ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relations between selected consumer goods industries (food and personal care) and their critical suppliers (flavours and fragrances respectively) in the face of responsibility. Adopting a suppliers’ perspective, it explores the social dynamics that emerge when they confront the high-intensity ethical issue of toxicity in food and personal care products. The study reveals the interdependence between the competing supplying organizations, the professional associations that represent them and their clients and analyzes how responsibility is negotiated among them. Through the issue of toxicity in food and personal care products, the discussion sheds light on the responsibility process and reflects on how social relations embedded in power and based on knowledge asymmetry between interdependent organizations in an industry can shape moral responsibility.
