**1. Introduction**

We seek to redefine the dimensions of product quality by proposing a novel theoretical framework in the context of food supply chains (FSCs). We are motivated by the need to incorporate sustainability more directly into operations and supply chain management (OM/SCM) theory [1–4]. In addition, climate change, population growth, and the resources required by industrialized agriculture, as well as changing consumer preferences, contributing to concerns about the social, ecological, and economic sustainability of FSCs [5–11]. This research, therefore, contributes to the literature by developing and empirically validating a theoretical framework with social and ecological sustainability incorporated as dimensions of food product quality. The notion that quality addresses sustainability (i.e., social and environmental) issues has origins in practice as well as the OM/SCM literature [12–17]). Two rationales suggest sustainability may be embedded within quality. First, many quality management principles (e.g., defect and waste reduction) and tools (e.g., statistical process control and root cause analysis) can be extended to environmental management. Second, quality management emphasizes understanding customer requirements; by broadening the view of customers to include stakeholders, we can extend the definition of quality to encompass a variety of social issues (e.g., worker safety, working conditions, and community relations) as well as the natural environment [12].

**Citation:** Johnson-Hall, T.D.; Hall, D.C. Redefining Quality in Food Supply Chains via the Natural Resource Based View and Convention Theory. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 9456. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/su14159456

Academic Editors: David Eshun Yawson and Fred Amofa Yamoah

Received: 29 June 2022 Accepted: 28 July 2022 Published: 2 August 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

We follow best practices for middle-range theory development, relying on a topdown approach to integrating extant theories within the context of FSCs [18,19]. Our theorization combines the lens of the natural resource-based view (NRBV), which prescribes the development of strategic capabilities related to social and ecological issues for longterm competitive advantage, with convention theory (CT) to reflect the broad and *socially embedded* nature of food quality attributes [20,21]. Integrating these theories into a novel product quality management framework places social and ecological issues in a central position within the OM/SCM function, which may enhance managers' ability to balance tradeoffs between performance attributes. We suggest that this could further advance the evaluation of quality performance from an input, rather than an output perspective, which is critical due to the limitations of testing and inspection, particularly in food [22]. Furthermore, this framework could reduce the need for *post hoc* monitoring because of the incorporation of sustainability in process and supply chain design. This is particularly relevant with respect to FSCs because of the acknowledged difficulty associated with measuring the outcomes of sustainability practices in this context [23].

Furthermore, while prior OM/SCM literature suggests quality dimensions (cf. [24]) including performance, features, conformance, etc., such frameworks do not address the socially embedded nature of economic markets and quality [1,25]. Consistent with the economic sociology literature and CT, our use of social embeddedness reflects aspects of product quality and economic decision-making which are grounded in social contexts and institutions including geographic, historical, and cultural associations. Incorporating social embeddedness into the definition of quality is particularly relevant for food products for several reasons. First, food is essential for human survival. The essential nature of food, therefore, dictates that the long-term sustainability of FSCs is of critical importance and that any holistic conceptualization of food quality needs to reflect the importance of ecological attributes. Second, food and consumer perceptions of food quality have strong associations with place, historical tradition, and culture [26]. Third, the for-profit food industry is intensely competitive, and, at the same, time, food products are typically low-margin items [7,27]. Fourth, firms compete, in part, with differentiated production and by marketing products with a wide array of quality attributes and claims [7]. Finally, FSCs involve a breadth of entities such as for-profit and non-profit operations, governmental organizations, and consumers. Each of these considerations suggests that quality frameworks need to address the socially embedded and complex nature of FSCs. From a practical perspective, food industry managers need to understand quality in order to interpret the voice of the customer into product attributes and to match supply with demand. We combine CT with the NRBV to develop the logic for how supply and demand characteristics influence the specification and *bundling* of quality conventions for competitive positioning [28].

Taken together, there are theoretical and practical motivations to reconsider definitions of quality for food products and within FSCs to incorporate sustainability [17]. Our study seeks to contribute by developing and testing a theoretical framework of food product quality that can simultaneously reflect the complexity and diversity of FSCs, as well as stakeholder perspectives, and which integrates dimensions of social, ecologic, and economic sustainability.

We organize the remainder of this manuscript as follows. First, we develop our theoretical framework by integrating the NRBV and CT to generate a food product/process typology with product exemplars [18]. Second, we explain our case methodology, including case selection strategy and analysis methods before moving on to an explanation of our case analysis and typology validation [29]. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications and directions for future research.
