Over the last decade, various studies have focused on the functioning of local food policy councils and their key role in institutionalizing participatory governance mechanisms involving different stakeholders concerned with the promotion of sustainable food systems. Nevertheless, the literature remains scattered, inconclusive, and mostly dissociated from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are increasingly used by organizations and government agencies alike. As a result, the best practices and challenges associated with the local food system governance and its impacts on sustainability need to be further evaluated. Based on a systematic analysis of 79 academic articles, this realistic synthesis sheds light on sustainability outcomes and key success factors underlying the effectiveness of local food policy councils. Findings show that local food systems can play a significant role in promoting sustainability issues, although the coverage of the SDGs remains very uneven across the objectives considered. The study also shows the key role of several collaborative governance principles, including broad participation, facilitative leadership, and consensus building, in the success of these systems. Contributions to the literature and managerial implications are discussed.
The objective of this article is to analyze the practices and challenges underlying the development and use of sustainability performance indicators in public organizations. Based on interviews with sustainability managers and experts (n = 39), analysis of strategic documents (n = 135), and participant observation within several organizations, the study shows that the governance-by-numbers system put in place by the government is largely dissociated from sustainability issues and real performance. The focus on quantifying performance and the verification mechanisms put in place do not lead to more rationality, rigor, or monitoring, but rather to a proliferation of unsubstantial information that paints a fictional picture of sustainability performance. Through the lens of the moral fictionalism approach, this study highlights the challenges of measuring sustainability performance and the reasons behind the production of quantitative data of questionable usefulness by public organizations. The study contributes to the critical literature on sustainability performance measurement practices, on the sociology of quantification, and on the fictionalist approach of governance by numbers.
