Abstract
Business organizations are increasingly engaged with global value chains in reaching the global marketplace. Ethical marketing practices are also initiated in the form of fair trade within these global value chains by capturing the modern market dynamics emerged with the behavioral changes of global consumers. This trading arrangement has highlighted the human resource development as a benefit mainly for the developing countries. Therefore, this paper aims to uncover how the human resource development is taken place through ethical marketing reside in the global value chain. The qualitative research method is used with a single case study approach in this research. The case study selected for this study is the one and only fair trade certified handicrafts manufacturing company in Sri Lanka. Data collection is completed through conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with organizational representatives and rural suppliers. The data was analyzed using the generic strategy including coding, sorting and synthesizing steps. The findings revealed that human resource development is taken place through ethical marketing under three themes. These are namely sharing business and procedural knowledge, sharpening skills of stakeholders and inculcating positive attitudes towards the business. The knowledge sharing for production, quality improvements and minimizing errors were the categories generated under the theme of sharing business and procedural knowledge. The sharpening skills of stakeholder’s theme was backed by the categories of business development skills, employee skills and supplier creativity. The theme of inculcating positive attitudes of people towards the business comprised of motivations of suppliers and sharpening their positive attitudes. Hence, this study explains the avenues for human resource development through ethical marketing while admitting the necessity of moving towards the stakeholder approach for marketing. Finally, the implications conveyed creating resilience towards capturing global opportunities, crafting purpose driven business ecosystems and reimagining the scholarly research to create a greater impact on local community.