Kelly Kollman

University of Glasgow | UofG · School of Social and Political Sciences

Behind closed doors, many large companies quietly use their political clout to influence public policy on social and environmental issues – often in a negative direction. This book seeks to create a new norm for responsible political behaviour by corporations. It brings together leading scholars of corporate political responsibility with leading or...

This paper explores the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an element in a corporation’s political action repertoire. Previous research has studied lobbying and CSR as a distinct means by which corporations seek to manage their non-market environment. Analyzing CSR as a political activity, we argue that corporations engage in CSR for...

The adoption of the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights by the United Nations (UNGPs) in 2011 created a new governance instrument aimed at improving the promotion of human rights by business enterprises. While reaffirming states duties to uphold human rights in law, the UNGPs called on firms to promote the realization of human rights w...

The concept of responsibility has emerged as central to the study of international politics. This book explores the integral role of responsibility within the context of global crises such as the responsibility to address climate change, manage financial crises, and intervene with political conflicts. Vetterlein and Hansen-Magnusson address respons...

Despite the notable successes of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activism in the region, individual European countries have varied considerably in the extent and speed with which they have adopted legislation to recognise the rights of their LGBTI citizens. Scholars have often turned to modernisation theory to explain these...

Scholars increasingly have argued that the future effectiveness and legitimacy of firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities are dependent on more transparent forms of lobbying to ensure firms' policy positions are aligned with their CSR commitments. Very little empirical work, however, has systematically analyzed firms' lobbying discl...

Why did the Netherlands become the first country to allow same-sex couples to marry? I argue that in addition to social and political factors that have been well-highlighted in the literature, the desire of Dutch activists and policy élites to burnish their international reputation as a social policy and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender right...

This article examines the relationship between national varieties of capitalism and firm engagement with the norms and best practices promoted within the global organisational field for corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using a content analysis of the CSR reports of US and European firms, we show that firms from the coordinated market economie...

No fewer than 24 European countries have implemented national s a me-sex unions (SSU) laws since 1989 (see Table 5.1). This relatively rapid diffusion of SSU policies in the region largely has occurred in the absence of legally binding mandates from either the European Union (EU) or the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The European polity an...

Since 1989, twenty-three European countries have implemented same-sex union (SSU) laws. We argue that the political processes leading to the adoption of these policies have been shaped by international influences such as policy harmonization, elite lesson-drawing and most importantly by social learning fostered within transnational networks. We exa...

This paper examines,variations in ¢rm-level adoption,of environmental,management systems,(EMS) ^ ISO 14001 and,the European,Union’s Eco-Audit and Management,Scheme (EMAS) ^ in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. Drawing on insights from club theory, institutional theory, and stakeholder theory, it argues that despite the fact that th...

In a period of just under 20 years, 15 Western European countries have adopted national same-sex union (SSU) laws that legally recognize the gay and lesbian couples who chose to enter them. This rather startling case of convergent policy change has largely slipped under the radar screens of political scientists. This article argues that the Europea...

This introduction provides a brief overview of key political developments in global lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizing and advocacy over the past three decades as well as a summary of recent academic research and debates on these issues in politics, sociology and other disciplines. It introduces the three questions addressed b...

What role do international business norms play in regulating the behavior of firms? Despite growing acceptance of the constructivist claim that norms play an important role in international life and an increased interest in private authority by international relations (IR) scholars, surprisingly little research in the field has explored the extent...

What explains why a majority of western democracies have adopted same-sex union (SSU) laws in the past decade and a half? I argue that this startling trend toward policy convergence in part can be explained by the rise of a human rights oriented transnational network of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists as well as the transna...

Much has been written about regulatory divergence between the US and EU (Vogel, 2003; Vig and Faure, 2004). The case of biotechnology provides interesting insights regarding regulatory politics and how it has evolved in the US over the years. The EU has applied the ‘precautionary principle’ to regulate GM foods/agricultural biotechnology and has ad...

This paper examines how different environmental policy types differentially impact firms and why firms vary in their responses to such policies. Based on the mechanisms embedded in policy instruments to create incentives for firms to comply, the characteristics of benefits/costs that policies impose on firms and the institutional context in which p...

This paper examines the circumstances under which economic globalization has led (and not led) to a convergence in the regulation of agricultural biotechnology in the European Union (EU) and the United States. While the EU has taken a precautionary approach to regulating biotech products, the U.S. has decided that these products are no different fr...

Environmental Management Systems (EMSS) represent a new generation of voluntary “beyond compliance” environmental policies that neither set substantive goals nor specify final outcomes. As a result, many stakeholder groups are lukewarm toward them. Since 1993 two major supranational EMSs—ISO 14001 and the European Union's Environmental Management a...

What explains why the US and Canada, two countries with similar socio-cultural and political systems, have diverged so dramatically over same-sex unions policy? In 2005, Canada became one of four countries to open marriage to same-sex couples. In that same year the US Congress held votes on a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriag...

The paper proceeds in five sections. The first section outlines different strands of convergence theory and relates them to the two types of convergence-government behavior and firm behavior-being addressed in the paper. The second section briefly describes EMAS and ISO 14001 and their historic development. Section three details the manner in which...

[From the introduction]. The central argument of this study is that the effects of Europeanization and the impact EU policy has on member states cannot be understood without taking certain international factors related to globalization into account; domestic institutional accounts do not tell the whole story. In particular the nature of EU policies...