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“Bluewashing” the Firm? Voluntary Regulations, Program Design, and Member Compliance with the United Nations Global Compact
Abstract
Voluntary programs have emerged as important instruments of public policy. We explore whether programs lacking monitoring and enforcement mechanisms can curb participants’ shirking with program obligations. Incentive-based approaches to policy see monitoring and enforcement as essential to curb shirking, while norm-based approaches view social mechanisms such as norms and learning as sufficient to serve this purpose. The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), a prominent international voluntary program, encourages firms to adopt socially responsible policies. Its program design, however, relies primarily on norms and learning to mitigate shirking. Using a panel of roughly 3,000 U.S. firms from 2000 to 2010, and multiple approaches to address endogeneity and selection issues, we examine the effects of Compact membership on members’ human rights and environmental performance. We find that members fare worse than nonmembers on costly and fundamental performance dimensions, while showing improvements only in more superficial dimensions. Exploiting the lack of monitoring and enforcement, UNGC members are able to shirk: enjoying goodwill benefits of program membership without making costly changes to their human rights and environmental practices.
... The past few decades have witnessed the emergence of voluntary initiatives as instruments of public policy (King & King, 2000;Berliner & Prakash, 2015;Albareda et al., 2008). International organisations and development agencies have also developed an interest in CSR. ...
... Karnani (2010) argues that despite talking a great deal about CSR, many companies do nothing about it. The terms "corporate green-washing" and "corporate blue-washing" have become popular descriptions of corporate posturing, where companies adopt symbolic voluntary initiatives to camouflage their "business as usual" attitudes (Utting, 2003;Benn and Bolton, 2011; Cohen, 2010;Berliner & Prakash, 2015). King and King (2000) argue that voluntary initiatives are susceptible to opportunistic behaviour. ...
... King and King (2000) argue that voluntary initiatives are susceptible to opportunistic behaviour. The profit imperative inherent in any business activity limits the extent to which business corporations can act in the public interest (Maphosa, 1998a(Maphosa, , 1998b(Maphosa, , 2009Karnani, 2010;Berliner & Prakash, 2015). Wettstein and Waddock (2005) argue that voluntary initiatives are increasingly becoming problematic with the growing emphasis on human rights. ...
... VEPs' work when member cities meet (comply with) the requirements set by the city networks. The key challenge for VEPs is to find the balance between benefits and requirements that are of interest to both parties engagedmember cities and city networks (Berliner & Prakash, 2015). In practice, this challenge boils down to providing sufficiently attractive benefits that can be provided by the city network for member cities to commit to the programme while simultaneously setting requirements for a member city to meet that help city networks achieve their aims (van der Heijden, 2019). ...
... Lee & Jung, 2018). These are akin to the benefits provided by other VEPs, discussed in the broader literature-information, financial profit, public recognition, and access to third parties (Berliner & Prakash, 2015;van der Heijden, 2012). We expect that cities prefer programmes with multiple benefits over programmes with single benefits. ...
... In terms of VEP requirements, entry and participation requirements are generally set to prevent the benefits for each participant from decreasing excessively by restricting the number of participants ('congestion problem'). The VEP provider generally undertakes monitoring and enforcement to prevent participants from receiving benefits without complying with the requirements ('free-riding problem') (Berliner & Prakash, 2015;Potoski & Prakash, 2009). The effect of strict or lenient requirements on attracting members to a VEP is not clear-cut (Berliner & Prakash, 2015;van der Heijden, 2012). ...
... Moreover, the audiences and objectives of INGOs can be appreciated as more specific (Perez et al., 2019), requiring instruments that suit their specific needs and objectives. In contrast, given their mandate to represent a wide range of constituents with mutual concerns, IGOs need to produce only a few instruments that apply broadly (Berliner and Prakash, 2015). With respect to the lower number of instruments coproduced by IGOs and INGOs, these may only be needed on the rare occasions when the interests of both types of organization converge and the competencies of each are required. ...
... It is surprising that stakeholder involvement, or the lack thereof, is proportional between instruments produced by IGOs and INGOs. This could imply that there are issues with the practicality of stakeholder involvement, or that international organizations are more interested in establishing universal practices rather than getting MNCs to develop tailor-made solutions for their stakeholders, as previous researchers have argued (Berliner and Prakash, 2015;Brown et al., 2018). ...
... Moreover, there was a large proportion of instruments applicable to any industry between IGOs and INGOs. These findings support the argument that INGOs need more instruments to suit a wider audience (Perez et al., 2019), while IGOs need fewer instruments that can be applied more broadly (Berliner and Prakash, 2015). ...
Purpose
It has been more than 20 years since the idea of binding multinational corporations directly to international law was abandoned. Since then, concerned actors have sought to manage corporate conduct through voluntary regulation. However, little is known about the instruments produced in this regard. This study aims to understand the properties of the instruments that govern or regulate corporate social responsibility at the international level.
Design/methodology/approach
Systematic literature review and content analysis methods were combined to compile a list of 229 international corporate social responsibility instruments (ICSRIs) produced by intergovernmental (IGOs) and international nongovernmental (INGOs) organizations. These instruments were categorized according to an adapted classification framework.
Findings
The majority of instruments from our sample are produced by INGOs, focus on management activities and are applicable to specific industries. The most common issues addressed by the instruments are related to worker protection, human rights, governance and the environment. A limited number of instruments specify stakeholders’ involvement or feature an external orientation. Instruments rarely address issues related to product quality and safety, economic contribution or social performance.
Practical implications
Without a comprehensive overview, it has been difficult to develop broad-based understandings about voluntary regulation as a mechanism for controlling corporate conduct internationally. This study’s findings offer valuable insights, allowing policymakers and industry practitioners to understand the effectiveness of, and make appropriate enhancements to, ICSRIs.
Social implications
By enhancing ICSRIs to address the limitations highlighted in the current study, multinational corporations can be induced into contributing more productively to the sustainable development of the societies they impact and play a greater role in the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Originality/value
Previous research has largely concentrated on analyzing small numbers of carefully selected instruments in a conceptual or descriptive approach. In contrast, this study represents a novel approach of systematic compilation and quantitative classification for a comprehensive list of ICSRIs.
... As a result, we expect firms tend to share the pro-climate behaviors of other firms with whom they have board interlocks. We highlight four 14 As with other norm-based voluntary reporting schemes, carbon disclosure programs risk merely providing reputational benefits to participants without meaningful improvements in performance (Berliner and Prakash 2015). ...
... We initially identified interlocks as two companies that, in the same year, share a board member with the same DirectorID, an identification variable used within BoardEx to follow specific directors. 18 Other norm-based voluntary governance programs include, among many others, Responsible Care (King and Lenox 2000), ISO 14001 (Potoski and Prakash 2005), and the United Nations Global Compact (Berliner and Prakash 2015). 19 Membership in climate coalitions is measured roughly every three to four years, as available. ...
When do corporations stop ignoring or opposing climate action and start to go green? We focus on the role of corporate boards of directors, which shape firms' positions on internal and external issues of corporate governance and public policy. We argue that board decisions to engage constructively on climate issues are likely to be influenced by the choices and experiences of other firms. Learning, socialization, and competitive dynamics are especially important in highly salient and rapidly evolving policy areas, such as climate change. To test this theory, we construct the network of board memberships for US public corporations and uncover robust evidence that climate innovations diffuse among companies that share board members in common and among companies whose board members interact at separate boards. Understanding the unfolding dynamics of corporate climate action requires examining corporate boards and their social context.
... The OECD guidelines thereby create a set of expectations about what good corporate behavior entails, covering topics such as human rights, employment practices, and bribery and also include expectations about environmental impacts. Many of these principles and practices are similar to those adopted by the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) (95). ...
... A key question is whether such suggested changes can be sufficiently sincere, ambitious, and fundamental-and if corporations are able to integrate biosphere stewardship at scales and speeds that are sufficient to effectively address the biosphere crisis-or if strategies and reporting associated with sustainability simply represent a new opportunity for TNCs to adapt a new language and marginally revised approaches that create competitive advantages and attract new investors and markets (49). Previously expressed concerns with corporations engaging in green- (151) or bluewashing (95) have generated substantial skepticism in relation to how serious and ambitious corporate activities in relation to the biosphere actually are. Such skepticism is further fueled by information of corporate lobbying against regulations (9,57,152), strategies for reducing the legitimacy of climate science and scientists (89), and perceptions of corporations as "psychopaths" (46,153). ...
Corporations are perceived as increasingly powerful and critically important to ensuring that irreversible climatological or ecological tipping points on Earth are not crossed. Environmental impacts of corporate activities include pollution of soils, freshwater and the ocean, depletion of ecosystems and species, unsustainable use of resources, changes to air quality, and alteration of the global climate. Negative social impacts include unacceptable working conditions, erosion of traditional practices, and increased inequalities. Multiple formal and informal mechanisms have been developed, and innovative examples of corporate biosphere stewardship have resulted in progress. However, the biosphere crisis underscores that such efforts have been insufficient and that transformative change is urgently needed. We provide suggestions for aligning corporate activities with the biosphere and argue that such corporate biosphere stewardship requires more ambitious approaches taken by corporations, combined with new and formalized public governance approaches by governments.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 47 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
... This implies that participation in orchestration initiatives, as a strategic choice of organizations to satisfy their audiences' demands, can be driven both by a logic of consequence or a logic of appropriateness (Bernstein & Cashore, 2007). For the former, incentive-based conditions such as the degree of competition within the stakeholder group the organization is a part of, external pressure (in terms of reputation or potential state laws) as well as anticipated costs and benefits of participation are central (Grimm, 2019;Berliner & Prakash, 2015). ...
... For the latter, norm-based conditions such as the atmosphere between potential members, shared norms and trust as well as a common understanding of what can and cannot be done are key (Grimm, 2019;Berliner & Prakash, 2015). These considerations, in turn, shape the demands that stakeholders put on the initiative's purpose, procedure and performance, that ultimately determine the initiative's legitimacy. ...
Today, the world faces grand challenges that are both daunting and urgent to address. The decarbonization challenge in particular requires states to mobilize a range of actors to achieve structural changes. In this context, there has been a proliferation of orchestration attempts by states, whereby they use soft or indirect forms of steering to coordinate and engage intermediaries to achieve policy objectives. This type of steering raises a number of questions: How can such forms of steering gain legitimacy among the targeted actors and how can this legitimacy be maintained in the face of competing interests? This paper uses the case of the Fossil Free Sweden Initiative to highlight key factors and considerations in establishing and maintaining legitimacy in the orchestration of a varied set of non-state actors with differing interests. Specifically, the paper makes two core contributions to existing literature. Theoretically , it highlights how institutional legitimacy is obtained through a balancing act of stakeholder demands at different levels. Empirically, it examines how Sweden, considered a climate leader, governs toward decarbonization through national orchestration as an important tool. The paper thereby offers new insights into the legitimacy of orchestration with significant implications for how to understand rule-making and governance with the use of intermediaries. It particularly highlights how power and agency can create a governance dilemma for the orchestrator that may undermine legitimacy in the long term.
... However, there are additional motivations for business actors to adopt stricter private standards or to even lobby for stricter public standards such as the considerations regarding competitive advantage (Morioka et al., 2017). It is also important to recognize that corporations are part of national and transnational climate change governance regimes, participating in organizations such as the United Nations Global Compact (Berliner & Prakash, 2015;Bernhagen et al., 2013). Consequently, they will be a subject of research in this journal as individual actors, but also as members of national or transnational climate change governance arrangements (Abbott, 2012;Bäckstrand & Kuyper, 2017;Chan et al., 2015;Roger et al., 2017). ...
... Given that climate change is a global problem, it is necessary to address it at the global level. Therefore, research traditionally focused on the international level (Bang & Underdal, 2015;Keohane & Victor, 2016;Tavoni & Winkler, 2020) and then broadened its perspective to include transnational governance (Bäckstrand & Kuyper, 2017;Bulkeley et al., 2014;Roger et al., 2017) and polycentric governance (Abbott, 2012;Cole, 2011;Jordan et al., 2015;Jordan et al., 2018;Ostrom, 2010). This literature has investigated both how domestic factors, including the existence of climate policy experiments Kivimaa et al., 2017) shape climate action at the international and transnational levels (scaling-up perspective), as well as how international and transnational factors affect governmental climate action in states (trickle-down perspective) (Clare et al., 2017;Dubash et al., 2013;Lachapelle & Paterson, 2013). ...
This editorial introduces the journal Climate Action to its audience and defines its aims and scope. It first calls for the need to understand climate action as the choices and behavior of international organizations, governments, civil society, businesses, and individuals. Next, it discusses both the facilitators and impacts of climate action. The editorial concludes with a research agenda for climate action to be studied from a transdisciplinary perspective with practitioners for triggering widespread societal transformation.
... It might also explain why educators working in the field of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship have been perceived as providing a 'cretin's education', acting as a Trojan Horse for Business Model Ideology, and spreading opportunism and survival of the fittest (c.f Riot in Loi et al, 2022). We discussed the idea of Blue Washing (Berliner and Prakash, 2015), where the deployment and wide promotion of Sustainable Development Goals in Business School environments (c.f. Azmat et al, 2023;Garcia-Feijoo et al, 2020) provides the appearance of sustainably-oriented purpose and strategy whilst there is little change on the ground. ...
Educators at all levels are being challenged to ensure that students know the truth about climate change and are empowered to be agents of change, able to resist despair and propose radical innovation in the face of sustainability challenges (Department for Education, 2022). For Enterprise Educators, this demand is potentially problematic, implicated as we are (through economic preparation activities), in contributing to take-and-consume cultures that relate to the unsustainability of development (Frederick, 2018; Hallonsten, 2023), and where limited empirical examples of transformed and sustainable practice exist (Klapper and Fayolle, 2023; Dodd et al, 2022). A question therefore becomes – how do we re-orient ourselves and our practice away from unsustainability? One possibility is to connect with the substantial materials and resources proposing regenerative business design, offered through the Doughnut framework (Raworth, 2017), and the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL, 2023). To explore this possibility, in this paper we adopt the stance of self-study, an approach used in teaching and teacher education where educators purposefully study themselves in order to bring about change in thinking and practice (Bullough and Pinnegar, 2001).
... Il y a en effet un écart entre le discours et les actes dans de nombreuses entreprises, ce qui constitue une hypocrisie organisationnelle (Brunsson, 1989). On peut même observer des effets contraires aux objectifs recherchés par la formation à la RSE, comme dans le cas du greenwashing et du bluewashing (Berliner et Prakash, 2015), lorsque des managers bien formés à la RSE utilisent les limites des modèles de labellisation RSE et de développement durable pour mettre en avant quelques réalisations positives afin de masquer des défaillances importantes, comme cela a été le cas pour la gestion de la sous-traitance de Nike. ...
L’éducation à la RSE dans les écoles de management passe à la fois par des messages implicites et explicites. La formation explicite à la RSE a des limites, voire des effets contre-productifs lorsque les écoles ne sont pas exemplaires de façon implicite. Toutefois, l’éducation implicite à la RSE devrait être bien articulée avec une formation explicite, comme le montre le cas de programmes de formation en alternance au management responsable de type socio-économique.
... It occurs, for example, when corporate codes of conduct claim social concerns that do not correspond to the company's practice. "Bluewashing" is another term which is typically used to encompass both the environmental and the social dimensions by reference to the blue UN flag, in which companies figuratively drape themselves to better their image in relation to environmental and human rights records [41]. ...
Sustainability aims to integrate environmental and social considerations into decision-making, alongside purely economic factors, in a balanced manner. Here, a concise critical review of policy instruments concerning the definition and implementation of this concept is presented. The sources were selected as the most relevant to capturing the origins and evolution of the idea of sustainability from the 1960s to the present day. The analysis narrows down to the construction sector within the European Union (EU), of which the perspective guides the work. As it emerges, the historical path led to the materialization of the sustainability concept into the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite interpretative discussions around the concept, these SDGs became the relevant sustainability model for sectors like construction. Its application to practice, however, faces three major challenges that must be acknowledged and addressed to allow defining robust and genuinely sustainable decision-making strategies: greenwashing, commodification, and “cherry picking”.
... Over the years, more specific types of greenwashing have emerged, such as CSR-washing (Pope and Waeraas, 2016), blue washing (misuse of United Nations Global Compact; Berliner and Prakash, 2015), and SDG washing (misuse of SDGs; Heras- Saizarbitoria et al., 2022). Furthermore, overlapping concepts like window-dressing and smoke-screening are sometimes used as synonyms for greenwashing to describe selective disclosure of favourable environmental information that fails to provide an accurate account of a product' s or company' s actual environmental performance (Pedersen, 2006). ...
Is greenwashing a business model? The paper is a conceptual effort to advance the discussions of greenwashing though the lenses of business model thinking. We argue that the business model literature can offer a useful supplement to the existing conceptualisations of greenwashing by linking talk-action disconnects to the broader business architecture. Essentially, greenwashing is considered as a broken business model, which characterizes organisations that deliberately disconnect the promises to the stakeholders (i.e. value proposition) from the underlying business architecture. We also argue that the concept of greenwashing can contribute to the business model literature by drawing attention to organisations with imperfect business architectures, which fail to deliver on the value proposition communicated to their stakeholders. Fundamentally, greenwashing calls attention to the multitude of organisations with limited integration between the individual building blocks of a business model.
... 94% of the companies indicated that they had implemented the UNGC's anti-corruption principles in their code of ethics, and half of them have additionally implemented other international standards or specific procedures (internal auditing, hotline, additional training). However, the study concludes, along the lines of criticism of the UNGC (Berliner and Prakash, 2015), that companies' inconsistent approach to complying with UNGC requirements leads to a disconnect from reality and merely improves the public image. ...
Purpose
The lack of transparency contributes to the growing corruption problem in various spheres of society. This paper aims to analyse the sustainability report disclosures published by Czech companies in 2021 and registered by the Association of Social Sustainability of the Czech Republic.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on three hypotheses, the relationships between the level of disclosed anti-corruption information and selected variables related to the corporate environment are tested using content analysis and the Mann–Whitney test.
Findings
This paper reveals that Czech firms provide more information if they operate in a higher-risk environment (energy, materials and financial services) or are state-owned (or with a state ownership stake). It also reveals that companies participating in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (UN Global Compact and Global Reporting Initiative) increase their credibility and social responsibility with more disclosed information.
Research limitations/implications
A limitation of this paper is the smaller number of selected companies matching the chosen criteria. In addition, a certain degree of subjectivity is likely to have manifested in the process of coding the reports and in the use of the content analysis method.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to research that addresses the fight against corruption and CSR issues with a specific study in a small, Central European country and provides new empirical data on the anti-corruption fight problem.
... Buhmann et al. (2018) stated that from the neo-institutional perspective, organizations engage with the SDGs primarily to respond to institutional pressures, rather than to significantly improve sustainability practices and performance, also known as greenwashing. In the case of compliance with the SDGs and other UN initiatives, a specific term was even created: bluewashing (with more emphasis on the economic and social factors), referring to the blue UN flag (Berliner and Prakash 2015). From a technology point of view, blue-and/or greenwashing happens when the positive sustainability impacts of a technology are exaggerated and/or overemphasized. ...
This paper responds to recent calls to address the indivisible nature of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) framework and the related knowledge gap on how SDG targets interlink with each other. It examines how SDG targets interact in the context of a specific technology, point of care (PoC) microfluidics, and how this relates to the concept of responsible innovation (RI). The novel SDG interlinkages methodology developed here involves several steps to filter the relevant interlinkages and a focus group of experts for discussing these interlinkages. The main findings indicate that several social synergies occur when deploying PoC microfluidics, but that the environmental trade-offs may jeopardize the total progress toward the SDGs. More specifically, the environmental sacrifices (use of plastics and lack of recyclability) resulted in the product being cheaper and, thus, better accessible. This work suggests that attention should be given (and prioritized) to the use of renewable and recyclable materials without jeopardizing the accessibility of the product. This should minimize the identified trade-offs. These findings inform how analyzing SDG interlinkages relates to the responsibilities and dimensions of RI in several ways. First, analyzing SDG interlinkages helps to execute the governance responsibility by using the RI dimensions (anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion and responsiveness). Second, analyzing SDG interlinkages gives insights into if and how a technology relates to the do-good and avoid-harm responsibility. This is important to assess the responsiveness of the technology to ensure that the technology can become truly sustainable and leaves no one behind.
... Finally, organisations sometimes lack the motivation to engage in deliberation, allowing only "formal" but not "substantive participation" (Etchanchu & Djelic, 2019: 903), exploiting deliberation spaces for greenwashing (Berliner & Prakash, 2015;Soundararajan, Brown, & Wicks, 2019), or using their power to shift the discourse according to their own benefit (Schormair & Gilbert, 2021;Thompson, 2008). ...
Organisations increasingly use digital nudges to influence their workforces’ behaviour without coercion or incentives. This can expose employees to arbitrary domination by infringing on their autonomy through manipulation and indoctrination. Nudges might furthermore give rise to the phenomenon of “organised immaturity.” Adopting a balanced approach between overly optimistic and dystopian standpoints, I propose a framework for determining the moral permissibility of digital nudging in the workplace. In this regard, I argue that not only should organisations provide pre-discursive justification of nudges but they should also ensure that employees can challenge their implementation whenever necessary through legitimation procedures. Building on Rainer Forst’s concept of the right to justification, this article offers a way to combine contract- and deliberation-based theories for addressing questions in business ethics. I further introduce the concept of meta-autonomy as a capacity that employees can acquire to counter threats of arbitrary domination and to mitigate organised immaturity.
... The study derives a measure of CSR based on membership in the UNGC and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting standards. The UNGC is a prominent voluntary public-private governance initiative that advances principles addressing human rights, labor standards, the environment, and anti-corruption (Berliner and Prakash, 2015;Carby-Hall, 2020). It offers a framework for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues that guide CSR practices of companies, and it is the most widely adopted CSR private governance system (Orzes et al., 2018). ...
... Accordingly, broad but shallow environmental commitments appear to be the most likely outcome of that strategic calculus. The relatively high likelihood of shallow private-sector commitments is reflected by an extensive amount of empirical research demonstrating that, without institutionalised oversight, the environmental benefits resulting from voluntary corporate action remain modest (Berliner and Prakash 2015;Sellare et al. 2022;Pye 2019). Yet, by engaging only in shallow environmental commitments, firms expose themselves to reputational risks (McGuire et al. 2022). ...
Environmental governance in many high-income democracies relies to some extent on self-regulation by the private sector. Yet, this policy mode is contested and proponents of top-down government regulation argue that voluntary corporate sustainability commitments remain shallow and rarely are more than greenwashing. I assess to what extent firms’ business conduct is subject to societal checks and balances, in particular, whether public support for regulation constitutes a control mechanism of corporate contributions to environmental goods. I rely on an original survey experiment (N = 2112) conducted with a representative sample of the Swiss voting population. The analysis shows that accusing firms of greenwashing reduces both citizens’ perceived effectiveness of self-regulation and perceived synergy of corporate profits and environmental protection. However, this attitudinal shift only translates into modest updates in respondents’ policy preferences. As a result, short-run shifts in public support for regulation are an unlikely societal control mechanism of business conduct.
... For instance, bluewashing is an issue related to the UNGC (Fortin and Jolly 2015, p. 52). A statistical analysis of 3000 U.S. firms by Berliner and Prakash (2015) reveals that the firms' human rights and environmental performance, with which the UNGC is concerned, tend to be only superficial management of the impression of considering these issues for bluewashing, avoiding substantial and costly actions. Haras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2021) conduct empirical research on how organisations worldwide engage with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda by exploring more than 1300 sustainability reports. ...
Human trafficking needs to be addressed globally. It is designated as an important part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Human trafficking can be defined as a by-product of a negative circle caused by several social and economic problems that reciprocally affect each other in a complex manner. Global systematic exploitation, widening inequality, domestic or international social problems, and human rights issues lead to it. Considering the features of human trafficking, this chapter attempts to examine methods to reduce it using SDGs. This study mainly considers SDGs 5, 8, 10, 16, and 17 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). This paper also tries to discuss it considering the goals and the following perspectives to propose possible solutions to the problems: First, the actions the international society has taken to eradicate the crime. Second, further understanding human trafficking. Finally, how SDGs can be adopted in the context of current human trafficking.
... For instance, bluewashing is an issue related to the UNGC (Fortin and Jolly 2015, p. 52). A statistical analysis of 3000 U.S. firms by Berliner and Prakash (2015) reveals that the firms' human rights and environmental performance, with which the UNGC is concerned, tend to be only superficial management of the impression of considering these issues for bluewashing, avoiding substantial and costly actions. Haras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2021) conduct empirical research on how organisations worldwide engage with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda by exploring more than 1300 sustainability reports. ...
Target 16.5 of SDGs aims to “Substantially reduce corruptionand bribery in all their forms.” It is widely accepted in economics that corruption aggravates the overall economic performance of a society. However, previous studies have also shown that firms providing bribes to public officials are likely to record higher sales growth, while public officials undoubtedly enjoy extra income or entertainment. Domestic and international actors have fought against corruption for long, but most of these efforts have failed, mainly due to the reluctance of public officials who benefit from the entangled networks of corruption. Corruption has become an equilibrium of the interactions of a variety of societal actors, which is thus considered a social institution. Historically, all societies were corrupt by today’s standards, but some of them have successfully overcome the hardship of escaping the equilibrium of corruption, achieving a more transparent society. The examples of such societies include Britain, the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore. These cases indicate that the strong political will of powerful elites is necessary for successful transitions. Many developing countries do not meet such conditions, which is a strait gate for a fair and transparent society.
... For instance, bluewashing is an issue related to the UNGC (Fortin and Jolly 2015, p. 52). A statistical analysis of 3000 U.S. firms by Berliner and Prakash (2015) reveals that the firms' human rights and environmental performance, with which the UNGC is concerned, tend to be only superficial management of the impression of considering these issues for bluewashing, avoiding substantial and costly actions. Haras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2021) conduct empirical research on how organisations worldwide engage with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda by exploring more than 1300 sustainability reports. ...
This chapter focuses on the relationship between Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 and higher education. Higher education has traditionally been expected to play three significant roles: education, research, and social contribution. However, due to globalization, these societal roles and expectations are gradually evolving. There are two targets under SDG 4 that are directly related to higher education. Target 4.3 aims to “ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational, and tertiary education, including university.” It is noteworthy that the target mentions not only accessibility to higher education, but also quality. Additionally, the Times Higher Education released the Impact Ranking and visualized a university’s global performance, which assesses universities according to the framework of SDGs. Japan was the most represented nation in 2019, highlighting Japanese universities’ active efforts to work on global issues. While various efforts have been made to achieve the indicators of SDG targets, the global impact of COVID-19 has provided a significant opportunity for the role of higher education to be reconsidered. Considering this background, this chapter introduces various activities and initiatives at Japanese higher education institutions, such as the Science and Technology ResearchPartnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS), which promotes international joint research on global issues. Finally, this chapter presents the further expected roles and challenges for higher education in society through the indirect spillover effects on the other goals of the SDGs.
... For instance, bluewashing is an issue related to the UNGC (Fortin and Jolly 2015, p. 52). A statistical analysis of 3000 U.S. firms by Berliner and Prakash (2015) reveals that the firms' human rights and environmental performance, with which the UNGC is concerned, tend to be only superficial management of the impression of considering these issues for bluewashing, avoiding substantial and costly actions. Haras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2021) conduct empirical research on how organisations worldwide engage with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda by exploring more than 1300 sustainability reports. ...
The aspiration of the Goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” is derived from both the “right to health” norm in the field of international human rights and the “health for all (HFA)” goal in the field of international development. The principle of “Leave no one behind” in achieving the SDGs is logically endorsed both by the right to health and the HFA. First, communicable diseases have become perceived as a threat to “human security” in global health, and Japan started to use the concept in global health diplomacy to elevate the level of dialogues. Nevertheless, Ebola Virus Diseaseand COVID-19, not anticipated when the SDGs were adopted, now urge us to re-visit the needs to reform global health governance. Second, to promote universal health coverage (UHC), international partnership has been strengthened. In 2019, at the G20 Summit, Japan played an important role in promoting the UHC among the twenty members. This led to an expanded international commitment made at UN High-Level Meeting on UHC in the same year. It shows that global health has become an important agenda for diplomacy.
... For instance, bluewashing is an issue related to the UNGC (Fortin and Jolly 2015, p. 52). A statistical analysis of 3000 U.S. firms by Berliner and Prakash (2015) reveals that the firms' human rights and environmental performance, with which the UNGC is concerned, tend to be only superficial management of the impression of considering these issues for bluewashing, avoiding substantial and costly actions. Haras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2021) conduct empirical research on how organisations worldwide engage with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda by exploring more than 1300 sustainability reports. ...
As Peace Studies is interdisciplinary subject, this chapter especially focuses on three main aspects: democratization, development, and peace. These are very important factors for keeping on a peaceful society. Therefore, we must cooperate for solving such challenges because we are facing with serious issues resulted from three areas. In concrete, democratic system is confronted by authoritarianism. The regime against human rights is increasing worldwide as well as in Asia. We get the news on election operation without a free and fair guarantee. It generally means there were irregularities at the polls. In the case of development, we are facing with the income disparity inside a country, as well as among states. Finally, the policy seeking the interests of own country like ‘America First’ sweep across worldwide. Therefore, we must promote the peace on human rights based on international harmony and cooperation. This chapter discusses to remove various obstacles as mentioned above. And then, the actors such as government, the UN, regional organization, and non-governmental organization (NGO) must take charge of the role of promoting peaceful world because they need to cooperate for realization of SDGs Goal 16, based on peace, justice, and strong institutions.
... For instance, bluewashing is an issue related to the UNGC (Fortin and Jolly 2015, p. 52). A statistical analysis of 3000 U.S. firms by Berliner and Prakash (2015) reveals that the firms' human rights and environmental performance, with which the UNGC is concerned, tend to be only superficial management of the impression of considering these issues for bluewashing, avoiding substantial and costly actions. Haras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2021) conduct empirical research on how organisations worldwide engage with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda by exploring more than 1300 sustainability reports. ...
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were launched to promote partnerships to enhance developmental effectiveness. This is especially apparent in Goal 17. The private sector is one of the prospective partners for the realisation of a sustainable society. Collaboration with it has accelerated internationally to challenge various development issues through businesses. This trend is impelled by both the public and private sectors, whose activities have different aims and purposes. Both multilateral and bilateral donors, including Japan, have planned and implemented various development projects in collaboration with untraditional partners, such as corporations. This chapter examines how partnerships with the private sector have been formed, focusing on Japan. First, it briefly studies international initiatives to understand the process by which previously separated entities—public and private sectors—gradually move closer to solve development problems. It then explores the way the Government of Japan and the Japan International Cooperation Agency, who are responsible for the public sector, have come to create or support projects in collaboration with companies. Their shift in the direction of international development responds to international calls for sustainable development. The chapter concludes by discussing the prospect of partnership with the private sector to realise the sustainable future that the SDGs aim to create.
... For instance, bluewashing is an issue related to the UNGC (Fortin and Jolly 2015, p. 52). A statistical analysis of 3000 U.S. firms by Berliner and Prakash (2015) reveals that the firms' human rights and environmental performance, with which the UNGC is concerned, tend to be only superficial management of the impression of considering these issues for bluewashing, avoiding substantial and costly actions. Haras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2021) conduct empirical research on how organisations worldwide engage with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda by exploring more than 1300 sustainability reports. ...
Education was positioned as Goal 4 (i.e., SDG4) in SDGs. SDG4 aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” The lack of education and the inability to read and write often limit access to information and disadvantage the livelihoods of people. From the perspective of acquiring knowledge and skills, along with developing human resources, it is clear that the elements of education are present across all 17 SDGs. In other words, education is a cross-cutting discipline that influences a variety of areas (Kitamura et al. 2014) and, as such, plays an important role in achieving all SDGs. The main objective of this chapter is to examine “inclusive and equitable quality education.” First, this chapter provides a brief overview of international trends in educational cooperation from 1945 to 2015, covering the Education for All (EFA), Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and SDGs. It then discusses “inclusive and equitable quality education,” the core of SDG4. It specifically addresses discussions on equity, inclusion, and the quality of education. Furthermore, the quality of education is examined from four perspectives: school environment, educational attainment, learning achievement, and non-cognitive skills. This chapter also presents the case of education for children with disabilities in Ethiopia.
[This chapter was written by modifying the following chapter: Tonegawa Y (2018) “Kokusai kyouiku kyouryoku (International cooperation in education)” in Yamada M (ed) Atarashii kokusai kyouryoku ron (New international cooperation theory), Revised edition, Akashi Shoten, Tokyo]
KeywordsInclusive educationQuality educationEquityEducation for children with disabilitiesEthiopia
... Efforts of shirking in the extractive industry universe Oshionebo, 2007) include 'greenwashing' CSR by adding an environmentally sensitive patina to lackluster efforts (Levy and Kolk, 2002;Selmier et al., 2015. See Capelle-Blancard and Petit, 2019, for extensive analytics on greenwashing in general) and 'bluewashing' 3 (Berliner and Prakash, 2015;Besada and Martin, 2015). The framework presented below makes shirking less successful. ...
Caught between the Rock of financial regulation and the Hard Place which CSR [corporate social responsibility] has become, extractive MNEs are being pushed to conduct business in more transparent, sustainable, ethical ways. Extractive industry CSR has come to be judged, predominantly, through the lens of sustainable development, hardening around multilateral codes such as the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs], through certification and reporting schemes such as the Publish-what-you-pay program, and under shareholder pressure from local communities, NGOs, home and host governments and peak associations such as the International Council for Mining and Minerals [ICMM].
“Finance” – bankers, investment firms and financial regulatory/governance – has gained increased capacity to monitor through three channels: first, financial firms are using ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] data analytics to monitor MNEs; second, compelled to monitor through MiFID, Dodd-Frank and OECD requirements, global banks allocate or withhold capital; third, extractive MNEs’ with headquarters, business operations, or banking relationships in the US or Europe have fallen under the reporting requirements of banking regulations such as Dodd-Frank [US] and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II [“MiFID”, Europe].
Interweaving concepts from extractive industry economics, international business, banking theory and law & finance, this chapter inductively constructs a framework to examine this financial disciplining. In the context of this book, it illustrates with five vignettes to provide a unique perspective on how this framework of financial disciplining may support the SDGs.
... Seitz y Martens [69], señalan un folleto promocional de la UNESCO que describe claramente los beneficios para las corporaciones multinacionales al asociarse (es decir, contribuyendo financieramente) con las Naciones Unidas. Como se explica, los donantes tendrán: i) Beneficios de una fuerte transferencia de imágenes, al estar asociados con una marca internacional de renombre y una agencia prestigiosa como lo es la ONU; ii) Ganancia de una mayor visibilidad en la escena internacional; iii) Acceso al amplio y diverso público de la UNESCO y redes privadas; iv) Beneficios del papel de la UNESCO como un organismo neutral y que actúa como broker de multistakeholders; v) Facilidad para hacer realidad su Responsabilidad Social y vi) Fortalecimiento de lealtad a la marca a través de buenas prácticas corporativas [73]. ...
Este artículo analiza el desarrollo y la organización de la Cumbre de Sistemas Alimentarios de las Naciones Unidas (UNFSS), que está siendo convocada por el Secretario General de la ONU, António Guterres, a finales de 2021. Aunque pocas personas discutirán que los sistemas alimentarios globales necesitan transformación, ha quedado claro que la Cumbre es, en cambio, un esfuerzo de una poderosa alianza de corporaciones multinacionales, organizaciones filantrópicas y países orientados a la exportación para subvertir las instituciones multilaterales de gobernanza alimentaria y capturar la narrativa global de la “transformación de los sistemas alimentarios”. Este artículo sitúa la próxima Cumbre en el contexto de cumbres mundiales sobre la alimentación anteriores y analiza las preocupaciones expresadas por muchos miembros de la sociedad civil. Explica cómo la estructura y las formas actuales de reclutamiento de participantes y compromiso público carecen de transparencia y rendición de cuentas básicas, no logran abordar conflictos de intereses significativos e ignorar los derechos humanos. A medida que la pandemia de COVID-19 ilumina las vulnerabilidades estructurales del modelo neoliberal de los sistemas alimentarios y las consecuencias del cambio climático para la producción de alimentos, ahora más que nunca se necesita un compromiso de alto nivel con los sistemas alimentarios equitativos y sostenibles. Sin embargo, los autores sugieren que el UNFSS, en cambio, parece seguir una trayectoria en la que los esfuerzos para gobernar los sistemas alimentarios globales en el interés público han sido subvertidos para mantener el colonialismo y formas corporativas de control.
... The initiative outlines ten principlestwo of them aiming at not causing or contributing to human rights abuseto which adhering companies commit and periodically report on the progress made. However, the Global Compact, set up as a soft law instrument, was soon criticized for lacking "teeth," falling short to provide accountability, while offering an avenue for corporations for "blue-washing" (Berliner and Prakash 2015). ...
The publication of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) was a watershed moment in the business and human rights (BHR) debate, a scholarly and policy discussion that has boomed over the last two decades. In parallel, the United Nations General Assembly issued its Agenda 2030, featuring 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by the end of 2030. Both, the UNGPs and the Agenda 2030, are instruments designed to advance corporate sustainability at an international level. Yet, despite their apparent complementarities and potential synergies, the connection between the two remains loose and therefore ambiguous. The disconnect is exacerbated by how the Agenda 2030 frames the role and contributions of the business sector, which holds strong parallelisms with the traditional notion of “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR). However, adopting a “CSR” approach to SDG implementation obstructs the integration of the UNGPs and hinders Agenda 2030 from taking advantage of the progress made in BHR over the last two decades and thus to realize their full potential in charting a holistic path of sustainability of business actors.
... Therefore, interaction with other UNGC member firms might improve MSRQ. Our findings are in line with the literature on the beneficial effects of UNGC membership (e.g., Schembera 2018) and disagree with the critical view that questions the UNGC's usefulness (e.g., Berliner and Prakash 2014). For robustness analyses, we additionally collect data on whether a firm joins the carbon disclosure project (CDP) or follows the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). ...
This study analyzes the association between various sustainable corporate governance (SCG) mechanisms and mandatory sustainability reporting quality (MSRQ). To this end, we construct a novel MSRQ measure based on manually collected data from 220 German firms in their first year of mandatory sustainability reporting according to the European CSR Directive (2014/95/EU). Descriptive findings show a heterogeneous reporting quality for our sample. The regression analyses suggest an important role of SCG in ensuring high MSRQ. MSRQ increases with the number of SCG mechanisms employed. Regarding the individual mechanisms, we find that MSRQ is positively associated with a sustainable remuneration of the executive board, gender diversity at the supervisory board level, the existence of a CSR committee, engagement in CSR initiatives, and external assurance. However, we do not find any association between gender diversity at the executive board level and MSRQ, contradicting research on voluntary sustainability reporting. Finally, we derive several implications for preparers, auditors, stakeholders, and regulators.
... 'Blue-washing' is another spinoff term, referring to marine conservation efforts that ignore the devastation caused by the impunity of industrial fishing (Schott 2010). Bluewashing is also used to refer to United Nations efforts to promote corporate responsibility that lead to window-dressing (Berliner and Prakash 2015). ...
This working paper is a review of keywords that communicate ideas associated with accountability. Words used to describe ideas about accountability often have different meanings, to different actors, in different contexts—and in different languages. This paper addresses the multiple, ambiguous meanings of accountability with the ‘keywords’ approach, a tradition that takes everyday big ideas whose meanings are often taken for granted and makes their subtexts explicit. Illustrations of different understandings of accountability are drawn mainly from cases in the international development field, but references to the persistent challenge of accountability in the US are also included. These serve as a reminder that democratic political systems and legal systems once considered robust are no guarantee of accountability. The paper addresses the scope of the concept and overlapping concepts before addresses widely-used keywords, keywords from more specialized communities of practice and accountability sayings.
... 'Blue-washing' is another spinoff term, referring to marine conservation efforts that ignore the devastation caused by the impunity of industrial fishing (Schott 2010). Bluewashing is also used to refer to United Nations efforts to promote corporate responsibility that lead to window-dressing (Berliner and Prakash 2015). ...
‘What counts’ as accountability, and who decides? Accountability is often treated as a magic bullet, an all-purpose solution to a very wide range of problems—from corrupt politicians or the quality of public service provision to persistent injustice and impunity. The concept has become shorthand to refer to diverse efforts to address problems with the exercise of power.
In practice, the accountability idea is malleable, ambiguous — and contested. This working paper unpacks diverse understandings of accountability ideas, using the ‘keywords’ approach. This tradition takes everyday big ideas whose meanings are often taken for granted and makes their subtexts explicit.
The proposition here is that ambiguous or contested language can either constrain or enable possible strategies for promoting accountability. After all, different potential coalition partners may use the same term with different meanings—or may use different terms to communicate the same idea. Indeed, the concept’s fundamental ambiguity is a major reason why it can be difficult to communicate ideas about accountability across disciplines, cultures, and languages.
The goal here is to inform efforts to find common ground between diverse potential constituencies for accountable governance.
This analysis is informed by dialogue with advocates and reformers from many countries and sectors, many of whom share their ideas in blogposts on the Accountability Keywords website. Both the working paper and blogposts reflect on accountability-related words and sayings that resonate with popular cultures, to get a better handle on what sticks.
The format of the working paper is nonlinear, designed so that readers can go right to the keywords that spark their interest:
The introduction maps the landscape of accountability keywords.
Section 2 addresses what counts as accountability?
Section 3 identifies big concepts that overlap with accountability but are not synonyms- such as good governance, democracy, responsiveness and responsibility.
Section 4 shows the relevance of accountability adjectives by spelling out different ways in which the idea is understood.
Section 5 unpacks widely used, emblematic keywords in the field.
Section 6 considers more specialized keywords, focusing on examples that serve as shorthand for big ideas within specific communities of practice.
Section 7 brings together a range of widely-used accountability sayings, from the ancient to the recently-invented—illustrating the enduring and diverse nature of accountability claims.
Section 8 makes a series of propositions for discussion.
... Overall, we conclude that positive communication on corporate climate strategies and commitments are largely symbolic in nature (Bowen, 2014;Delmas & Montes-Sancho, 2010;Doda et al., 2016). Our results support the contention that voluntary, bottom-up climate governance systems alone are inadequate for dealing with the massive, systemic problem of emissions mitigation in the corporate and private sectors (Berliner & Prakash, 2015;Dingwerth & Eichinger, 2010;Diouf & Boiral, 2017;Marimon et al., 2012). Recent advances in climate regulation are promising. ...
This study conducts machine‐aided textual analysis on 725 corporate sustainability reports and empirically tests whether climate ‘talk’ within the sampled reports translates into performance ‘walk’, proxied by changes in greenhouse gas emissions over a 10‐year period. We find mixed results for the ‘talk–walk’ hypothesis, depending on the type of talk and the associated climate change actors involved. Indeed, our empirical models show that while some climate commitments are genuine, many constitute little more than ‘greenwashing’—producing symbolic rather than substantive action. We attribute this result to false signalling of climate transitioning in order to mislead due to misaligned incentives. An unexpected positive finding of the study is that talk about operational improvements is a significant predictor of climate performance improvement. On the other hand, reactive strategies are consistent with poor climate performance. Our findings highlight the significance of corporate climate strategies other than emissions reductions in assessing the effective contribution of business to the climate transition.
... Jest to zresztą też charakterystyczne dla podobnych rozważań dotyczących współczesnej etyki biznesu 3 . Niektórzy autorzy, próbując określić początki współczesnej koncepcji społecznej odpowiedzialności biznesu, wskazują na połowę XX w. ( [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. To w tym czasie pojawił się słynny esej amerykańskiego potentata branży stalowej Andrew Carnegie -Ewangelia bogactwa − w której zdefiniował on dwie podstawowe powinności przedsiębiorcy: dobroczynność i dobre zarządzanie powierzonymi zasobami (Carnegie, 1900, s. 1-46). ...
Monografia poświęcona jest sprawozdawczym i pozasprawozdawczym narzędziom komunikowania się z interesariuszami zewnętrznymi. W części teoretycznej omówiono istotę i znaczenie komunikacji CSR oraz przedstawiono szeroki wachlarz narzędzi, które mogą być wykorzystane w tym procesie. W części empirycznej opisano i oceniono wykorzystanie obu kategorii narzędzi przez cztery spółki, których siedziby główne znajdują się w Trójmieście.
... Publishing sustainability reports is a way firms respond to such stakeholder pressures by communicating their aspirations and progress (Bebbington & Unerman, 2018;Cho & Patten, 2007;Reynolds & Yuthas, 2008). Sustainability reporting is largely voluntary and less prescribed than its financial counterpart (Berliner & Prakash, 2015;Kolk, 2003), so while certainly imperfect, these reports offer valuable insights on firms' sustainability efforts, both realized and aspirational (Christensen et al., 2013). ...
In 2015, the United Nations launched the SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGs) in collaboration with civil society and firms, recognizing that leading firms have the potential to innovate bold solutions at scale to achieve global sustainability. Exploring the impact of the SDGs’ launch on firms, through the lens of normative pressure, we apply computer-aided text analysis to the language used in sustainability reports of 164 large corporations to investigate whether and how the SDGs impacted sustainability reporting. Results show that, when comparing firms’ sustainability reports before and after 2015, increasing alignment was observed with the language of certain SDGs, while alignment did not significantly change for other SDGs. We further analyze these changes across industries, natural resource intensity levels, and geo-institutional contexts, revealing variation among firms based on institutional characteristics that may point to selection priorities and critical gaps as global firms engage with the grand challenges embodied in the SDGs.
JEL CLASSIFICATION: M14
... Scholars note the issue of shirking, where firms may join clubs but may not honor the membership obligations. For scholars, this is more likely to take place when clubs lack effective monitoring and enforcement mechanism (King and Lenox 2000;Rivera and Leon 2004;Delmas and Keller 2005;Morgenstern and Pizer 2007;Berliner and Prakash 2015). Our paper does not engage the debate on whether club membership is associated with cities that have improved climate resilience. ...
This paper examines whether US cities’ membership in voluntary climate clubs improves the municipal bond ratings issued by S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch. We suggest that only clubs focused on climate adaptation could help cities signal their resilience to climate risks and their ability to service their municipal bonds. Yet, club membership is only a signal of intent. By itself, it does not offer concrete evidence that cities have adopted adaptation policies or enhanced their resilience to climate risks. We examine three climate clubs: ICLEI, whose membership obligations cover climate and other environmental issues; C40, whose scope covers both climate mitigation and adaptation; and 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), which focuses on adaptation only. Employing a two-way fixed effects model for a panel of 80 US cities from 1995 to 2018, we find that 100RC membership leads to a small improvement in bond ratings. This has important policy implications: Assurances about implementing adaptation policy, as opposed to evidence about how adaptation reduces climate risks, could have spillover effects on municipal finance. In such cases, climate adaptation could have tangible implications for city-level finances.
... 79). Berliner and Prakash [23] discovered that members exhibit poorer performance than nonmembers in crucial and cost-intensive dimensions, while merely making low-cost efforts to improve in rather superficial dimensions. ...
Growing awareness of the fashion industry’s negative impact on people and the environment has led to considerable growth of the sustainable fashion market. At the same time, Black Friday purchases increase annually as the sales event develops into a global phenomenon. As sustainable fashion brands are choosing to participate in the event, many communicate their offers via the social media platform Instagram. To gain a competitive advantage and maintain their sustainable corporate images, some brands use greenwashing and/or bluewashing strategies. The first part of this study explores which strategies were employed in Instagram content posted by sustainable brands, using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. We propose a research-based model of nine greenwashing/bluewashing strategies. The second part of the study examines predictive factors for consumer evaluations of Black Friday ads by sustainable brands, using an online survey and a stepwise multiple regression analysis. Findings show that consumers’ critical attitude towards Black Friday and high ad skepticism predict positive evaluations while sustainable purchase behavior predicts negative evaluations. These insights suggest that ‘sustainable’ Black Friday campaigns may appeal to consumers who show a general concern for the environment and issues of social sustainability, but not to those who exhibit actual sustainable behavior.
This article explores the communication strategies of multinational corporations in response to the Russo-Ukrainian War and the public pressure to divest from the Russian domestic market. By content analyzing official statements from the top 50 revenue-generating multinational corporations in Russia, the article identifies patterns in corporate narratives about the war, their actions and concerns, and potential solutions. The findings reveal that most companies declare scaling down their presence in Russia while maintaining certain basic obligations, prioritizing employee safety, and expressing concerns about the global economy. While few explicitly condemn Russia's aggression, many adopt neutral language to avoid naming Russia as the aggressor. Corporations emphasize the importance of diplomacy, adherence to international law, and the pursuit of peace, but often avoid proposing concrete solutions. Despite variations across industries, countries of origin, and decisions to stay or leave Russia, the differences in statements were not significant. The uniformity of corporate statements and evidence that companies frequently do not follow their declared promises suggest potential “bluewashing” – making vague or false claims of social responsibility or anti-war stances to improve their public image. These findings emphasize the need for multinational corporations to develop sincere and original wartime communication strategies.
Метою статті є вивчення передумов виникнення феномену «bluewashing», аналіз підходів до розуміння та класифікації bluewashing в рамках концепції Глобального договору ООН. В процесі дослідження використовувалися такі методи, як: історичний (для аналізу передумов виникнення феномену «bluewashing»); узагальнення (для аналізу поглядів дослідників щодо критики Глобального договору ООН та щодо підходів трактування поняття «bluewashing»); аналізу і синтезу (для класифікації видів bluewashing за рівнем невідповідності соціальним принципам); абстрактно-логічний (для викладення матеріалу та пропозицій для подальших досліджень. Розглянуті питання виникнення практики «bluewashing» в контексті появи Глобального договору ООН та критики відносно цієї ініціативи. Конкретизовано визначення поняття «bluewashing» та запропоновано класифікувати його за рівнем невідповідності соціальним принципам (нульовий, мінімальний, суттєвий, загрозливий). Перераховані інструменти моніторингу та заохочення самих учасників до уникнення політики, яка може призводити до такої практики як bluewashing. Обґрунтовано поняття «bluewashing», проведено класифікацію bluewashing та запропоновано заходи, що сприяють уникненню та виявленню практики bluewashing для українських компаній. Для підвищення ефективності управління ризиками для українських компаній, які поточно є членами ГД ООН в Україні чи планують вступати до нього, необхідно проводити заходи, дія яких спрямовується на уникнення практики bluewashing.
Do transnational corporations act more responsibly when they are owned by the state and informed by the Nordic societal model? This is explored through multisited ethnographic studies of Norwegian energy and extraction corporations' operations abroad. The book also situates the corporate ethics in the Norwegian 'home context' of the corporations. Case studies are from operations in Brazil, Tanzania, Turkey, China, Northern Kurdistan and the far north of Norway, and include the corporations Norsk Hydro, DNO, Statkraft, and Equinor.
The fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Sustainable fashion (SF) aims to address this issue by designing, creating, and marketing socially and environmentally responsible products. This paper provides a broad overview of the extant literature on SF marketing to understand the trends and future directions. The paper starts with a discussion on sustainable consumption and marketing in the particular context of fashion and ends with potential research gaps, which have scope for further work. For the analysis, 97 research papers were selected based on a structured, systematic search with a particular set of keywords. The review finds that marketing SF from a customer’s perspective has been emphasized in the existing literature. Widely studied topics include consumer behavior, purchase behavior, and the attitude–behavior gap. Further research is required to explore how SF can gain from B2B marketing, circular economy, sustainability-oriented innovations, and subsistence markets, particularly in emerging economies. This paper contributes to theory and practice by providing state-of-the-art sustainable fashion marketing research, identifying research gaps, and providing future research directions.
Purpose
This paper aims to synthesize the corporate social responsibility decoupling (CSRD) literature, CSRD's causes and consequences and discuss other organizational attributes examined by CSRD scholars during 2010 and 2020. The authors provide suggestions for a future research agenda in this domain.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors' systematic literature review (SLR) uses the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework to extract CSRD studies. The authors filter collected articles against quality and relevancy criteria and finally review 175 published articles.
Findings
A theme analysis identifies and structures the many themes related to CSRD. The authors discuss the drivers of CSRD and reveal the consequences companies face after CSRD. The authors also provide a comprehensive CSRD discussion in the context of developed and developing economies. CSR communication is also identified as a tool for decoupling and recoupling.
Research limitations/implications
The identified themes provide a thorough illustration of CSRD literature for new CSRD scholars. The authors also provide suggestions for future research, such as examining country-level policy-making and implications of CSRD variance and identifying cultural and economic hurdles to achieving core CSR purposes.
Practical implications
Policymakers and scholars may adopt the approach that CSRD is a misreporting of information similar to accounting fraud. This is particularly relevant given that an increasing number of CSRD scandals indicate that the purpose of bringing change through corporate CSR has not been adopted well by corporations.
Originality/value
The authors' study offers a comprehensive literature review for the period of 2010–2020. The studies identified are structured into meaningful themes which can provide groundwork for future researchers.
The fashion industry is now in the eye of the storm for what concerns sustainability because of the enormous impact that such a business area has on the environment. To exploit the full potential for circular economy implementation, the fashion industry requires urgent changes adapting much more conscientious business practices, driving consumers to change their perceptions and behaviours towards circular products and services. The renunciation of greenwashing practices and the use of strategy focused on regaining consumer’s trust will increase the positive sentiment towards the fashion brands. This work demonstrates to what extent greenwashing may jeopardise the fashion industry in addressing challenges related to the implementation of more sustainable circular economy in the context of designing with intention of recycle, reduction of by-products, lower energy consumption and wise purchase habits.
This study provides guides for the fashion brands about the risks and gains related to the greenwashing practices and sustainable fashion industry. This study sketches also future research opportunities in more sustainable holistic approach of a products’ life cycle and how this can be translated into clear, transparent, or reliable certification schemes to prevent the misleading and dishonest marketing strategies helping the consumers to make a responsible choice.
Global greenhouse gas emissions are the main contributor to anthropocentrically-induced climate change and have risen 41% since 1990. We are still yet to reach peak emissions. A large share of those emissions result from private sector activity. At the same time, the private sector possesses major resources which should be harnessed to scale up funding and emissions reduction technologies to benefit the 3 climate. Since the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, there has been an upsurge in private sector activity on climate change, especially in the corporate sector. Researchers have suggested that this groundswell of private sector activity especially in reduction of carbon emissions holds out the promise of plugging conspicuous public governance gaps. But while this surge in private action since the Paris Climate Agreement is to be encouraged, and indeed has been formally welcomed by global public climate governance actors under the UNFCCC, the measurable success of private, public-private and “hybrid” climate governance arrangements on reducing emissions remains unclear. Through an in depth empirical investigation of the actors and initiatives that play a key role in this emerging domain of bottom-up climate change governance, this study finds that, despite a groundswell in private activity, zones of fragmentation among a multiplicity of private actors, initiatives and standards is stymying progress: while key actors are increasingly networked, key metrics remain severely fragmented; while substantial resources have been dedicated to governing carbon emissions, greenhouse gas emissions keep rising. These observations are demonstrated through an empirical analysis of the “carbon-based” governance regime, which we define as the governance of climate change through a unitary focus on carbon measurement, disclosure, and verification. So far, the ultimate goal of carbon-based governance to reduce emissions is far from being realized. Whether this regime can be repurposed to fulfil this crucial function remains an open question.
Partnerships for Sustainability in Contemporary Global Governance investigates the goals, ideals, and realities of sustainability partnerships and offers a theoretical framework to help disentangle the multiple and interrelated pathways that shape their effectiveness.
Partnerships are ubiquitous in research and policy discussions about sustainability and are important governance instruments for the provision of public goods. While partnerships promise a great deal, there is little clarity as to what they deliver. If partnerships are to break free from this paradox, more nuance and rigor are required for understanding and assessing their actual effects. This volume applies its original framework to diverse empirical cases in a way that could be extended to broader data sets and case studies of partnerships. The dual contribution of this volume, theoretical and empirical, holds promise for a more thorough and innovative understanding of the pathways to partnership effectiveness and the conditions that can shape their performance. The broad range of crosscutting analyses suggest important practical implications for the design of new partnerships and the updating of existing initiatives.
This interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to researchers, students, and practitioners within international relations, political science, sociology, environmental studies and global studies, as well as the growing number of scholars in public policy, global health and organizational and business studies who are keen to gain a deeper understanding of the pathways and mechanisms that influence the outcomes and effectiveness of cross-sector collaboration and transnational governance more broadly.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www .taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This article examines the methods employed in the human rights acts that have been legislated at the Australian State/Territory level to encourage compliance with human rights amongst non-government entities. The article considers the provisions in the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT) and the Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld) that enable non-government organisations to voluntarily ‘opt-in’ to the statutory obligations of a public authority to act in compliance with human rights. The intention behind these provisions was to encourage the voluntary assumption by private sector entities of the human rights standards expected of public authorities. This article examines how the ACT provision has had limited take-up and has not been successful in encouraging ‘opt-in’ by private sector organisations. The organisations that have opted-in are predominantly non-government, service oriented or advocacy organisations that already had a strong commitment to human rights. While this may indicate that the opt-in provision has not been successful in fulfiling its goal, it has achieved some modest outcomes in terms of setting an example for human rights compliance for non-government organisations. There are also some important lessons that should be heeded in terms of promotion and maintaining government commitment to develop a human rights culture.
For decades, companies found in international protocols and standards an alternative source of normative guidance to operatively implement sustainability policies at an organisational level. The ever‐increasing adoption of these multi‐faceted policies and guidelines co‐occurs with a more proactive and voluntaristic attitude towards CSR implementation by companies. Born as a kind of soft corporate law to reinforce a regulatory answer to sustainability issues, today, CSR due diligence is becoming a central pillar of the transition of the economic system towards a great level of sustainable development. The paper presents the results of an interventionist research carried out by researchers in collaboration with the European Parliament, aimed at developing a normative resolution on the prominent role of CSR due diligence and its accountability. Through the exploration of the different state‐of‐the‐art of European companies on CSR due diligence, findings suggest that there is considerable room for improvement in CSR due diligence that can be reached through a normative intervention. In addition, the paper contributes to the development of the literature on interventionist research carried out by business scholars, focusing on academia‐industry‐institutions relations.
Although franchise chains are increasingly committed to environmental, social, and societal transitions, only a few researchers have focused on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the specific case of franchising. The aim of our paper is to discuss the specificities and challenges of CSR in franchising, explore how franchisors report on their sustainable practices, and emphasize subsequent directions for future research. In order to do so, we focus on the Corporate Social Disclosure (CSD) practices of twenty-two retail and service franchisors operating in the French market where regulations of non-financial information disclosures exist for large companies. Our findings show that these franchisors disclose rich and diversified information about their CSR activities. However, franchisors’ disclosures can vary significantly, especially depending on their chain size and whether they are subject to reporting regulations. Our research contributes to the literature on CSR in franchise chains, as well as the practice.
Corporate social performance (CSP) is increasingly viewed as an important business outcome by researchers, investors, and society as a whole. Furthermore, empirical research indicates that CSP is positively related to corporate financial performance. These considerations lead to the question of whether CEO pay is properly structured to provide incentive to the CEO to improve firm CSP. In a sample of 313 firms, the authors found that a short-term CEO pay focus was negatively related to CSP, whereas a long-term focus was positively related to CSP. Implications of these results for future research and CEO pay design are presented.
Political scientists, sociologists, and economists have all sought to analyze the spread of economic and political liberalism across countries in recent decades. This article documents this diffusion of liberal policies and politics and proposes four distinct theories to explain how the prior choices of some countries and international actors affect the subsequent behavior of others: coercion, competition, learning, and emulation. These theories are explored empirically in the symposium articles that follow. The goal of the symposium is to bring quite different and often isolated schools of thought into contact and communication with one another, and to define common metrics by which we can judge the utility of the contending approaches to diffusion across different policy domains.For helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article, the authors wish to thank Barry Eichengreen, Lisa Martin, and John Meyer. Nancy Brune and Alexander Noonan provided excellent research assistance. The authors also wish to acknowledge and thank the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, the UCLA International Institute, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University for funding conferences at which this collection of symposium papers were discussed.
We argue that the social construction of target populations is an important, albeit overlooked, political phenomenon that should take its place in the study of public policy by political scientists. The theory contends that social constructions influence the policy agenda and the selection of policy tools, as well as the rationales that legitimate policy choices. Constructions become embedded in policy as messages that are absorbed by citizens and affect their orientations and participation. The theory is important because it helps explain why some groups are advantaged more than others independently of traditional notions of political power and how policy designs reinforce or alter such advantages. An understanding of social constructions of target populations augments conventional hypotheses about the dynamics of policy change, the determination of beneficiaries and losers, the reasons for differing levels and types of participation among target groups, and the role of policy in democracy.
The contribution of this work is a classification of corporate social action underlying the Social Ratings Data compiled by Kinder Lydenburg Domini Analytics, Inc. We compare extant typologies of corporate social action to the results of our exploratory factor analysis. Our findings indicate four distinct latent constructs that bear resemblance to concepts discussed in prior literature. Akey finding of our research is that positive and negative social action are both empirically and conceptually distinct constructs and should not be combined in future research. Additionally, we recommend that some prior research results be reconsidered to determine whether these newly derived measures might clarify some previous findings.
This article reviews the interdisciplinary literature on the UN Global Compact. The review identifies three research perspectives, which scholars have used to study the UN Global Compact so far: a historical perspective discussing the Global Compact in the context of UN-business relations, an operational perspective discussing the composition and impact of its participants, as well as a governance perspective discussing the constraints and opportunities of the initiative as an institutionalized arena for addressing global governance gaps. The authors contrast these three perspectives and identify key empirical as well as conceptual scholarly contributions. The remainder of this article contains focused summaries of the articles selected for this Special Issue. All articles are introduced and evaluated against the background of the three research perspectives.
The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) was created in 2000 to leverage UN prestige and induce corporations to embrace 10 principles incorporating values of environmental sustainability, protection of human rights, fair treatment of workers, and elimination of bribery and corruption. We review and analyze the GC’s activities and impact in enhancing corporate social responsibility since inception. First, we propose an analytical framework which allows us to assess the qualities of the UNGC and its principles in the context of external and internal elements that influence code effectiveness and implementation. Second, we analyze UNGC performance in encouraging companies to become signatory members and bring about demonstrable change in corporate CSR-sustainability activities. In its 10-year report, UNGC has proclaimed growth in both membership and program activity. However, all credible and publicly available data and documentation conclusively demonstrate that the UNGC has failed to induce its signatory companies to enhance their CSR efforts and integrate the 10 principles in their policies and operations. The result has been a loss of public trust and support of UNGC from important constituencies among civil society organizations, and those individuals and groups adversely impacted by corporate activities and resultant negative externalities. This diminished credibility has also made UNGC largely dependent on the corporate sector for its very survival. We conclude that this dependence has in turn impaired and would continue to hinder UNGC’s ability to fulfill its mission. Such an outcome raises serious questions as to the viability, usefulness, and continued existence of UNGC.
Theory suggests that when transaction costs are low, corporations and stakeholders can minimize social costs by transacting to their mutual advantage, but when trans- action costs are high, reducing social costs requires the intervention of a centralized institution. In surprisingly little work have scholars considered what happens in between—when transaction costs exist but recourse to hierarchical institution is barred. I use transaction cost analysis to hypothesize how collaboration between corporations and environmental stakeholder groups will be structured. Ronald Coase's "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960) was one of two articles mentioned by the Nobel Committee when awarding him the 1991 Nobel Prize in Economics. Yet, in his lecture at the award ceremony, Coase argued that the ar-
This article examines the concept of the corporate “social license,” which governs the extent to which a corporation is constrained to meet societal expectations and avoid activities that societies (or influential elements within them) deem unacceptable, whether or not those expectations are embodied in law. It examines the social license empirically, as it relates to one social problem–environmental protection–and as it relates to one particular industry: pulp and paper manufacturing. It shows try the social license is important, the circumstances in which it may encourage companies to go “beyond compliance” with regulation, how its terms are monitored and enforced, and how it interacts with what we term the regulatory and economic licenses. Overall, this research demonstrates that corporate environmental behavior cannot be explained purely in terms of instrumental threats and moral obligations to comply with the law, and that the increasing incidence of “beyond compliance” corporate behavior can be better explained in terms of the interplay between social pressures and economic constraints.
Under the leadership of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the United Nations has played an active role in promoting corporate social responsibility as one means to respond to the challenges of globalisation. The Global Compact has been Annan's major initiative in this domain. It has explicitly adopted a learning approach to inducing corporate change, as opposed to a regulatory approach; and it comprises a network form of organisation, as opposed to the traditional hierarchicbureaucratic form. These distinctive and, for the UN, unusual features lead the Compact's critics to seriously underestimate its potential, while its supporters may hold excessive expectations of what it can deliver. Because organisational issues of this sort will continue to confront the search for viable global governance mechanisms for many years ahead, this paper spells out both the advantages but also the inherent limitations of the learning networks approach.
A consensus has emerged in the burgeoning literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) that “virtuous” firms are often rewarded by the marketplace. Unfortunately, the mechanisms through which those rewards materialize are not well understood. Furthermore, it is difficult for managers and investors to know whether a company is actually engaged in responsible behavior. Thus, many stakeholders rely on institutional assessments of a firm’s social practices to inform their own judgments about that company’s CSR reputation. In this article, we draw on institutional theory and research on reputation and legitimacy to investigate the relationship between institutional endorsements (and repudiation) of CSR and firm financial performance. Our empirical results indicate that institutional intermediaries influence market assessments of a firm’s social responsibility and highlight the importance of the legitimacy-conferring function of expert bodies in understanding the relationship between social and financial performance. Our findings also illustrate the delicate interplay among different social performance assessments, reputation, and measures of financial and operating performance such that operating performance may serve as an advanced indicator of social performance and one type of social performance assessment may temper market reactions to another.
Policy Design for Democracy is a theoretically sophisticated work that draws examples from a wide array of public policy arenas. It summarizes four current approaches to policy theory-pluralism, policy sciences, public choice, and critical theory-and shows how none offers more than a partial view of the policy design characteristics that support and perpetuate democracy. Schneider and Ingram then develop a theory of public policymaking predicated on understanding how differences in policy designs are related to differences in the contexts from which they emerge and how these designs have an impact on democracy.
Human rights norms are today a central aspect of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda. After decades of exclusive attention to the behavior of states, human rights activists began during the late 1980s and 1990s to increase their pressures on corporate actors and demand commitment to and compliance with basic human rights in the business world. Unlike states, corporations lack international legal personality and cannot express commitment by signing on to formal international human rights treaties. Apart from voluntary standards, codes of conduct, and other UN standard-setting activities directed at businesses, the Global Compact (GC) represents to date the main UN sanctioned soft law designed to commit corporations to international standards of human rights and environmental protection. The GC does not replace the main compliance mechanisms set out by the legal obligations assumed by states under international law, but its goal is to supplement those existing mechanisms with an additional, non-binding avenue of promoting universal human rights principles. This essay argues that the relevance of the GC as a means to move businesses towards greater respect for human rights depends to a large degree on the emergence of local GC networks effectively faciliating engagement with civil society, learning about best practices, and providing a forum of deliberation. These services provided by local networks are particuarly important for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
▪ Abstract The study of compliance with international agreements has gained momentum over the past few years. Since the conclusion of World War II, this research agenda had been marginalized by the predominance of realist approaches to the study of international relations. However, alternative perspectives have developed that suggest that international law and institutions are important influences on the conduct of international politics. This review examines four perspectives and assesses their contribution to understanding the conditions under which states comply with international agreements. Despite severe conceptual and methodological problems, this research has contributed significantly to our understanding of the relationship between international politics and international law and institutions.
Corporate social performance (CSP) is increasingly viewed as an important business outcome by
researchers, investors, and society as a whole. Furthermore, empirical research indicates that
CSP is positively related to corporate financial performance. These considerations lead to the
question of whether CEO pay is properly structured to provide incentive to the CEO to improve
firm CSP. In a sample of 313 firms, the authors found that a short-term CEO pay focus was negatively
related to CSP, whereas a long-term focus was positively related to CSP. Implications of
these results for future research and CEO pay design are presented.
Policy scholars, for at least a generation now, have addressed the usefulness of public-mandated "command and control" environmental regulations as an effica- cious means to promote a cleaner environment. In the United States, these policies go back at least as far as the Clean Air Act of the late 1960s and are quite often designed, evaluated, and generally shepherded under the auspices of the Environmental Pro- tection Agency (EPA). Given a series of mixed evaluations (for a recent review, see Coglianese & Nash, 2006; Prakash & Potoski, 2006) as to their overall effectiveness, the concept of a Voluntary Environmental Program (VEP) was posed as an alterna- tive to the extensive governmental rules and regulations mandated by "command and control" legislation. In general terms, VEPs are self-regulation agreements that can be promoted by firms, governments, industry associations, and/or environmen- tal groups to compel businesses to enhance their environmental protection perfor- mance (Steelman & Rivera, 2006). The idea underlying the voluntary programs concept was consonant with a widespread changing, deregulatory philosophy of government, and was reflected in a number of policy issue-areas, e.g., communications and transportation. However, it was in the area of environmental regulation where Voluntary Programs were most noted, especially under the sponsorship of the EPA (see the Green Lights—later incorporated into Energy Star—and the 33/50 programs). Still, it is important to recognize that the emergence of VEPs was more than just a public policy, as various industries similarly established their own set of VEPs, often in cooperation with and assistance of a government agency; for instance, the American Chemical Council created the Responsible Care Program and the National Association of Ski Areas created a Sustainable Slopes Program (see King & Lenox, 2000; Rivera, deLeon, & Koebler, 2006, respectively). Scholars investigating the VEP phenomenon have observed that there are a number of reasons for firms or industry to adopt VEPs, like as a way of reaching out to consumers with a green signal (thus abetting their comparative differentiation advantage), as a way of obtaining new technologies and information, or as a way of avoiding later, possibly more constraining and invasive government-imposed regulations. VEP scholars, not surprisingly, soon offered a small but growing number of VEP-specific evaluations, finding (again not surpris-
Voluntary programs have become widespread tools for governments and nongovernmental actors looking to improve industry's environmental and regulatory performance. Voluntary programs can be conceptualized as club goods that provide nonrival but potentially excludable benefits to members. For firms, the value of joining a green club over taking the same actions unilaterally is to appropriate the club's positive brand reputation. Our analysis of about 3,700 U.S. facilities indicates that joining ISO 14001, an important nongovernmental voluntary program, improves facilities' compliance with government regulations. We conjecture that ISO 14001 is effective because its broad positive standing with external audiences provides a reputational benefit that helps induce facilities to take costly progressive environmental action they would not take unilaterally.
Combining insights from international relations theory with institutional approaches from organization theory and public policy, this book provides a complete explanation for the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR), showing how global norms influenced CSR adoption in the mining industry. Global normative developments have clearly had an important influence on major mining companies: by the mid-2000s, the majority had adopted sustainable development as a normative frame for their CSR policies and practices. However, there is significant variation between firms in terms of the timing, degree of commitment, and the willingness to assume a leadership role in promoting global standards for the mining industry. The author finds that attributes internal to the firm, including the critical role of leadership, and the way in which management responds to the institutional context and operational challenges faced in different countries are important influences on CSR adoption and important factors explaining variation.
This book examines and evaluates various private initiatives to enforce fair labor standards within global supply chains. Using unique data (internal audit reports, and access to more than 120 supply chain factories and 700 interviews in 14 countries) from several major global brands, including NIKE, HP, and the International Labor Organization's Factory Improvement Programme in Vietnam, this book examines both the promise and the limitations of different approaches to actually improve working conditions, wages, and working hours for the millions of workers employed in today's global supply chains. Through a careful, empirically grounded analysis of these programs, this book illustrates the mix of private and public regulation needed to address these complex issues in a global economy.
This is the first study to evaluate the impact of self-regulation on industrial accidents. We examine Responsible Care in the US chemical manufacturing sector using our author- constructed database of 1,867 firms that own 2,963 plants between 1988 and 2001. Firms’ self- selection into RC is instrumented using pollution-related regulatory pressure on firms that influences their probability of joining RC, but not plant-level accidents. The average treatment effect on the treated indicates that RC reduces the likelihood of accidents by 2.99 accidents per 100 plants in a given year. This 69.3% reduction in the likelihood of accidents, accounting for the plants that participate in RC, translates to back-of-the-envelope avoided losses of $0.8 billion to $3.8 billion per year. RC also reduces the likelihood of more narrowly-defined accidents, i.e., process safety accidents and accidents related to violations of RC codes, by 5.75 accidents per 100 plants in a given year or by 85.9%.
Institution theory and the resource-based theory of the firm represent two explanations of how organizations adapt to institutional change. These two theories are compared, contrasted, and applied to the context of environmental management. Arguments based on the theories are used to generate hypotheses about the diffusion and efficacy of the ISO 14001 system, a set of voluntary environmental standards. Empirical tests of the factors lying behind adoption of the ISO 14001 standards and whether or not the standards lead to toxic emissions reductions are conducted on a set of 316 electronics facilities located in the United States. Results support the idea that the standards allow facilities to "catch-up" to best practices if they are an especially high producer of toxic emissions. The paper ties the analysis back to current strategic management theories about organizations and institutional change, and then concludes by assessing the value of ISO 14001 versus traditional government regulation from the point of view of professionals and policy-makers.
In recent years a set of new postempiricist approaches to public policy, drawing on discursive analysis and participatory deliberative practices, have come to challenge the dominant technocratic, empiricist models in policy analysis. In this book, Frank Fischer brings together this work for the first time and critically examines its implications for the field of public policy studies. He describes the theoretical, methodological and political dimensions of this emerging approach to policy research. The book includes a discussion of the social construction of policy problems, the role of interpretation and narrative analysis in policy inquiry, the dialectics of policy argumentation, and the uses of participatory policy analysis. After an introductory chapter, ten further chapters are arranged in four parts: Part I, Public Policy and the Discursive Construction of Reality (two chapters), introduces the re-emergence of interest in ideas and discourse. It then turns to the postempiricist or constructionist view of social reality, presenting public policy as a discursive construct that turns on multiple interpretations. Part II, Public Policy as Discursive Politics (two chapters), examines more specifically the nature of discursive politics and discourse theory and illustrates through a particular disciplinary debate the theoretical, methodological, and political implications of such a conceptual reframing of policy inquiry. Part III, Discursive Policy Inquiry: Resituating Empirical Analysis (four chapters), offers a postempiricist methodology for policy inquiry based on the logic of practical discourse, and explores specific methodological perspectives pertinent to such an orientation, in particular the role of interpretation in policy analysis, narrative policy analysis, and the dialectics of policy argumentation. Part IV, Deliberative Governance (two chapters), discusses the participatory implications of such a method and the role of the policy analyst as facilitator of citizen deliberation .
Even when political interests control bureaucratic outputs, the control of policy outcomes is complicated by trade-offs between controllable versus effective implementation strategies. I use a nested game framework to explain why a cooperative strategy can increase enforcement effectiveness in the narrow administrative game and why principal-agent control problems and collective action problems associated with the strategy lead policy beneficiaries to oppose the effective strategy in the broader political games. Analyses of state-level Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforcement provide evidence that cooperation does enhance the impact of enforcement in reducing workplace injury rates but that policy beneficiaries oppose and sabotage cooperation. The interactions between administrative effectiveness and interest group politics in this and other implementation situations require that both be analyzed simultaneously, and the nested game framework can provide a systematic approach to such analyses.
An increasingly common regulatory tool is one that delegates the duty to provide information to the regulated entities, creating new problems in principal-agency models of regulation. Failure to comply with regulations mandating information provision is as much due to ignorance of reporting requirements as to willful evasion. A modified detection controlled estimation model for coverage, violation, and detection of facility compliance with the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory, estimated for facilities in Minnesota in 1991. Violation is better understood by those variables associated with the likelihood that the firm is ignorant of TRI reporting requirements, than by those associated with evasion. Firms in violation tend to be small facilities, releasing or transferring small amounts of toxins to the environment.
This article examines how the quality of domestic regulatory institutions shapes the role of global economic networks in the cross-national diffusion of private or voluntary programs embodying environmental norms and practices. We focus on ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 14001, the most widely adopted voluntary environmental program in the world, which encourages participating firms to adopt environmental stewardship policies beyond the requirement of extant laws. We hypothesize that firms are motivated to signal environmental stewardship via ISO 14001 certification to foreign customers and investors that have embraced this voluntary program, but only when these firms operate in countries with poor regulatory governance. Using a panel of 129 countries from 1997 to 2009, we find that bilateral export and bilateral investment pressures motivate firms to join ISO 14001 only when firms are located in countries with poor regulatory governance, as reflected in corruption levels. Thus, our article highlights how voluntary programs or private law operates in the shadow of public regulation, because the quality of public regulation shapes firms' incentives to join such programs.
Norms shape policy when they get translated into concrete programs. What if a widely shared norm gets translated into a weak program? How might this influence the program's legitimacy? We examine these issues in the context of the United Nations Global Compact, a voluntary program that embodies the widely shared norm of corporate responsibility. While both international intergovernmental organization (IGO) and international non-governmental organization (INGO) networks support this norm, they differ on the adequacy of the Compact's program design. We explore how this tension affects the diffusion of the Compact across countries, which vary in their levels of embeddedness in IGO and INGO networks. Our findings suggest that embeddedness in IGO networks encourages adoption, while embeddedness in INGO networks discourages it. Our analysis provides important lessons for sponsors of voluntary governance mechanisms. Widespread support for a norm does not automatically ensure support for a program that claims to embody it.
Governments enact environmental regulations to compel firms to internalize pollution externalities. Critics contend that regulations encourage technological lock-ins and stifle innovation. Challenging this view, the Porter-Linde hypothesis suggests that appropriately designed regulations can spur innovation because (1) pollution reflects resource waste; (2) regulations focus firms’ attention on waste; and (3) with regulation-induced focus, firms are incentivized to innovate to reduce waste. This article explores the regulation–innovation linkage in the context of voluntary regulations. The authors focus on ISO 14001, the most widely adopted voluntary environmental program in the world. Examining a panel of 79 countries for the period 1996–2009, they find that country-level ISO 14001 participation is a significant predictor of a country's environmental patent applications, a standard proxy for innovation activity. The policy implication is that public managers should consider voluntary regulation's second-order effects on innovation, beyond their first-order effects on pollution and regulatory compliance.
In recent years a startling policy innovation has emerged within global and domestic environmental governance: certification systems that promote socially responsible business practices by turning to the market, rather than the state, for rule-making authority. This book documents five cases in which the Forest Stewardship Council, a forest certification program backed by leading environmental groups, has competed with industry and landowner-sponsored certification systems for legitimacy. The authors compare the politics behind forest certification in five countries. They reflect on why there are differences regionally, discuss the impact the Forest Stewardship Council has had on other certification programs, and assess the ability of private forest certification to address global forest deterioration.
How do social movements influence corporations? Recent work suggests that movements can inflict material damage on their targets and shape categories of evaluation in organizational fields. Extending these ideas, we examine the effects of anti-sweatshop campaigns on sales, stock performance, reputation and specialized ratings of U.S. firms, using fixed-effects regression models and event study methods. The analysis demonstrates that social movements can in some circumstances shape both the markets and fields that firms inhabit. Specifically, anti-sweatshop campaigns (1. had negative effects on sales (though only among certain types of firms), (2. influenced stock prices, and (3. shaped specialized ratings of corporate responsibility. They also diminished previously positive corporate reputations (to a modest degree) but did not radically alter reputational hierarchies in the business community.
We provide a theoretical analysis of multitask promotion tournaments in which workers increase their promotion chances by
under-performing (over-performing) on tasks that are de-emphasized (emphasized) in a promotion rule. In some settings the
firm can mitigate such “strategic shirking” by committing to a promotion rule that requires more balance in the performances
across job tasks than would be justified on productivity grounds. The model can explain “Putt’s Law”, which states that competent
workers are sometimes passed over for promotion in favor of incompetent ones. (JEL J24, M53).
This article examines why global corporate social responsibility (CSR) frameworks have gained popularity in the past decade, despite their uncertain costs and benefits, and how they affect adherents’ behavior. We focus on the two largest global frameworks—the United Nations Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative—to examine patterns of CSR adoption by governments and corporations. Drawing on institutional and political-economy theories, we develop a new analytic framework that focuses on four key environmental factors—global institutional pressure, local receptivity, foreign economic penetration, and national economic system. We propose two arguments about the relationship between stated commitment and subsequent action: decoupling due to lack of capacity and organized hypocrisy due to lack of will. Our cross-national time-series analyses show that global institutional pressure through nongovernmental linkages encourages CSR adoption, but this pressure leads to ceremonial commitment in developed countries and to substantive commitment in developing countries. Moreover, in developed countries, liberal economic policies increase ceremonial commitment, suggesting a pattern of organized hypocrisy whereby corporations in developed countries make discursive commitments without subsequent action. We also find that in developing countries, short-term trade relations exert greater influence on corporate CSR behavior than do long-term investment transactions.
We use panel data on ISO 9000 quality certification in 85 countries between 1993 and 1998 to better understand the cross-national diffusion of an organizational practice. Following neoinstitutional theory, we focus on the coercive, normative, and mimetic effects that result from the exposure of firms in a given country to a powerful source of critical resources, a common pool of relevant technical knowledge, and the experiences of firms located in other countries. We use social network theory to develop a systematic conceptual understanding of how firms located in different countries influence each other's rates of adoption as a result of cohesive and equivalent network relationships. Regression results provide support for our predictions that states and foreign multinationals are the key actors responsible for coercive isomorphism, cohesive trade relationships between countries generate coercive and normative effects, and role-equivalent trade relationships result in learning-based and competitive imitation.
Drawing upon institutional and stakeholder theories, we explore the ‘causal’ mechanisms of institutionalization and their influence on Sustainable Development initiatives. To test our arguments, we study the registration patterns of 394 large corporations from 12 Western European and Latin American countries into the United Nations Global Compact. Results indicate that the normative and mimetic mechanisms of institutionalization (i.e., academe and peer influence) are better indicators of Sustainable Development initiatives than the coercive one (i.e., government regulation). The implications of these findings are consequential if SD practices continue as an ethical choice, and not a mandated obligation, for corporate decision makers.
One of the emerging areas in the public policy literature concerns new modes of thought about the construction and analysis of public policy. This article extends notions about politics within the ‘policy design’ literature by considering the implications of different political environments for policy design and implementation. Two different political environments – policies with and without publics – that form ends of a continuum of policy publics are discussed. A contrast is drawn between these two polar political environments with respect to differing policy design and implementation challenges, as well as with respect to differing opportunities for policy learning.
Little attention has been given in policy analysis to the creative process of designing solutions to public policy problems. There are a number of difficulties in applying macro-level theories – whether from economics, sociology, philosophy or macro-systems theory – in the policy process. Any macro-level theory will tend to provide inadequate guidance in one or more of three aspects of policy-making: a model of causation, a model for evaluating alternatives and outcomes, and a model of how interventions operate. Our current knowledge about which policy strategies work best under which conditions is at best rudimentary. Academic disciplinary perspectives focus on a narrow repertoire of policy instruments. What is required is a design focus which draws on instruments associated with a range of disciplines and professions. A design perspective involves both a systematic process for generating basic strategies and a framework for comparing them. Such an approach will require at least the following elements: (1) the characteristics of problems (scale, collectiveness, certainty, predictability, independence); (2) characteristics of goals (value-laden, operational, process of goal-setting); (3) characteristics of instruments (suitability of different instruments).
Strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them. Recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management, rather than traditional arenas of strategic management. Using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance, this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance. Corporate social performance (CSP) is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance, supporting the theory that slack resource availability and CSP are positively related. CSP is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance, supporting the theory that good management and CSP are positively related.© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Across Europe, there is considerable interest in establishing stronger links between environmental regulation and standards for environmental management systems (EMSs) such as ISO 14001. If it can be demonstrated that possession of an EMS results in improved environmental or regulatory performance, then there is a case for granting ‘regulatory relief’ in the form of, for example, reduced inspection frequencies. This paper describes the analysis of information on almost 800 sites regulated under the UK's Integrated Pollution Control regime. It demonstrates that having an EMS improves certain procedural aspects of environmental management but does not appear to reduce the likelihood of breaching permit conditions. Interviews with certification bodies revealed the factors, such as differentiation of services in the market for certification, that underlie this finding. It is concluded that some limited recognition of EMS in regulation is warranted, because there is overlap between some regulatory and certification procedures, and because having an EMS facilitates the supply of information necessary for regulation. The broader implications for regulated industry, certification bodies, regulators and wider environmental policymaking are considered. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Does membership in Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) affect states’ human rights behavior? One might expect IGOs with a specific human rights mandate, like the International Labour Organization or the Council of Europe, to have a positive effect on the human rights practices of their member states. But what about other sorts of IGOs, particularly those with no direct connection to human rights issues? This study employs cross-national data on abuses of “physical integrity rights” for 137 countries over the period 1982–2000 to test the hypothesis that IGOs can promote the diffusion of human rights norms by providing venues for interstate socialization. Recent empirical work on IGOs has suggested that this sort of socialization effect can play an important role in promoting democracy and can also lead to a more general convergence among states’ interests. The results presented here suggest that IGOs can have a surprisingly powerful influence on states’ human rights practices as a result of this process.
Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) seek to improve the environment by encouraging, rather than mandating, businesses and other organizations to adopt environmentally protective measures. Since the 1990s, VEPs established by industry, government, and nongovernmental organizations have proliferated around the globe, raising the question of how effective these programs are in securing environmental protection, both on their own and in comparison to traditional mandatory regulations. This article reviews the emerging research literature on VEPs, describing the variation in their structures, providing a framework for assessing their impacts, and summarizing what is known about why organizations engage in voluntary environmental action and what effects these programs have on environmental quality.