2. the rise of global corporate social responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies are often regarded as a strategic response by companies to outside pressures, for example, from civil society and the general public. In The Rise of Global Corporate Social Responsibility, Dashwood demonstrates that this explanation is too simplistic. Companies, she argues, do not only respond to their surroundings, but are political actors who actively shape global norms and practices. A complete understanding of the interplay between global norms and why and how firms adopt CSR policies requires looking beyond outside pressures and other external variables. Dashwood opens the black box of business and integrates into her analysis firm-level factors such as the role of senior management. By combining different theoretical lenses that can account for both external and firm-level factors, Dashwood offers a compelling and thorough account of the dynamics between individual firms and their external environment. The book builds on the author’s extensive research experience in the mining sector. The reader benefits from Dashwood’s exclusive access to senior executives and gains unique insights into their views on sustainability.

The book contributes to the long-standing debate on structure versus agency in International Relations by providing a nuanced understanding of CSR adoption and the role of global norms. Dashwood shows that firms are influenced by external factors as much as they are agents of norm dissemination themselves. Further, both strategic and normative considerations guide firms in adopting CSR policies and led to convergence around the norm of sustainable development by the mid-2000s. Dashwood therefore demonstrates that both the logic of consequence and the logic of appropriateness are at play when firms decide to develop more socially and environmentally responsible practices.

Dashwood’s work makes a theoretical contribution by integrating insights from several institutionalist approaches rooted in different social science disciplines into a three-level framework. By a combination of approaches, the framework can account for the interplay between global developments and internal processes at the firm level. Rational choice institutionalism helps to explain instrumental motives of individual firms. The critical juncture concept in historical institutionalism helps to explain why firms adopt CSR policies. Institutionalism in organization theory focuses on learning and norms, therefore also taking global developments into account. Constructivism, as a theory of International Relations, can explain the interplay between the views of executive management and global CSR norms.

In Chapter 1, Dashwood sets the stage by stressing the mining sector as a particularly salient case for studying CSR adoption because of the severe social and environmental impacts of mining operations. Dashwood situates the book in the relevant International Relations literature on global governance and constructivism. She further outlines the major research questions and research design. Chapter 2 develops a theoretical framework and maps out the relevant firm-level variables for explaining why some companies were early movers and took on leadership roles in promoting CSR norms. Major developments in the global mining industry are discussed in Chapter 3, focusing on the external drivers to which all major mining companies were exposed. These include increasing national and international regulations, pressures from the public and civil society and the emergence of sustainable development as a global norm. The mining industry was for a long time sceptical about the notion of sustainable development. From the mid-1990s onwards, companies increasingly started to adopt CSR policies and, by the late 2000s, most of the sector had converged around the norm of sustainable development. Dashwood draws on interest-based rational choice institutionalism and the critical juncture concept of historical institutionalism to explain the responses of companies to these external drivers. However, the chapter concludes that these factors alone cannot sufficiently explain the adoption of CSR policies. In particular, the reasons why companies differed in their timing of CSR adoption and why some took on leadership roles in the promotion of CSR at the global level cannot be explained by external drivers.

The subsequent chapters complement the findings in Chapter 3 by drawing attention to firm-level variables, such as the role of senior management, corporate culture and learning. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are devoted to the global mining companies Noranda, Placer Dome and Barrick, respectively. By means of temporal ordering and process tracing, Dashwood explains why Noranda and Placer Dome were early movers with respect to CSR policies and framing CSR as sustainable development. The case study on Barrick highlights the differences compared with the two early mover cases. Chapter 7 returns to global-level dynamics and focuses on the role of industry leadership and industry associations in disseminating CSR norms. It examines the role and motivation of the early movers, Noranda and Placer Dome, in taking a leadership role in promoting global CSR standards and traces how the mining industry converged around the norm of sustainable development. In the concluding chapter, Dashwood synthesizes her findings and their theoretical implications, and identifies areas for future research.

Dashwood provides a detailed account of the distinct paths taken by the companies in the three case studies in developing their CSR policies. The Rise of Global Corporate Responsibility moves beyond the common assertion that firms only adopt CSR policies in response to external pressures from NGOs and the public. Instead, mining companies are also norm entrepreneurs themselves and global, domestic and firm-level factors all play their part in explaining CSR adoption. By combining multiple theoretical approaches to explain the intricate relationship between these various explanatory factors, the reader is presented with a more complete picture of CSR adoption. As Dashwood herself notes, accounting for a complex phenomenon comes at the expense of presenting a parsimonious theory with one key explanatory variable. By structuring explanatory variables and theoretical approaches in a clear way, the book remains nonetheless coherent despite the complexity of the topic.

The book is an enlightening read for anyone interested in acquiring a theoretically and empirically grounded understanding of why and how companies adopt CSR policies. The three case studies also provide rich empirical insights into the Canadian mining sector, including a view into the thinking of senior management regarding sustainable development. In sum, Dashwood offers a compelling narrative of how the CSR policies of major mining corporations developed over time and explains these developments by tracing national and international normative, political and institutional changes.

3. non-state actors as standard setters

As a result of the advance of globalization, liberalization, and deregulation, states are increasingly challenged as authoritative standard setters. Numerous non-state actors have established their own standards in an attempt to regulate issue areas that states are either unwilling or unable to govern. The organizational constellations in which non-state actors set standards vary greatly. They range from public–private partnerships (PPPs) and multistakeholder organizations to purely private regulatory initiatives. These forms of non-state regulation have proliferated in recent decades and have become increasingly influential in areas as diverse as forestry and industrial production. Non-State Actors as Standard Setters – edited by Anne Peters, Lucy Koechlin, Till Förster and Gretta Fenner Zinkernagel – combines political science, sociology and legal studies to examine the practice of standard setting by non-state actors. Its 18 chapters cover empirical issues, ranging from environmental and social regulation to financial and military standard setting. The contributions examine these various fields with regard to a number of core themes: actors and actor constellations, legitimacy, agency and the effectiveness of standards. The book makes a valuable contribution to central debates in the field of transnational governance. It discusses the importance of the proliferation of non-state standard setting and adds to the debate on the public–private divide.^{Footnote 2} Overall, Non-State Actors as Standard Setters highlights the multifaceted character of standard setting by non-state actors and aims to contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon.

In the introductory chapter, the editors place the proliferation of standard setting by non-state actors into context and define central concepts. Given the interdisciplinary character of the book, standard setting is understood in a very broad sense, mainly as opposed to lawmaking. Chapter 1 further outlines the main debates in law, sociology and political science in relation to standard setting. The book is divided into three parts, each dealing with a core theme connected with standard setting. Part I comprises Chapters 2 to 7 on the subject of new actors and processes in current standard setting. Chapters 8 to 12, in Part II, address the legitimacy and accountability of actors and standards. Part III examines, in Chapters 13 to 18, the authority and effectiveness of actors and standards. The book concludes with a synthesis of the findings and an outlook on the future.

Contributions in these three main parts of the book address a set of cross-cutting research topics. A number of chapters investigate the impact of present or absent state regulation on the standard setting practices of non-state actors. For example, Dieter Neubert (Chapter 2) argues that, in weak or failing states, various non-state actors such as companies, NGOs or warlords create ‘islands of order’ in which they establish particular rules and regulations. In the power vacuum left behind by an absent state, different non-state actors set various competing standards. Till Förster (Chapter 12) discusses how norms of an acceptable level of violence are negotiated between different actors in northern Côte d’Ivoire. Taking a more critical approach than Dashwood in The Rise of Global Corporate Social Responsibility, Eva Kocher and Egle Svilpaite (Chapters 15 and 16, respectively) investigate the effectiveness of private standard setting processes. Both contributions point to the crucial role of public regulation for private standard setting. Eva Kocher shows that codes of conduct and framework agreements in transnational production often lack enforcement mechanisms and, in some cases, are not complied with on a regular basis. However, Kocher argues that under certain conditions private standards can be more effective. For instance, when the role of local actors is strengthened, these will support the implementation of private standards. She further argues that universal legal principles and national law are a source of legitimacy for private social standards in production. In contrast, Egle Svilpaite (Chapter 16) discusses the case of Lithuania, demonstrating that private social standards lack legitimacy because they are often vague, contradictory and non-transparent. She argues that standards are not effective because they are too weak and do not define concrete responsibilities for the actors involved. Svilpaite concludes that state regulation and public scrutiny are necessary to ensure effective private standards. These contributions show that despite the proliferation of non-state standard setting, public and state regulation continue to provide the broader setting for effective and legitimate non-state rules and standards.

Conflicting discourses and sources of power are another recurring theme throughout the book. In Chapter 9, Julia Black examines legitimacy and accountability discourses in complex regulatory regimes, showing how different types of legitimacy may conflict. Black argues that the effectiveness of regulatory bodies in polycentric regulatory relationships varies depending on their role and responses to competing discourses. Further, Ulrike Wanitzek examines, in Chapter 17, the interaction between state and paralegal law in Tanzania. She highlights the different sources of legitimacy that often conflict, such as customary law and religion on the one hand and international agreements on the other. These and other contributions demonstrate how norms and power have to be renegotiated in non-state standard setting.

Sustainability is one of the issue areas in which non-state actor involvement has been particularly prominent. In Chapter 11, Marcus Schaper discusses the impact of environmental standards imposed by financial institutions on infrastructure projects. He argues that the presence of competing actors that are not bound by the environmental regulation – in his example financial investors that do not request compliance with environmental criteria – significantly affects the effectiveness of the environmental standards set by the financing bodies that do impose them.

In Chapter 14, Stéphane Guéneau shows how, in the case of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), quasi-legal forms of regulation interact with national and internal law. He argues that the establishment of the FSC strengthened the legitimacy of private regulation while questioning the role of public actors because of their failure to regulate the forestry sector.

In an interdisciplinary effort, Non-State Actors as Standard Setters covers a variety of actors, issues and the scholarly debates. Because of its broad coverage, the book provides inspiration not only in terms of empirical cases but also for more research at the disciplinary frontiers. Legal scholars, political scientists and sociologists interested in the phenomenon of non-state standard setting are presented with an inspiring account of how a joint interdisciplinary effort can provide a more complete understanding of the role of non-state actors in contemporary world politics. Overall, Non-State Actors as Standard Setters offers a fascinating account of the diversity associated with standard setting by non-state actors.

4. transnational environmental governance

Certification institutions today exist for a broad range of issue areas, displaying a variety of organizational structures and political impacts.^{Footnote 3} But few have gained such prominence among activists and academics as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), founded in 1993, and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), founded in 1996. Lars Gulbrandsen’s study of certification in the area of forests and fisheries provides an authoritative discussion of the causal dynamics driving the trend, the various organizational forms displayed and the concrete and measurable impacts observed. While, for each of these broader questions, a number of previous studies exist, Gulbrandsen deserves credit for having integrated these concerns into a coherent study.

Transnational Environmental Governance opens with an analytical framework that promises to provide the necessary theoretical foundations for the case studies. Chapters 3 and 4 provide an overview of the emergence and impact of forest certification, while Chapter 5 illustrates the crucial dynamics of forest certification with an in-depth case study on Sweden and Norway. The specific merit of this chapter is to link the adoption of certification to concrete interest structures of the national forest industry and the broader public. The static picture of transnational governance found in much of the global environmental governance literature is here amended by a more dynamic perspective highlighting the political and contested nature of certification. It is unfortunate that the discussion of the MSC, in Chapters 6 and 7, is not followed by a corresponding assessment of competing certification schemes in the fisheries sector. The absence of such a comparative chapter on certification partially impairs a better understanding of the significance of transnational environmental governance. Chapter 8 then provides a useful reflection on the generic spread of certification as a governance innovation, rehearsing arguments on isomorphism and organizational fields.

One of the key conclusions emerging from Gulbrandsen’s book is that the role of public actors (i.e. the state) is crucial for understanding the underlying dynamics of certification. Against the assumption that certification is by and large a ‘non-state’ phenomenon, Gulbrandsen convincingly argues that states have indeed substantially influenced – through their regulatory system and administrative culture – non-state standard setting initiatives. Paying more attention to the interlinkages between what is perceived to be transnational and international or public and private is one sound recommendation for future analysts.

While the strength of Transnational Environmental Governance is its focus on concrete examples and rich empirical illustration, the absence of a broader interpretative frame for making sense of what has been observed might well count as the book’s weakness. Most chapters are quite empirical, with relevant theoretical reflections largely limited to the analytical framework presented in Chapter 2. While the discussion of rational and sociological institutionalism is concise, relatively few cross-references are made to these arguments in subsequent chapters. As a result, the book lacks an encompassing theorization that would allow putting its detailed and well-observed findings into perspective. This lack of deeper theoretical reflections (beyond meso-level theories of adaptation, impacts and emergence) might, however, be a generic trademark of much of the contemporary environmental governance research.