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13 results

  • Multi-stakeholder Initiatives and Legitimacy: A Deliberative Systems Perspective

  • Kristin Apffelstaedt, Stephanie Schrage, Dirk Ulrich Gilbert
  • Journal:
    Business Ethics Quarterly / Volume 34 / Issue 3 / July 2024
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    14 August 2023, pp. 375-408
    Print publication:
    July 2024
    • Article
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  • The legitimacy of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) as institutions for social and environmental governance in the global economy has received much scholarly attention over the past years. To date, however, research has yet to focus on assessing the legitimacy of MSIs in their interactions with other actors within larger systems of deliberation. Drawing on the deliberative systems perspective developed within deliberative democracy theory, we theorise a normative framework to evaluate the roles of MSIs within the broader systems of governance they co-construct through their interactions with other initiatives, governments, non-governmental organisations, and other external actors. As we demonstrate in our evaluation of the illustrative case of the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety as a MSI in the context of the Bangladeshi garment industry, this framework can help researchers assess whether a MSI ultimately serves to enhance or undermine the deliberative legitimacy of the overall system of which it forms a part.

  • 22 - Labour Rights in Global Supply Chains

  • from Part IV - Corporate Sustainability: Issues
  • Edited by Andreas Rasche, Copenhagen Business School, Mette Morsing, Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), UN GlobalCompact, United Nations, Jeremy Moon, Copenhagen Business School, Arno Kourula, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam
  • Book:
    Corporate Sustainability
    Published online:
    09 March 2023
    Print publication:
    30 March 2023, pp 456-483

  • Summary

    Over the past three decades, globalisation has particularly manifested itself in the spread of global supply chains. Only recently, rising protectionism and trade wars between the United States and China, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, have placed an unprecedented burden on the world economy and the globalisation process of supply chains. Already existing power asymmetries and poor working conditions of workers in global value chains of MNCs have become even more visible. Against this background, the questions arise as to what role sweatshops play in global value chains, how they should be evaluated from an economic and ethical perspective, and what measures can and should be taken to improve poor working conditions. We provide a brief overview of the labour rights frequently affected by the contracts between MNCs and their suppliers before discussing a number of examples for violations of these labour rights in global supply chains. We offer a definition for sweatshops and then continue to critically evaluate the pros and cons of sweatshop labour. Based on these insights, we briefly review opportunities at different levels and by different actors to regulate and improve working conditions in global supply chains.

  • Guest Editors’ Introduction: The Challenges and Prospects of Deliberative Democracy for Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility

  • Dirk Ulrich Gilbert, Andreas Rasche, Maximilian J. L. Schormair, Abraham Singer
  • Journal:
    Business Ethics Quarterly / Volume 33 / Issue 1 / January 2023
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 February 2023, pp. 1-25
    Print publication:
    January 2023

  • This introduction argues that the use of the concept of deliberative democracy in corporate social responsibility (CSR) research needs to be theoretically extended. We review three developments that have recently occurred in deliberative democracy theory within political science and philosophy: 1) the conceptualization of deliberative systems (macro level), 2) the considerations of mini-publics (micro level), and 3) the role of online deliberation. We discuss the challenges and prospects that incorporating these three developments into future CSR-related research creates. We thereby also introduce the articles in this special issue and show how they connect to each of the three developments. On the basis of this discussion, we outline the contours for a more general program of distributed deliberative CSR that enables CSR scholars to incorporate an updated understanding of deliberative democracy theory into their future work.

  • Creating Value by Sharing Values: Managing Stakeholder Value Conflict in the Face of Pluralism through Discursive Justification

  • Maximilian J. L. Schormair, Dirk Ulrich Gilbert
  • Journal:
    Business Ethics Quarterly / Volume 31 / Issue 1 / January 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 June 2020, pp. 1-36
    Print publication:
    January 2021

  • The question of how to engage with stakeholders in situations of value conflict to create value that includes a plurality of conflicting stakeholder value perspectives represents one of the crucial current challenges of stakeholder engagement as well as of value creation stakeholder theory. To address this challenge, we conceptualize a discursive sharing process between affected stakeholders that is oriented toward discursive justification involving multiple procedural steps. This sharing process provides procedural guidance for firms and stakeholders to create pluralistic stakeholder value through the discursive accommodation of diverging stakeholder value perspectives. The outcomes of such a discursive value-sharing process range from stakeholder value dissensus to low (agreement to disagree) and increasing levels of stakeholder value congruence (value compromise) to stakeholder value consensus (shared values). Hence, this article contributes to the emerging literature on integrative stakeholder engagement by conceptualizing a procedural framework that is neither overly oriented towards dissensus nor consensus.

  • Chapter 18 - Labour Rights in Global Supply Chains

  • from PART IV - THE GOVERNANCE OF TRANSNATIONAL ISSUES
  • Edited by Andreas Rasche, Copenhagen Business School, Mette Morsing, Copenhagen Business School, Jeremy Moon, Copenhagen Business School
  • Book:
    Corporate Social Responsibility
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    23 March 2017, pp 451-472

  • Summary

    Learning Objectives

  • • Name the core labour standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

  • • Describe cases of labour rights violations that commonly occur in global supply chains.

  • • Evaluate the arguments for and against sweatshop labour.

  • • Identify institutional responses at different levels to improve working conditions in global supply chains.

    • Introduction: Globalisation and Global Supply Chains

    Globalisation is often defined as a process of increasing economic, social, political and cultural interconnectedness. While globalisation is certainly not a new phenomenon, as international trade has always been part of human history, the speed and scope of globalisation has increased substantially in recent years. Over the past two decades, globalisation has particularly manifested itself in the spread of global supply chains. The income generated in global supply chains has nearly doubled over the past fifteen years. Successive rounds of trade liberalisation, advances in information and communication technology (ICT) as well as the liberalisation of the global financial system and capital markets have substantially reduced trade and coordination costs and have been important drivers for the increase in global trade and the related growth of global supply chains.

    Today, countries at all stages of development, ranging from low-income countries to the most advanced, are involved in global supply chains. The expansion of supply chains has also led to a growing specialisation of countries and firms in specific activities or stages in the value chain. Multinational Corporations (MNCs) increasingly outsource activities from industrialised countries to international networks of contractors in both developed and less developed countries. As a consequence, many industries today are characterised by a clear division of labour. In the footwear, garment or electronics industry, for example, MNCs mainly concentrate on value chain activities such as research and development, product design and marketing while thousands of independent contractors in developing countries and emerging economies focus on the often labour-intensive production of goods. These contractors cobble shoes, sew shirts or assemble mobile phones according to exact specifications of MNCs, and are required to deliver high-quality products often according to very tight delivery schedules.

  • Accountability in a Global Economy: The Emergence of International Accountability Standards

  • Dirk Ulrich Gilbert, Andreas Rasche, Sandra Waddock
  • Journal:
    Business Ethics Quarterly / Volume 21 / Issue 1 / January 2011
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 January 2015, pp. 23-44
    Print publication:
    January 2011

  • This article assesses the proliferation of international accountability standards (IAS) in the recent past. We provide a comprehensive overview about the different types of standards and discuss their role as part of a new institutional infrastructure for corporate responsibility. Based on this, it is argued that IAS can advance corporate responsibility on a global level because they contribute to the closure of some omnipresent governance gaps. IAS also improve the preparedness of an organization to give an explanation and a justification to relevant stakeholders for its judgments, intentions, acts and omissions when appropriately called upon to do so. However, IAS also face a variety of problems impeding their potential to help address social and environmental issues. The contribution of the four articles in this special section is discussed in the context of standards’ problems and opportunities. The article closes by outlining a research agenda to further develop and extend the scholarly debate around IAS.

  • 19 - The United Nations Global Compact as a Network of Networks

  • Edited by Andreas Rasche, University of Warwick, Georg Kell
  • Foreword by Ban Ki-moon
  • Book:
    The United Nations Global Compact
    Published online:
    05 February 2012
    Print publication:
    16 June 2010, pp 340-354

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The United Nations Global Compact reflects a Global Public Policy Network bringing together UN agencies, corporations, civil society actors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and labour representatives from all over the world. Today, the Global Compact provides the most far-reaching initiative worldwide to catalyse a voluntary participation of multinational corporations (MNCs) in corporate social responsibility activities (Arevalo and Fallon 2008, Kell and Levin 2003, Kell and Ruggie 1999, Leisinger 2007). The Compact offers a platform for businesses to advance ten Principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption (Kell 2005, Williams 2004). The core tasks of the Global Compact are to mainstream these principles in global business activities and to facilitate cooperation among those constituents who are willing to create multi-stakeholder engagement.

    Unlike certification-based initiatives (e.g. SA 8000), the Compact has no intention to enforce or even measure the behaviour of firms participating in the initiative. The Global Compact rather intends to bring together a variety of different actors to discuss, learn about and advance its underlying principles (Kell 2005, Kell and Levin 2003, Rasche 2009b, Ruggie 2001, 2003, Williams 2004). Against this background the Global Compact can be considered as a strategic policy initiative for business focusing on the implementation of its ten Principles and the promotion of broader UN goals (Rasche 2009a).

  • Discourse Ethics and Social Accountability: The Ethics of SA 8000

  • Dirk Ulrich Gilbert, Andreas Rasche
  • Journal:
    Business Ethics Quarterly / Volume 17 / Issue 2 / April 2007
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 January 2015, pp. 187-216
    Print publication:
    April 2007

  • Based on theoretical insights of discourse ethics as developed by Jürgen Habermas, we delineate a proposal to further develop the institutionalization of social accounting in multinational corporations (MNCs) by means of “Social Accountability 8000” (SA 8000). First, we discuss the cornerstones of Habermas's discourse ethics and elucidate how and why this concept can provide a theoretical justification of the moral point of view in MNCs. Second, the basic conception, main purpose, and implementation procedure of SA 8000 are presented. Third, we critically examine SA 8000 from a Habermasian perspective, and discuss advantages and drawbacks of the initiative. Fourth, to address the drawbacks, we introduce a “discourse-ethically” extended version of SA 8000. We show that this approach is theoretically well-founded and able to overcome some of the current deficits of the certification initiative. We demonstrate that the extended version of SA 8000 can be successfully applied on a cross-cultural basis, and that our findings have significant implications for other international ethics initiatives.