Annegret Flohr

Vom Wolf im Schafspelz

Transnationale Unternehmen haben als Forschungsobjekt in den Internationalen Beziehungen eine erstaunliche Karriere durchlaufen. Bis zum Beginn der 2000er Jahre blieben sie auserhalb einiger Pionierarbeiten und der Internationalen Politischen Okonomie weitgehend unbeachtet. Seitdem beschaftigen sich zahlreiche Forschungsarbeiten aus einer Governance-Perspektive mit Unternehmen als politischen Akteuren, dem Aufstieg von Formen privater Autoritat, von unternehmerischer Selbstregulierung und offentlich-privaten Formen von Ko-Regulierung.

A New Architecture for Global Governance

The most relevant conditions under which corporations are likely to act as norm-entrepreneurs have been identified and the effectiveness and legitimacy potential of different types of individual and collective self-regulatory arrangements were evaluated. In this final chapter, the current polity of global governance is examined to derive policy recommendations for embedding corporate governance contributions in an institutional architecture that encourages corporate norm-entrepreneurs and ensures that they serve the public interest. The empirical evidence that corporate norm-entrepreneurship can provide meaningful contributions to global governance under certain conditions justifies taking stock of the gap between corporate norm production as it is currently known and normative demands, as described in Chapters 7 and 8. Against the background of the identified shortcomings, policy goals are identified that specify what could be done to develop the full potential of corporate norm-entrepreneurship as a meaningful private contribution to global governance in the future. An institutional approach to private governance contributions is followed (see also Pattberg 2007: 49–56) where the focus is on corporate norm-entrepreneurship within governance systems. Although individual company codes of conduct may stimulate collective norm-related processes, the different types of collective regulatory arrangements are more relevant here.

The Social and Political Environment

The most intuitive answer to the question of what makes corporations engage in CSR activities and, more specifically, norm-entrepreneurship is public pressure. Because corporations are profit-maximizing enterprises, it is assumed that they do not develop any interest in beyond profit activities unless external factors exist. Corporations consider engaging in CSR only when civil society or consumers succeed in either reframing their moral demands into solid business cases or in awakening corporations’ moral sensitivity (Gunningham and Rees 1997). How far this expectation holds true for corporate decisions to engage in norm-entrepreneurship is examined here. Given the dual character of the public as a structural variable and an actor endowed with intentionality (Habermas 1990; Gerhards 1994; Neidhardt 1994), it is assumed that structural conditions are necessary for a transnational public to function but that NGOs and other civil society actors form the basis of public pressure on corporations. Changes in the structure of international relations have enabled nonstate actors to become influential and the deliberate actions of transnational NGOs, for example, reinforce these changes.

Basic Concepts and Assumptions

The aim of this book is to explore the conditions and the degree to which profit-oriented business corporations can be expected to make meaningful contributions to global governance by participating in setting and developing generally applicable norms — a phenomenon increasingly observable in transnational governance arrangements and considered under the label ‘corporate norm-entrepreneurship’ here. In what follows this concept is elaborated in more detail. A representative sample of systematic normentrepreneurs is selected as the basis of the empirical analysis in Chapters 3 to 5. Potential explanations for corporate norm-entrepreneurship are also presented and put to the test.

The Effectiveness of Transnational Private Governance

Global governance research only recently discovered the output dimension of transnational self-regulatory arrangements (Borzel and Risse 2002, 2005; Rieth and Zimmer 2004: 28; Conzelmann and Wolf 2007a, 2007b). Adequate yardsticks are still sought to evaluate the effectiveness of norm and rule setting by corporate actors, alone or in cooperation with states and NGOs, and in individual or collective self-regulatory arrangements. To fill this gap, a comprehensive conceptual framework is developed to assess the effectiveness of corporate contributions to global governance. A consolidated model for assessing corporate norm-entrepreneurship is introduced and applied to select individual and collective self-regulatory arrangements.

The Legitimacy of Transnational Private Governance

Engaging in norm-entrepreneurship is not something normatively ‘good’ in the sense of serving or aiming to serve the public interest. Therefore, corporate norm-entrepreneurship does not answer but raises the question of its potential to increase or even harm the legitimacy of governance beyond the state in a postnational constellation. The answer to this question is of paramount significance for any attempts at designing a future institutional architecture for global governance that reconciles the demands of effective public goods provision raised by policy research with the legitimacy demands normative political theory addresses to decision making processes and the institutions through which they are provided. In other words, what can be the role of corporate norm-entrepreneurship? What kind of transnational private governance contributions should be promoted or ruled out for normative reasons?

Introduction: Corporate Norm-entrepreneurship and Global Governance

Effective and legitimate governance beyond the state faces considerable challenges. The traditional mode of interstate accords seems increasingly insufficient to provide reliable and sustainable solutions to collective problems at the global level. Against this background, emerging new forms of private self-regulation may be seen as possible solutions. To establish how far these expectations are justified and to what extent private contributions to global governance can be supplements or even substitutes for public regulation, the aims are as follows: to take stock, in empirical terms, of private contributions to transnational governance systematically as an expression of the new interplay among the state, the business sector, and civil society; to understand better the potential as well as the limits of private regulatory initiatives as components of the future global governance architecture; investigate under what conditions what kind of private contributions to governance beyond the state can be expected; and to evaluate, from a normative perspective, the implications of these contributions for the effectiveness, responsiveness, and reliability of public good provision as well as for power control and the self-determination of the addressees of private regulatory initiatives.

Comparisons for Conclusions: Different Paths to Corporate Norm-entrepreneurship

As the causal analysis in the previous chapters has shown, a number of factors influence corporations’ decisions to engage in norm-entrepreneurship. Therefore, any attempt at explaining the conditions under which corporations are likely to act as norm-entrepreneurs is necessarily a complex undertaking. Causal factors can result from characteristics of the corporations themselves (Chapter 3) or their environment (Chapter 4) and act as push factors for individual norm-entrepreneurship. Other factors emanate from institutional designs of self-regulatory initiatives (Chapter 5) which may be attractive to corporations. The latter can be regarded as pull factors, in the sense that they direct corporate norm-entrepreneurship toward engaging in certain collective initiatives, rather than others, or from individual toward collective norm-entrepreneurship. These factors do not explain norm-entrepreneurship itself but the unilateral or collective shape it is likely to assume.