Luc Fransen

Global rule-setting for business: A critical analysis of multi-stakeholder standards

In the field of global rule-setting for responsible business behaviour, multi-stakeholder standards have emerged in recent years because of their potential for effective consensus-building, knowledge-sharing and interest representation. Proponents also hold that multi-stakeholder standards could address problems related to other forms of global rule-setting for business. Despite alleged advantages, however, analyses of multi-stakeholder initiatives, considering benefits and drawbacks, have been lacking. This article examines multi-stakeholder standards compared to other collaborative standards adopted in the past decade, and focuses subsequently on the peculiarities of multi-stakeholder standards regarding participation, governance and implementation. Multi-stakeholder standards, which involve business and NGOs, and sometimes also governments, are more specific and well-elaborated than other types of standards. But monitoring and implementation are rarely used as means for increasing participation from multiple stakeholders, including most notably those from developing countries. The article also discusses the implications of the current lack of specificity of the (multi-)stakeholder concept and suggests refinement of multi-stakeholder standards in terms of narrow versus broad inclusiveness.

Corporate social responsibility and global labor standards: firms and activists in the making of private regulation

Part I: Understanding Private Labor Regulation 1. Private Labor Regulation: Why and What Is It Good For? 2. Understanding Developments in Private Labor Regulation: A Research Framework Part II: Organizing Private Labor Regulation 3. Labor Standards, Implementation and Degrees of Control: A Power Based Analysis of Private Regulatory Approaches 4. How to Dress Up a Code: The Politics of Developing Private Regulatory Organizations Part III: Business Demand and Competition 5. Choosing a Code: Understanding Business Support for Private Labor Regulation 6. Competing Codes: Understanding the Dynamics of Private Regulatory Competition Part IV: The Future of Private Labor Regulation 7. Conclusions and Prospects Glossary of Organizations Appendix I: The Eight Private Regulatory Organizations Appendix II: Methodology Notes Bibliography

A market for worker rights: explaining business support for international private labour regulation

ABSTRACT Why do companies choose the private labour regulations that they do? Scholars know plenty about why companies might accept private regulators to oversee and protect labour standards. But they know very little about why companies choose one rather than another private regulatory approach when several are available, differing in terms of stringency. This paper explores the conditions under which companies in the clothing industry choose private labour-standards regulation with more rather than less stringent regulation. It does so based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of clothing companies in Europe. It argues that business preference for more stringent private labour regulation is positively affected by societal pressure, and that this societal pressure is predominantly orchestrated by activist groups. This not only entails campaigns, but also can be a combination of public and informal efforts to influence companies, together with pressures from consumers and media. This research also shows that national and industrial factors play a role. In particular, the position of the firm in the value chain and its distance to consumers and manufacturers affect preference for more or less stringent private regulation. Societal pressure is therefore important but not the only source of business preferences for private regulation.

Codes of Conduct and the Promise of a Change of Climate in Worker Organization

Do codes of conduct adopted by multinational companies help to advance the position of workers in emerging economies? We focus on three workplaces in the Turkish clothing industry in order to assess their ability to promote Freedom of Association, in the context of a restrictive legal framework, extensive subcontracting relations and different degrees of formality of manufacturing sites. We conclude that under specific conditions codes can make a positive contribution to worker organization; but given the imbalance of power between workers and employers, often sustained by national regulation, they make little contribution to Freedom of Association.

Privatizing or socializing corporate responsibility: business participation in voluntary programs

This article explores why companies choose some Corporate Responsibility initiatives over others. The focus is on competing voluntary programs to oversee and protect labor standards. These programs may differ with regard to two aspects: the governance of the program and the financial and managerial responsibility for compliance. These aspects are crucial to distinguish “socializing” or “privatizing” types of voluntary labor regulation. The article explores the conditions under which companies in apparel production choose different types of governance and responsibility, based on qualitative and quantitative evidence of the European industry. The study shows that corporate preference for multi-stakeholder governed programs is positively affected by societal pressure orchestrated by NGOs, through both public campaigns and informal efforts, together with pressures from consumers and media. Second, the position of the firm in the value chain affects preference for taking financial and managerial responsibility for compliance.

Global Labour‐Standards Advocacy by European Civil Society Organizations: Trends and Developments

In recent years, developments in intergovernmental organizations and transnational private governance organizations have created new opportunities and constraints for the promotion of global labour-standards governance by civil society organizations (CSOs). This article describes how European CSOs (including trade union organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)) respond to these developments. It argues that European civil society is witnessing a threefold shift in priorities of labour-standards advocacy: from pushing regulatory approaches to organizational capacity building; from corporate responsibility strategies focused on compliance to strategies focused on transparency; and from fair labour standards within the sustainable development agenda to a host of other issues. The overall result is that labour-standards advocacy in general and private labour governance in particular are receiving less attention from European CSOs.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Public and Private Labor Standards Policy in the Global Economy

This article introduces a Global Policy Special Issue on public and private protections of labor and social standards in the global economy, exploring whether public and private regulations of such standards develop in harmony or tension with one another. It promotes an approach to studying public-private interactions in global labor governance that is sensitive to how interactions are important at different stages in the making of public and private regulation; how the causal interaction can go from the public to the private and from the private to the public; how such interaction varies in quality and promise across different parts of the world, labor issue areas and policy instruments; and how public-private interaction can only be captured by combining case histories with large-N analysis. The evidence from the Special Issue’s articles leads to a set of generic propositions, describing how public interventions tend to strengthen private labor policy, while private interventions tend to either modestly substitute for or have little effect upon public labor and social protections. The article then discusses how these dynamics may be influenced by the political contentiousness of the specific labor issue and the characteristics of the state.

Support for Ethical Consumerism and Welfare States in the Global Economy: Complements or Substitutes?

This paper explores attitudes about alternative paths to promoting labor and social standards in the global political economy: public welfare-state policy protecting workers and social standards through policy and regulation, versus private ‘red consumerism’ protecting standards through consumer buying-power and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Scholarly debate has emerged over whether these public and private realms reinforce or undermine one another, but has lacked empirical traction to systematically judge such relationships. This paper provides such traction by analyzing European public opinion towards welfare redistribution and towards using consumer power to protect labor and social standards. It matches public opinion data on attitudes towards such issues to measures of existing public and private social protections. The analysis of public opinion suggests that red consumerism is more popular in settings with already-generous public protections, including strong social-policy programs and labor regulation. But the tendency of trade competition and other economic risks to spur a citizen’s support for welfare-state redistribution is diminished where CSR activity and ethical consumerism have stronger footholds. While ‘red’ ethical consumerism and CSR activities may be facilitated by generous existing social policies, they might well erode citizen support for those policies.

Might Corporate Social Responsibility Hollow Out Support for Public Assistance in Europe

This article explores whether private regulatory activity to promote labour and social standards might hollow out traditional public regulations to provide welfare and labour protection at home and abroad. Such exploration has hitherto been frustrated by empirical limitations of measures of private regulatory activity and its implications for public regulation. The present article extends those limits by focusing on how new measures of labour†related private regulation affect attitudes in 27 European polities towards welfare redistribution and for foreign assistance. Our analysis suggests that private†regulatory CSR promoting labour and social standards may directly and indirectly diminish public support for domestic welfare redistribution, but appears to have little effect on support for foreign aid. We see, hence, possible crowding†out only with respect to domestic, not international, assistance.