The limits of corporate responsibility standards

Audits and COVID-19: A paradigm shift in the making

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the obsolescence and vulnerability of many existing auditing practices. While some progressive practices have been implemented (e.g., remote audits using rudimentary information and communication technologies), a new paradigm is needed not only to account for the risk of repeated lockdowns but also to align practices with the level of digitalization, automation, and use of artificial intelligence in the current business environment. In this article, we argue that the adoption of new technologies requires a fundamental rethinking of how auditing services are delivered. We argue that new technological possibilities have implications for five other auditing elements that enable a shift from the old to the new paradigm of auditing, namely actors, processes, spaces, training and skills development, and services. We explain how nonfinancial audits conducted under the new paradigm are key enablers of a firm's ability to participate and to thrive in a competitive international marketplace.

Same Same but Different? A Quantitative Exploration of Voluntary Sustainability Standards in Agriculture

Private governance by means of voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) has become ubiquitous, especially for the governance of sustainability issues along global value chains in agriculture. As VSS have multiplied and proliferated, their commonalities and differences are not always easily discernable to value chain participants and their stakeholders. Concurrently, extant research is ambiguous on the degree of harmonization or diversification of standards currently available. Two core aspects have received particular attention: the meaning of sustainability reflected in VSS and the degree of stakeholder inclusion in standard governance. It is the purpose of this study to compare VSS from different types of standard setting initiatives regarding these two core aspects by analyzing their purported sustainability worldview and the inclusiveness of their institutional design. The quantitative exploration covers exemplars offered by inter-governmental organizations, business initiatives, non-governmental organizations as well as multi-stakeholder initiatives. The analysis finds significant ambiguity of sustainability worldviews across the sample, as well as almost universal uptake of design characteristics to enhance inclusiveness irrespective of the type of standard setting initiative. However, there are also significant differences in the way sustainability is understood among VSS offered by different standard setting initiatives.

Shared Responsibility and Labor Rights in Global Supply Chains

The article presents a novel normative model of shared responsibility for remedying unjust labor conditions and protecting workers' rights in global supply chains. While existing literature on labor governance in the globalized economy tends to focus on empirical and conceptual investigations, the article contributes to the emerging scholarship by proposing moral justifications for labor governance schemes that go beyond voluntary private regulations and include public enforcement mechanisms. Drawing on normative theories of justice and on empirical-legal research, our Labor Model of Shared Responsibility introduces three main claims: First, that responsibility for protecting and promoting labor standards in global supply chains should be shared by all private and institutional actors involved (whether directly or indirectly) in the production and distribution processes. Second, we offer a normative model for allocating responsibility among the various actors, based on five principles: connectedness, contribution, benefit, capacity, and power. Last, we demonstrate how the normative model could be implemented through various national and international institutional mechanisms.

Corporate Social Performance: An Assessment Model on an Emerging Market

This paper investigates the priorities governing large companies in an emerging market regarding corporate social performance (CSP). The authors propose profile patterns of responsible managerial behavior and a framework for evaluating CSP relying on stakeholder theory. The study relies on a statistical analysis which is designed to examine the significance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice as it emerges from company business strategies. Taking the form of an empirical study involving 87 managers, this work relies on the cluster analysis theory, identifying six behavioral patterns when considering CSR practices: “lethargic”, “compliant, “pragmatist”, “auditor”, “formalist”, and “performer”. The cluster typology indicates the complexity of CSR practices and highlights the role of CSR in company strategy development. The proposed assessment model is intended to empower CSP diagnosis, while supporting management towards achieving sustainable growth.

Revisiting Politics in Political CSR: How coercive and deliberative dynamics operate through institutional work in a Colombian company

This article analyses the political dynamics taking place within a Colombian supplier company during the implementation of a client’s global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme, which radically transformed the local understandings of the supplier’s social responsibilities. We distinguish two forms of politics in political CSR – coercive and deliberative politics – and examine how they unfold through lower-level managers’ institutional work. Our longitudinal case study identifies four types of institutional work, which combine into three political configurations – irreconcilable politics, complementary politics and aligned deliberative politics – resulting in the hybridization of explicit and implicit CSR. By analysing how local managers from emerging countries and at the bottom of the supply chain cope with the new political role of MNCs, we expand the political microfoundations of CSR and highlight the interactive and political nature of institutional work aimed at addressing major societal challenges.

Social sustainability in supply chains: a review

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to review the development of the socially sustainable supply chain management field.

Design/methodology/approach

The 112 most cited papers in the field until 2017 are analysed using a state-of-the-art structured literature review model borrowed from the accounting field.

Findings

This study highlights the increasing number of publications across the years, the diversity of journals and the type of authors addressing the topic. It reveals that qualitative studies focused on large companies in the garment, food and electronics sectors and on private regulations capture most of the attention, with Asia, Europe and North America being the most scrutinised locations. Drivers and barriers for socially sustainable supply chain management are summarised, clustered and confronted. This study also evaluates how the sustainability and corporate social responsibility concepts are used in the above field and analyses the existing definitions of social sustainability.

Research limitations/implications

This study incites researchers to broaden their studies to diverse sectors and locations, addressing different levels of supply chains with quantitative techniques and clearer conceptual foundations.

Practical implications

This study incites practitioners to further contribute to this scholars-dominated research field, offering their practical insights and perspectives.

Originality/value

This study offers original insights and critiques of the literature, highlighting its gaps and proposing new research avenues for the future.

Critical reflections on quality standards within drug demand reduction

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect on the usefulness of quality standards aimed at prevention interventions for drug using young offenders.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses critical literature on quality standards, readings of quality standards and qualitative interviews as well as focus-group discussions with professionals working in services targeting drug use among young offenders.

Findings

The findings show discrepancies between the idea that quality standards provide a tool for supporting the implementation of more effective interventions and professionals’ experiences with quality standards as almost absent in their work.

Originality/value

This viewpoint highlights barriers to the implementation of quality standards that have to be overcome if quality standards are to be adopted and implemented in practice.

Drivers and barriers for adoption of a leading social management standard (SA8000) in developing economies

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify drivers and barriers for adopting Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000), a leading global social management standard.

Design/methodology/approach

The approach involves combining insights from Institutional Theory with a focus on economic performance to study SA8000 adoption by suppliers operating in a developing economy (i.e. India). Data collection involves interviews with adopters and non-adopters, social standard experts and auditors, and archival data on local working conditions.

Findings

This study confirms that customer requests are the major reason for adopting SA8000 in order to avoid loss of business. It is noteworthy, however, that those customer requests to adopt SA8000 are often symbolic in nature, which, in combination with the lack of a positive business case, hinders effective implementation.

Practical implications

The findings imply that symbolic customer requests for SA8000 adoption induce symbolic implementation by suppliers, a “supply chain effect” in the symbolic approach. Substantive requests in contrast lead to more substantive implementation and require customer investment in the form of active support and an interest in the standard’s implementation, context and effects.

Originality/value

This study is original in that it addresses social sustainability from a supplier’s perspective, using the lens of Institutional Theory. The value lies in demonstrating the “supply chain effects” that arise from the “quality” of customer requests: a purely symbolic approach by customers leading to symbolic implementation vs the merits of substantive customer requests which stimulate substantive implementation.

Performance implications of SA8000 certification

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the relationship between the adoption of Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) – which is considered the most important ethical certification standard – and firm performance, building on agency and contingency theories.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors analyse secondary longitudinal balance sheet data of listed firms employing a rigorous event-study approach and compare SA8000-certified companies to different control groups based on three matching criteria, i.e., industry, size, and pre-certification performance. The authors then study the moderating effects of the cultural features, the country’s development level, and the labour intensity on the causal relationship through multiple regression methods.

Findings

The authors find that SA8000 certification positively affects labour productivity and sales performance but has no effect on profitability. Furthermore, the study supports that the relationship between SA8000 and profitability is moderated by two cultural features of the home country of the firms (i.e. power distance and uncertainty avoidance).

Originality/value

This is the first study, which empirically tests the effects of the ethical certification SA8000 on firm performance using a cross-country sample. In addition, the authors contribute to the wider debate on the effects of corporate social responsibility practices on firm performance.

Deliberative Lobbying? Toward a Noncontradiction of Corporate Political Activities and Corporate Social Responsibility?

Recently, researchers have claimed that food and beverage corporations should be excluded from the development of public health policy because their lobbying activities strategically undermine the promotion of public health. At the same time, recent political corporate social responsibility (CSR) theory holds that corporations have a responsibility to help solve global public issues. We address this described misalignment and show that corporations may fulfill this “new political role” if they turn to novel forms of corporate political activity (CPA) establishing a minimal standard for not contradicting their CSR. Therefore, we put forward a normative concept called deliberative lobbying based on discourse, transparency, and accountability, which aims to resolve public issues and advance CPA. In three lobbying cases, we show misalignments and contradictions that harm both society and the corporation. We position deliberative lobbing as an argument to maintain self-regulation against critics claiming that corporations should be excluded from all political processes.

After Rana Plaza: Building coalitional power for labour rights between unions and (consumption-based) social movement organisations

Global labour governance has typically been approached from either industrial relations scholars focusing on the role of organised labour or social movement scholars focusing on the role of social movement organisations in mobilising consumption power. Yet, little work has focused on the interaction of the two. Using an exploratory case study of the governance response to the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, this article examines how complementary capacities of production- and consumption-based actors generated coalitional power and contributed to creating the ‘Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh’, making it binding and convincing more than 180 brand-name companies to sign up. The research has implications for understanding how the interface between production and consumption actors may provide leverage to improve labour standards in global supply chains.

The Dynamics of Standardization: Three Perspectives on Standards in Organization Studies

This paper suggests that when the phenomenon of standards and standardization is examined from the perspective of organization studies, three aspects stand out: the standardization of organizations, standardization by organizations and standardization as (a form of) organization. Following a comprehensive overview of existing research in these three areas, we argue that the dynamic aspects of standardization are under-represented in the scholarly discourse. Furthermore, we identify the main types of tension associated with standardization and the dynamics they generate in each of those three areas, and show that, while standards and standardization are typically associated with stability and sameness, they are essentially a dynamic phenomenon. The paper highlights the contributions of this special issue to the topic of standards as a dynamic phenomenon in organization studies and makes suggestions for future research.