Cuadro resumen de marco normativo

CSR policies involve the participation of a variety of stakeholders in the development or construction of a code of conduct that expresses a company‘s commitments regarding the impact of its activities in the wider community. The idea that a variety of actors (generally held to be those who are either impacted by, or have an impact upon, the action in question) ought to be involved in this process has been theorised by stakeholder theory. The central idea behind stakeholder theory is that traditional theories of management put too much emphasis on the importance of shareholders in the business, and that there are a variety of other stakeholders associated with the operation of the firm to whom due recognition must be given. Freeman proposes that there ought to be an equal relationship between the firm and all stakeholders; generally, these stakeholders are (in no particular order), owners, management, local community, customers, suppliers, and employees (Freeman, 2002: 42). As such, the firm‘s primary

responsibility is not to shareholders but to all actors who have an effect on, or are affected by the activity of the firm. The idea is that the firm ought to be managed with due regard to the equality of all stakeholders and that as well as being concerned with the ―bottom-line‖ (profitability), a firm should also pay due regard to the ―triple bottom line‖ (social and environmental impacts of its activities).

Initially, codes of conduct were primarily developed unilaterally by companies or business associations, rather than with the participation of multiple stakeholders (Utting, 2002: 69). In the early 1980s, most codes that were adopted unilaterally by companies were to do with questionable payments, prompted largely because of the US Securities and Exchange Commission‘s investigation into such payments (Jenkins/UNRISD, 2001: 5). This approach was apparently a convenient one for business, in the sense that by developing their own regulatory codes, corporations avoided external interference and controlled the direction of regulation. It was, however, open to criticism: allegations of greenwash, an ad hoc approach, and the gap that often existed between what appeared on paper, and what was done in practice (Ibid).

In the context of this type of criticism then, the trend shifted towards the participation of a variety of actors in multi-stakeholder initiatives in the construction of corporate codes of conduct. Primarily, actors include: NGOs, trade unions, business and industry associations, corporations, global public governance agencies and national governments. Such initiatives form links that transgress the territorial boundaries of the states in which they are based, thus

reflecting the nature of the corporate environment that they are trying to regulate. The structure of these initiatives and the range of actors that participate is not fixed or uniform.

For instance, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) is a non-profit business association based in the US, but lists as its global alliances as The UN Global Compact, The Ethos Institute (Brazil), Business in the Community (UK), amongst others. Its major funders are traditional philanthropic associations such as The Ford Foundation, and government agencies, such as the US Department of State. The Ethical Trading Initiative has a membership that incorporates corporations, international trade union confederations, and global NGOs, as well as the UK‘s Department for International Development (DFID). At the level of supranational governance agencies, the EU‘s Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility (see EU, 2004) incorporates regional business associations, global NGOs, regional trade union federations, and global public governance agencies. Similarly, the UN Global Compact operates under the auspices of a global public governance agency, but is centred around the participation of a wide range of actors from both public, private and non- governmental sectors.

This multi-stakeholder approach has obvious implications for the content and organisational form of the codes of conduct, which will be dealt with in further detail below. In terms of the actors involved, the array of participants in multi- stakeholder initiatives are a good indication of the way in which codes of conduct, and CSR, are constructed as both a public and private responsibility. In

this form of regulation, what Utting calls ―articulated regulation‖ (2005: 8) or what has elsewhere been called ―regulated self-regulation‖ (cited in Ougaard, 2006: 247;), authority (albeit what might be called ―soft‖ authority) stems from both public and private sector on a non-territorial (global) basis. The success of a multi-stakeholder initiative is dependent on the all actors‘ participation, be it governmental participation to add a degree of legitimacy, NGO participation for the articulation of special interest groups needs/interests, or corporate participation to lend an element of feasibility to the process. In this sense, the authority derived from multi-stakeholder codes of conduct is only as good as the sum of its parts.

The multiplicity of actors involved in the creation of corporate codes of conduct is not without problems. Although it purports to be a more democratic way of constructing CSR, it raises some important questions which relate to the overall success of CSR. On paper, the participation of all relevant stakeholders ought overall to be a good thing. However, power dynamics come in to play in this instance, so that the very issue of inclusion in or exclusion from the dialogue becomes problematic in terms of the resulting code of conduct. For instance, Newell has pointed out that very often the poorest sections of the community are excluded from the processes of constructing codes of conduct, often because they are not seen as legitimate stakeholders, or because their interests are presumed to be represented by those bodies already involved in the process (2005: 543). By using the stakeholder process as the justification for the content of a code of conduct, we learn nothing about ―the observable and non-observable uses of power in stakeholder relationships, or the rights and responsibilities of

stakeholders‖ (Blowfield, 2005b: 180). Additionally, there can be problems in relation to the legitimacy of actors in terms of the communities they speak for. NGOs, in this regard, are problematic because, as Newell points out, NGOs have their own political agendas to play out in CSR processes, which may not necessarily align with those of a community they purport to represent (Newell, 2005: 552). Similarly, Utting has pointed out that many trade unions have difficulties with NGO participation in such processes, because of the ambiguity of their status as legitimate representatives, as well as the manner in which NGOs participate in processes that operate outside of democratic public policy processes (Utting, 2005: 9). The general point here is that multi-stakeholder participation within a CSR process does not get around the fact that it is still an inherently political process, within which the political dynamics of power are played out. As is discussed later on in the thesis, justice is contingent on such power dynamics being rectified. The ideas set out in chapter six attempt to address problems in this regard.

Despite this, the convergence of different actors in the formation of codes of conduct is important from the point of view that it illuminates a lot about the context in which CSR is constructed. Implicit in the variety of actors is the idea that corporate responsibility is not just a matter of private (self) regulation, or public (state) regulation. This reflects the generalised move in the last twenty years of the twentieth century away from the ―hard‖ regulation of public governance agencies, in particular the state; and, more recently, the curbing of the private authority of corporations, albeit in ways that do not fit easily into a model of public regulation.