The drivers of corporate social responsibility : a critical review

The paper criticises the dominant discourse of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by examining six sets of factors conventionally considered as promoting outcomes consistent with core principles of social responsibility: intra-organizational factors, competitive dynamics, institutional investors, end-consumers, government regulators and non-governmental organizations. Each factor is addressed conceptually, empirically, and with respect to its likely future significance in promoting outcomes consistent with CSR. Our overall conclusions are not promising on any of these dimensions.

The drivers of corporate social responsibility : a critical review

The paper criticises the dominant discourse of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by examining six sets of factors conventionally considered as promoting outcomes consistent with core principles of social responsibility: intra-organizational factors, competitive dynamics, institutional investors, end-consumers, government regulators and non-governmental organizations. Each factor is addressed conceptually, empirically, and with respect to its likely future significance in promoting outcomes consistent with CSR. Our overall conclusions are not promising on any of these dimensions.

A critical review of relations between corporate responsibility research and practice

This essay identifies epistemological, theoretical and methodological problems in a potentially influential subset of the interdisciplinary corporate responsibility literature, that which appears in the management literature. The received conceptualization of stakeholder analysis is criticised by identifying six sets of factors conventionally considered as promoting social responsibilities in the firm: inter-organizational factors, economic competitors, institutional investors, end-consumers, government regulators and non-governmental organizations. Each is addressed on conceptual grounds, its empirical salience in terms of the latest relevant research and prospects to be a significant factor in promoting outcomes consistent with social welfare. Despite obvious antagonistic relations between organization-centred economic objectives and extra-organizational-directed social considerations, the huge body of research we address drifts in a disengaged Sargasso Sea. The essay argues for appropriate directions for continuing business ethics/responsibility/corporate citizenship research, suggesting certain sociological works on moral leadership, moral courage, and academic leadership.

Paddling the canoe on one side : women in decision-making in Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands

Heather Wallace examines changes in attitudes to women in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. She discusses policy changes and the slow process of these filtering into practice leading to shifting attitudes towards women's decision-making role in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Her focus is on the complex processes by which policy changes are translated into practice, and she looks at both non-governmental organizations and the government in addressing gender policy and in the implementation of programmes in Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.

Balancing the benefits and risks of public–private partnerships to address the global double burden of malnutrition

Objective: Transnational food, beverage and restaurant companies, and their corporate foundations, may be potential collaborators to help address complex public health nutrition challenges. While UN system guidelines are available for private-sector engagement, non-governmental organizations (NGO) have limited guidelines to navigate diverse opportunities and challenges presented by partnering with these companies through public–private partnerships (PPP) to address the global double burden of malnutrition.

Design: We conducted a search of electronic databases, UN system websites and grey literature to identify resources about partnerships used to address the global double burden of malnutrition. A narrative summary provides a synthesis of the interdisciplinary literature identified.

Results: We describe partnership opportunities, benefits and challenges; and tools and approaches to help NGO engage with the private sector to address global public health nutrition challenges. PPP benefits include: raising the visibility of nutrition and health on policy agendas; mobilizing funds and advocating for research; strengthening food-system processes and delivery systems; facilitating technology transfer; and expanding access to medications, vaccines, healthy food and beverage products, and nutrition assistance during humanitarian crises. PPP challenges include: balancing private commercial interests with public health interests; managing conflicts of interest; ensuring that co-branded activities support healthy products and healthy eating environments; complying with ethical codes of conduct; assessing partnership compatibility; and evaluating partnership outcomes.

Conclusions: NGO should adopt a systematic and transparent approach using available tools and processes to maximize benefits and minimize risks of partnering with transnational food, beverage and restaurant companies to effectively target the global double burden of malnutrition.

International NGO approaches to rural development in Myanmar

The article analyzes the research data provided by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) in Myanmar on strategies that maximizes rural community development. It discusses INGO approaches to rural community development and relationship with stakeholders. The study reveals that INGOs right partnership with local officials, equity and local community sustainability are crucial to the success of rural development projects in Myanmar.

Process evaluation of a community-based intervention program: Healthy Youth Healthy Communities, an adolescent obesity prevention project in Fiji

Nearly one-half of the adult population in Fiji between the ages of 15–64 years is either overweight or obese; and rates amongst school children have, on average, doubled during the last decade. There is an urgent need to scale up the promotion of healthy behaviors and environments using a multi-sectoral approach. The Healthy Youth Healthy Community (HYHC) project in Fiji used a settings approach in secondary schools and faith-based organizations to increase the capacity of the whole community, including churches, mosques and temples, to promote healthy eating and regular physical activity, and to prevent unhealthy weight gain in adolescents aged 13–18 years. The team consisted of a study manager, project coordinator and four research assistants (RAs) committed to planning, designing and facilitating the implementation of intervention programs in collaboration with other stakeholders, such as the wider school communities, government and non-governmental organizations and business partners. Process data were collected on all intervention activities and analyzed by dose, frequency and reach for each specific strategy. The Fiji Action Plan included nine objectives for the school settings; four were based on nutrition and two on physical activity in schools, plus three general objectives, namely capacity building, social marketing and evaluation. Long-term change in nutritional behavior was difficult to achieve; a key contributor to this was the unhealthy food served in the school canteens. Whilst capacity-building proved to be one of the best mechanisms for intervening, it is important to consider the cultural and social factors influencing health behaviors and affecting specific groups.

Australian environmental alliances from an environmental NGOs perspective

Businesses have used alliances to share knowledge and resources amongst themselves to achieve corporate goals, yet little is written in the literature on how non-profit organizations manage alliances and what makes these alliances effective. This paper examines how Australian environmental non-governmental agencies (NGOs) perceive their alliances with other NGOs, profit-based organizations and governmental partners. To a large extent this paper replicates the work of Milne, Iyer and Gooding-Williams (1996) and includes measures of alliance effectiveness developed by Bucklin and Sengupta (1993). The findings suggest that Australian environmental NGOs use varying mechanisms to manage these alliance relationships, which is generally supported in the existing literature.

Community-based rehabilitation : why not in Iraq?

Introduction: Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) has emerged and developed since the 1950s as a possible solution for socio-economic reintegration of people with disabilities. Government and non government organizations are key players and have vital roles in policy making, planning, funding, managing and implementing CBR programmes.
Contents: This article explores the role of government and non-government organizations and international agencies in community-based rehabilitation in Iraq. It examines the possibility of NGOs initiating and running (CBR) programmes for people with a disability regardless of Iraqi government commitment or participation.
Conclusions: The research results show that implementation of CBR in Iraq is vital but not widely spread. Non-government organizations seem more active, committed and capable at the present time being to initiate, run and manage CBR programmes when compared with the government of Iraq.

What’s in a name? The personal and political meanings of 'LGBT' for non-heterosexual and transgender youth in Kyrgyzstan

In this article, we focus on the ways in which non-heterosexual and transgender youth involved with the non-governmental organization ‘Labrys’ in Kyrgyzstan have begun to demand the protection of their basic civil and human rights on the basis of self-identification as ‘LGBT’. This acronym, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, is relatively new to Kyrgyzstan and other post-Soviet states, and represents a change in the terms used by non-heterosexual and transgender people to describe themselves. We frame our discussion using the concepts of sexual citizenship, private/public divides and stigma and base our discussion on debates amongst the staff and community of Labrys about the purpose and scope of the organization. Centrally, we suggest that the strategic use of ‘LGBT’ as a public and politicized identity represents a new, pro-active form of stigma management. By employing this strategy, young LGBT people become ‘would-be’ sexual citizens and challenge traditional societal norms that seek to keep discussion of sex and sexuality in the private sphere and restrict rights to heterosexual, cisgender citizens.

A climate-compatible approach to development practice by international humanitarian NGOs

If current climate-change predictions prove accurate, non-linear change, including potentially catastrophic change, is possible and the environments in which international humanitarian NGOs operate will change figuratively and literally. This paper proposes that a new approach to development is required that takes changing climate into account. This 'climate-compatible approach' to development is a bleak shift from some of the current orthodox positions and will be a major challenge to international humanitarian NGOs working with the most vulnerable. However, it is necessary to address the challenges and context such NGOs face, and the need to be resilient and adaptive to these changes.

Building G20 outreach: The role of transnational policy networks in sustaining effective and legitimate summitry

G20 outreach processes, in the form of the Think 20, Labour 20, Business 20, and Civil 20, Youth 20, and Women 20, are a formal attempt by G20 leaders to engage various social sectors with G20 policymaking. This essay contends that G20 outreach processes are best understood as transnational policy networks, which are involved in widening the field of policy communication and deliberation. The importance of these transnational policy networks rest upon their role in developing and disseminating G20 policy priorities and principles; and are an attempt to enhance the legitimacy and influence of the G20 and its policy proposals.

"We agree that, in order to strengthen its ability to build and sustain the political consensus needed to respond to challenges, the G20 must remain efficient, transparent and accountable. To achieve this, we decide to … pursue consistent and effective engagement with non-members, regional and international organisations, including the United Nations, and other actors, and we welcome their contribution to our work as appropriate. We also encourage engagement with civil society.G20 Cannes Summit Final Declaration 2011 (G20 2011)"

The difficulty in balancing the effectiveness and representativeness of the Group of Twenty (G20) has led to sustained questions about its legitimacy (Cooper 2010; Rudd 2011; Cooper and Pouliot 2015). Consequently, while leaders have long sought external advice about the agendas of Group of Seven (G7) summits since 1975, and about the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors’ meetings (G20 FM/CBG) since 1999, there has been intensification, elaboration, and institutionalization of transnational networks of policymakers with respect to the G20 in recent years. These networks are especially evident in the form of the G20 working groups and G20 outreach processes involved in the G20 FM/CBG and the G20 leaders’ forum created in 2008.

G20 working groups include transgovernmental groups of government officials and outside experts within a specific policy area who are charged with preparing material for G20 deliberations. G20 outreach processes are a recent and more formal attempt by G20 leaders to engage various social sectors with the policymaking activity of the G20 and were first considered by the G20 membership in 2010 with a more formal engagement with business interests. This led to the formal development of G20 outreach groups in 2013 in the form of the Think 20 (think tanks), Labour 20, Business 20, Civil 20 and Youth 20, which include representatives from these sectors. In 2015, a Women 20 outreach group was also added. These outreach processes are best understood as transnational policy networks which have been built to support the G20’s capacity to be effective and legitimate.

This essay focuses on G20 outreach processes and examines why and how the G20 has sought to augment its intergovernmental summitry and transgovernmental working groups with transnational policy networks, purposely involving a range of societal interests. Transnational policy networks demonstrate the existence of policymaking practices which include the policy influence of experts and advocates outside government. These networks also indicate the ways in which governments, International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) and summits like the G20 engage society, or where elements of society engage themselves with the policymaking process (Stone 2008). These networks intersect with the intergovernmental activities of leaders and key diplomats, and overlap with the transgovernmental relationships of various levels of government bureaucrats (Baker 2009). One of the principle features of transnational policy networks is the way they create and channel the communication of political ideas and priorities. However, it is important to keep in the mind the purpose and power of actors involved in the network and consider who has the discretion and motivation to create the network in the first instance. As the G20 members stated in 2012, the aspiration for outreach is founded upon an intent to strengthen the G20’s capacity “to build and sustain the political consensus”. Consequently, it is important to consider how the development of transnational policy networks in the form of G20 outreach processes are able to sustain the effectiveness and legitimacy of the G20.

This essay contends that G20 outreach processes are best understood as transnational policy networks. These networks have been built to widen the field of policy communication and deliberation. Furthermore, these outreach processes and networks are an attempt to enhance the legitimacy and influence of the G20 and its policy proposals. While there is no doubt that outreach practices are “ad hoc responses to the widespread charge that the G20 reproduces the politics of exclusion in global governance” (Cooper and Pouliot 2015, 347), these practices have the potential to improve both the effectiveness and legitimacy of the G20. The G20 possesses uncertain legitimacy and members of the G20 demonstrate an awareness of this and a corresponding willingness to actively develop various political practices to support the capacity and legitimacy of the G20.

However, G20 outreach also enables the G20 to place some limit upon the policy narratives and ideas that develop within these policy networks. The G20 is liable to be misunderstood without examining the activity of these transnational networks because the G20 is fundamentally a deliberative policy forum rather than a negotiating forum of binding regulations. Transnational policy networks have the potential to scrutinize and amplify relevant policy ideas and thereby enhance the legitimacy of the G20 and strengthen the capacity of the G20 to address an array of global economic and social problems. However, while some narrative control is important to amplify the G20 agenda, too much narrative control will undermine its legitimacy and capacity to develop broad-based responses to global problems. This essay explores the formation of these transnational policy networks by first outlining the evolution of the purpose and configuration of the G20, then it considers the ways G20 outreach processes constitute transnational policy networks and why they have been established, and lastly, analyses how these networks operate to enhance the legitimacy and effectiveness of the G20.