ABSTRACTThis article studies multi-stakeholder initiatives as spaces for both deliberation and contestation between constituencies with competing discourses and disputed values, beliefs, and preferences. We review different theoretical perspectives on MSIs, which see them mainly as spaces to find solutions to market problems, as spaces of conflict and bargaining, or as spaces of consensus. In contrast, we build on a contestatory deliberative perspective, which gives equal value to both contestation and consensus. We identify four types of internal contestation which can be (...) present in MSIs—procedural, inclusiveness, epistemic, and ultimate-goal—and argue that embracing contestation and engaging in ongoing revision of provisional agreements, criteria, and goals can enhance the democratic quality of MSIs. Finally, we explore the implications of this perspective for theorizing about the democratic quality in MSIs and about the role of corporations in transnational governance. (shrink)

In response to stakeholder pressure, companies increasingly make ambitious forward-looking sustainability commitments. They then draw on corporate policies with varying degrees of alignment to disseminate and enforce corresponding behavioral rules among their suppliers and business partners. This goal-based turn in private sustainability governance has important implications for its likely environmental and social outcomes. Drawing on paradox theory, this article uses a case study of zero-deforestation commitments in the Indonesian palm oil sector to argue that goal-based private sustainability governance’s characteristics set (...) the stage for two types of paradoxes to emerge: performing paradoxes between environmental, social, and economic sustainability goals, and organizing paradoxes between cooperation and competition approaches. Companies’ responses to these paradoxes, in turn, can explain the lack of full goal attainment and differential rates of progress between actors. These results draw our attention to the complexities hidden behind governance through goal setting in the corporate space, and raise important questions about the viability of similar strategies such as science-based targets and net-zero goals. (shrink)

Building on an illustrative case of a systemic environmental threat and its multi‐stakeholder response, this paper draws attention to the changing political impacts of corporations in the digital age. Political Corporate Social Responsibility (PCSR) theory suggests an expanded sense of politics and corporations, including impacts that may range from voluntary initiatives to overcome governance gaps, to avoiding state regulation via corporate political activity. Considering digitalization as a stimulus, we explore potential responsibilities of corporations toward public goods in contexts with functioning (...) governments. We show that digitalization—in the form of transparency, surveillance, and data‐sharing—offers corporations’ scope for deliberative public participation. The starry sky beetle infestation endangering public and private goods is thereby used to illustrate the possibility of expanding the political role of corporations in the digital sphere. We offer a contribution by conceptualizing data‐deliberation as a Habermasian variation of PCSR, defined as the (a) voluntary disclosure of corporate data and its transparent, open sharing with the public sector (b) along with the cooperation with governmental institutions on data analytics methods for examining large‐scale datasets (c) thereby complying with existing national and international regulations on data protection, in particular with respect to privacy and personal data. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning literature on the governance and impact of cross-sector partnerships in the past two decades, the debate on how and when these collaborative arrangements address globally relevant problems and contribute to systemic change remains open. Building upon the notion of wicked problems and the literature on governing such wicked problems, this paper defines harnessing problems in multi-stakeholder partnerships as the approach of taking into account the nature of the problem and of organizing governance processes accordingly. The paper develops (...) an innovative analytical framework that conceptualizes MSPs in terms of three governance processes harnessing three key dimensions of wicked problems. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil provides an illustrative case study on how this analytical framework describes and explains organizational change in partnerships from a problem-based perspective. The framework can be used to better understand and predict the complex relationships between MSP governance processes, systemic change and societal problems, but also as a guiding tool in organizing governance processes to continuously re-assess the problems over time and address them accordingly. (shrink)

The present paper builds on the Rawlsian critique of utilitarianism in order to identify the moral implications of Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. While Luhmann aptly discerned the pervasive problems of the precarious system–environment relations throughout the modern society, he took moral communication to be person-centered and thus ill-equipped to deal with these problems. At the same time, the Rawlsian possibility of sacrificing fundamental liberties for the sake of economic gains not only exemplifies the Luhmannian precariousness of the relations of (...) the economic system to its societal environment, but also shows this precariousness to be a moral problem. Thus, from the systems-theoretic perspective, the Rawlsian idea of justice denotes the moral dimension of the capacity of the societal environment to carry the economic system. More generally, the proposed complementarity between Rawls and Luhmann allows to see the precariousness of system–environment relations, for any type of social system, as a moral problem. Two implications follow. First, the morally problematic manifestations of the precarious system–environment relations are not limited to the Rawlsian case of the discrimination of the least advantaged groups but rather include a broad range of social costs and damaging effects of business on society and nature. Second, and related, the proposed systems-theoretic perspective explicates the moral value of sustainability of the economic as well as other social systems in their environment, societal and ecological alike. (shrink)

While the benefits of including local communities in multi-stakeholder initiatives have been acknowledged, their successful involvement remains a challenging process. Research has shown that large business interests are regularly over-represented and that local communities remain marginalized in the process. Additionally, little is known about how procedural fairness and inclusion can be managed and maintained during multi-stakeholder initiatives. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate how marginalized stakeholders, and local communities in particular, can be successfully involved during the course (...) of a multi-stakeholder initiative. An action research approach was adopted where the first author collaborated with a social housing association on an initiative to involve the local community in the design and implementation of circular economy approaches in a low-income neighbourhood. This study contributes to the multi-stakeholder initiative literature by showing that the successful involvement of marginalized stakeholders requires the initiators to continuously manage a balance between uncertainty–certainty, disagreement–agreement and consensus- and domination-based management strategies. Furthermore, our study highlights that factors which are regularly treated as challenges, including uncertainty and disagreement, can actually play a beneficial role in multi-stakeholder initiatives, emphasizing the need to take a temporally sensitive approach. This study also contributes to the circular economy literature by showing how communities can play a bigger role than merely being consumers, leading to the inclusion of a socially oriented perspective which has not been recognized in the previous literature. (shrink)

Business is expected to contribute to grand challenges (GC) such as poverty within their corporate social responsibilities. Multi‐stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have developed to a popular governance model to address GC. While existing scholarship has discussed the positive and negative aspects of MSIs, we know relatively little about how corporations within MSIs are held accountable. The objective of the study is to analyze the dynamics of accountability relationships between the corporate actor and the accountability forum to conceive a process model for (...) effective accountability relationships in developing countries. We conducted an inductive study which explored the tensions the accountability forum perceives in MSI accountability relationships and the criteria to meet the forum's accountability claims. Our study identified four accountability criteria: transparency, inclusion, procedural fairness, and efficacy. Our main theoretical claim is that considering the four accountability criteria in the process of facilitating, dialoguing, and evaluating allows affected stakeholders to validate and match legitimacy claims with their own expectations, and thus, manage MSIs more effectively. Our contribution to existing scholarship on MSIs in developing countries is that we offer a novel perspective on analyzing the effectiveness of MSIs to address GC through our focus on one element of MSIs––specifically accountability. Beyond academic theorizing, this perspective may well hold value for nongovernmental organizations, policymakers, and business managers as it advances a concept of responsibility based on a set of accountability criteria which have the potential to become a cornerstone for how MSI members can organize to effectively address GC in developing countries. (shrink)