This paper argues that the literature examining the role that MNCs play in ‘political CSR’—an emerging area of management research concern—can be enhanced by more a fulsome examination of the ‘varieties of capitalism’ that currently exist in the global economy. We argue that the willingness and capacity of a particular MNC to participate in governance activity—which we broadly equate to political CSR—are contingent, at least in part, upon the national systems of government-business relations present in its home market. We argue (...) that the decisions MNCs make in terms of whether and how to participate in governance are predicated in part on the domestic system of business-government relations out of which they emerge. The paper then asserts that our current conceptions of political CSR are limited, because they do not take fully into account the increasingly important corporate form of statism, in which home governments maintain a large ownership position in the country’s MNCs, even as they expand abroad. We posit that a key question this reality poses is whether such companies will reinforce established patterns of ‘political CSR’, whether they will challenge those established patterns, or whether some mutual adaptation will occur. We conclude the article with some suggestions for how this question might be explored in future work by interested scholars. (shrink)

The growing popularization of stakeholder theory among management scholars has offered a useful framework for understanding the multiple and interdependent roles of government and business in an increasingly challenging political and regulatory environment. Despite this trend, attention to the role and responsibility of government to protect citizen rights has been limited. To the two traditional stakeholder theory views of government where the focal organization remains the firm, we propose to add two views by pivoting the government’s place and making it (...) the focal organization. We thus describe governments as serving four roles in the business–government–society nexus. For each role, we analyze typical governmental activities/behaviors, relationships with firms’ stakeholders, as well as the challenges and limits to these roles. We also focus on the central notion of salience amplification, as a means of checks and balances across stakeholders in order to safeguard citizen rights and reveal the greater good. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives have become a vital part of the organizational landscape for corporate social responsibility. Recent debates have explored whether these initiatives represent opportunities for the “democratization” of transnational corporations, facilitating civic participation in the extension of corporate responsibility, or whether they constitute new arenas for the expansion of corporate influence and the private capture of regulatory power. In this article, we explore the political dynamics of these new governance initiatives by presenting an in-depth case study of an organization often (...) heralded as a model MSI: the Forest Stewardship Council. An effort to address global deforestation in the wake of failed efforts to agree a multilateral convention on forests at the Rio Summit in 1992, the FSC was launched in 1993 as a non-state regulatory experiment: a transnational MSI, administering a global eco-labeling scheme for timber and forest products. We trace the scheme’s evolution over the past two decades, showing that while the FSC has successfully facilitated multi-sectoral determination of new standards for forestry, it has nevertheless failed to transform commercial forestry practices or stem the tide of tropical deforestation. Applying a neo-Gramscian analysis to the organizational evolution of the FSC, we examine how broader market forces and resource imbalances between non-governmental and market actors can serve to limit the effectiveness of MSIs in the current neo-liberal environment. This presents dilemmas for NGOs which can lead to their defection, ultimately undermining the organizational legitimacy of MSIs. (shrink)