Post-Partnership Strategies for Defining Corporate Responsibility: The Business Social Compliance Initiative

While cross-sectoral partnerships are frequently presented as a way to achieve sustainable development, some corporations that first tried using the strategy are now changing direction. Growing tired of what are, in their eyes, inefficient and unproductive cross-sectoral partnerships, firms are star...

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Authors: Egels-Zandén, Niklas (Author) ; Wahlqvist, Evelina (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2007
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2007, Volume: 70, Issue: 2, Pages: 175-189
Further subjects:B Corporate Responsibility
B codes of conduct
B Institutional Theory
B actor-network theory (ANT)
B supplier relations
B Partnership
B Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI)
B garment industry
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Summary:While cross-sectoral partnerships are frequently presented as a way to achieve sustainable development, some corporations that first tried using the strategy are now changing direction. Growing tired of what are, in their eyes, inefficient and unproductive cross-sectoral partnerships, firms are starting to form post-cross-sectoral partnerships (‚post-partnerships’) open exclusively to corporations. This paper examines one such post-partnership project, the Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI), to analyse the possibility of post-partnerships establishing stable definitions of ‚corporate responsibility’. We do this by creating a theoretical framework based on actor-network theory (ANT) and institutional theory. Using this framework, we show that post-partnerships suffer from the paradox of striving to marginalise those stakeholders whose support they need␣for establishing stable definitions of ‚corporate responsibility’. We conclude by discussing whether or not post-partnership strategies, despite this paradox, can be expected to establish stable definitions of ‚corporate responsibility’.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9104-7