Community structure and the behavior of transnational sustainability governors: Toward a multi-relational approach

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fransen, Luc; Schalk, Jelmer; Auld, Graeme
• 署名单位: University of Amsterdam; Leiden University - Excl LUMC; Leiden University; Carleton University
• 刊物名称: REGULATION & GOVERNANCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1748-5983
• DOI: 10.1111/rego.12185
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 3-25
• 关键词: private regulation; policy community; governance; POLITICS; network; ORGANIZATIONS; legitimacy; emergence; certification; multiplicity

摘要

Hundreds of transnational private governance organizations (TPGOs) have emerged in recent decades to govern social and environmental conditions of production using voluntary standards. A debate persists over whether the ties among different TPGOs and other organizations create a professional community that affects the behavior of TPGOs. To help resolve this debate, we analyze multiple ties among agriculture TPGOs to offer a more robust exploration of community structures and their potential effects for three forms of TPGO behavior - coordination, collaboration, and isomorphism. Our aggregate measure of ties reveals a thin community dominated by older TPGOs and TPGOs advancing a broad notion of sustainability that were created by Solidaridad, the World Wildlife Fund, and/or Unilever. The clearest community structures are built from ties that exhibit the potential for not actual collaboration, coordination, and isomorphism. Thus, while there exists convergence toward an emergent TPGO-community, obstacles remain to more intense behavioral effects for TPGOs.