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Business & Society Online Table of Contents Alert

A new issue of Business & Society is available online for subscribers:

Special Issue: The United Nations Global Compact: Retrospect and Prospect:
March 2013; Vol. 52, No. 1

The below Table of Contents is available online at: http://bas.sagepub.com/content/vol52/issue1/?etoc

Editorial

Editorial Announcement

Duane Windsor

Business Society 2013; 52 3-5
http://bas.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/52/1/3

Articles

The United Nations Global Compact: Retrospect and Prospect

Andreas Rasche, Sandra Waddock, and Malcolm McIntosh (<st1:placename w:st="on">Copenhagen</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Business</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype>, <st1:placename w:st="on">Boston</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">College</st1:placetype>, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Griffith</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>)

Business Society 2013; 52 6-30
http://bas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/1/6

This article reviews the interdisciplinary literature on the UN Global Compact. The review identifies three research perspectives, which scholars have used to study the UN Global Compact so far: a historical perspective discussing the Global Compact in the context of UN-business relations, an operational perspective discussing the composition and impact of its participants, as well as a governance perspective discussing the constraints and opportunities of the initiative as an institutionalized arena for addressing global governance gaps. The authors contrast these three perspectives and identify key empirical as well as conceptual scholarly contributions. The remainder of this article contains focused summaries of the articles selected for this Special Issue. All articles are introduced and evaluated against the background of the three research perspectives.

12 Years Later: Reflections on the Growth of the UN Global Compact

Georg Kell (UN Global Compact Office)

Business Society 2013; 52 31-52
http://bas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/1/31

The United Nations (UN) Global Compact's journey over the last 12 years can be summarized as building and integrating UN issues into the global corporate responsibility movement. This summary begs the question as to how a policy speech developed for the UN secretary-general has evolved into an innovative public–private partnership initiative. This article argues that the following four factors contributed to creating enabling ingredients for the UN Global Compact's growth: continued relevance of the initiative's underlying idea, sustained institutional leadership support, governmental support (political back-up), and operational viability. Based on the author's personal experience with the initiative from its inception, the article highlights what is required for an initial idea to be developed into a vibrant operational entity in the context of a multilateral organization. Specially, the article reflects on how the aforementioned four attributes have interacted with each other throughout the last 12 years.

The United Nations Global Compact: A CSR Milestone

James E. Post (<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Boston</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>)

Business Society 2013; 52 53-63
http://bas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/1/53

The author focuses attention on some of the historical antecedents of the United Nations Global Compact. Developments such as the Global Compact do not arrive "whole cloth" but require people and institutions to be in a "state of readiness" for the idea. The article discusses Secretary-General Annan's challenge to action, the historical background of three stages of corporate social responsibility, and the future of global corporate responsibility.

Enabling Institutional Investors' Collective Action: The Role of the Principles for Responsible Investment Initiative

Jean-Pascal Gond and Valeria Piani (<st1:placetype w:st="on">City</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>, PRI Secretariat <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>)

Business Society 2013; 52 64-104
http://bas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/1/64

This article analyzes the process of organizing collective action by studying the role of the organizational platform provided by the United Nations–backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) initiative in supporting institutional investors' collaborative engagement with corporations on environmental, social, and governance issues. The authors combine stakeholder and collective action theory to explain how institutional investors influence corporations through collective engagement. A unique access to data from the PRI secretariat on two cases of collaborative campaigns allows evaluation of our framework. The findings clarify how investors enhance their sources of power, legitimacy, and urgency and attract managers' attention through collaborative engagement, and show how they manage these attributes to reshape the legitimacy and urgency of their claims in the eyes of managers. Our data suggest that "enabling organizations" such as the PRI initiative facilitate the emergence of collective action by lowering barriers to entry and providing a mobilizing structure, support collaborative efforts by adding their own legitimacy, normative power, and persistence to the collaborative engagement, and create conditions for a lasting dialogue between investors and managers by providing a hybrid organizational space.

The Global Compact and Gender Inequality: A Work in Progress

Maureen A. Kilgour (Université de Saint-Boniface)

Business Society 2013; 52 105-134
http://bas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/1/105

A number of international organizations have identified eliminating gender inequality as a critical element in poverty reduction and development. Given that the Global Compact (GC) was launched, in part, to work toward the achievement of these goals, this article argues that the GC should pay significant attention to gender inequality in its learning network. The article discusses the findings of a review of the GC learning network, which reveals that the issue of gender inequality was missing from its agenda in its first decade. The author suggests explanations for this finding, including the lack of participation by women's organizations in the GC learning network, the lack of a gender discourse in corporate social responsibility initiatives generally, and the GC's focus on the business case, which may deflect attention from gender inequality where no clear business case can be made.

Trust and the United Nations Global Compact: A Network Theory Perspective

Dirk Ulrich Gilbert and Michael Behnam (<st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Hamburg</st1:placename>, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Suffolk</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>)

Business Society 2013; 52 135-169
http://bas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/1/135

The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is a Global Public Policy Network supporting ten universal principles in the areas of human rights, labor standards, environmental protection, and anticorruption. Networks such as the UNGC are an organizational form with distinct structural properties and specific requirements regarding coordination. Relationships among network partners are typically complex, reciprocal, and trust based. Despite the relevance of trust for a successful coordination of networks, the literature on the UNGC remains relatively silent when it comes to this phenomenon. The conditions and mechanisms that contribute to the constitution of trust in the UNGC are poorly understood. Based on research in network theory, the authors argue that the trust of participants and other stakeholders supporting the UNGC is a key precondition to enhance collaboration and to further develop the initiative. Against this background, the aim of this article is to develop a systematic approach to foster the constitution of trust in the UNGC. A thorough investigation of the connection between trust and the UNGC may help identify concrete measures for increasing the scale and scope of collaboration between stakeholders and stimulating not only collective learning but also the implementation of the Global Compact's ten principles.

Review Essay

Arno Kourula (University of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Amsterdam</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Business</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype></st1:place>)

Business Society 2013; 52 170-176
http://bas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/1/170

This review essay addresses first the author's own assessment of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and second the structure and contribution of the book edited by Andreas Rasche and Georg Kell on The United Nations Global Compact: Achievements, Trends and Challenges (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010). The book brings together contributions by academics and practitioners from business, civil society, and the UNGC office.

Duane Windsor, BAS Editor, odw@rice.edu