Abstract
Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are a form of private governance sometimes used to manage the social and environmental impacts of supply chains. We argue that there is a potential tension between input and output legitimacy in MSIs. Input legitimacy requires facilitating representation from a wide range of organizations with heterogeneous interests. This work, however, faces collective action problems that could lead to limited ambitions, lowering output legitimacy. We find that, under the right conditions a relatively small group of motivated actors, who we call institutional stewards, may be willing to undertake the cost and labor of building and maintaining the MSI. This can help reconcile the tension between input and output legitimacy in a formal sense, though it also results in inequalities in power. We test this claim using a case study of organizations’ activities in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). We find that a small group of founding members—and other members of long tenure—account for a disproportionate level of activity in the organization.
Highlights
IntroductionGlobal production networks [1,2] and complex supply chains [3], as Abbott and Snidal [4] (p. 2) argue, challenge the “capacity of even highly developed states to regulate activities that extend beyond their borders.” These institutional voids allow private sector actors to play governance roles [3,5,6,7,8], adopting voluntary programs targeting supply chains’ negative social and environmental externalities [4,6,9,10,11]
While often separate due to their constructivist and rationalist ontologies, the literatures on legitimacy and strategic interests in multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) both point to an important theoretical question: given inequalities in power, costs, and benefits, why do MSIs often persist, but see membership growth? As an initial response, and in contrast to much of the work on MSIs, we focus on micro-level politics [20,21]
Drawing on the literature on institutional work [22], we argue that key stakeholder organizations, who we call institutional stewards, help reconcile the tension between legitimacy and heterogeneous interests in MSIs that endure and grow
Summary
Global production networks [1,2] and complex supply chains [3], as Abbott and Snidal [4] (p. 2) argue, challenge the “capacity of even highly developed states to regulate activities that extend beyond their borders.” These institutional voids allow private sector actors to play governance roles [3,5,6,7,8], adopting voluntary programs targeting supply chains’ negative social and environmental externalities [4,6,9,10,11]. 2) argue, challenge the “capacity of even highly developed states to regulate activities that extend beyond their borders.” These institutional voids allow private sector actors to play governance roles [3,5,6,7,8], adopting voluntary programs targeting supply chains’ negative social and environmental externalities [4,6,9,10,11]. Raise fears that private self-regulation could be whitewash or greenwash [4,11,12,13], a mildly reformist extensions of neoliberalism [14] Whatever their actual effects, these multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs), which bring together organizations from public, private, and civil society sectors, have become increasingly common. Visualized using of 27 ggplot2 [97], in R 3.4.1 [86]
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