Abstract
Third party certification organizations provide opportunities for market and community/non-state actors to collaborate with minimal state involvement. This new hybrid form of collaborative governance raises questions about accountability and responsibilities of private-social partnerships and the challenges to policy implementation. Emerging market based approaches are driven by shareholder expectations as well as commitment to corporate social responsibility, whereas community engagement is increasingly centered on the questions of social license to operate. This paper argues that a community’s lack of trust of industry and/or certification organizations and assessments hinders the collaborative process. It is found that community groups can grant or withhold social license to operate, ceasing industry progress despite its commitments to corporate social responsibility policies and certified standards.
Highlights
Collaboration between the actors of the three social mechanisms or modes of governing can increase efficiency, flexibility, and innovation amongst state and non-state actors (Sørensen 2012; Hartley, Sørensen, and Torfing 2013)
Third party certification bodies have taken over the regulatory roles of the state because it does not have the capacity to effectively or efficiently develop, deliver and monitor the standards that industry and the community are seeking in sustainable environmental management (Howlett and Ramesh 2016)
Hybrid governance arrangements are becoming more prevalent in the management of natural resources, where third party certification and ecolabeling schemes are increasingly providing an incentive to achieve ecologically sustainable practices
Summary
Collaboration between the actors of the three social mechanisms or modes of governing (community, market and the state) can increase efficiency, flexibility, and innovation amongst state and non-state actors (Sørensen 2012; Hartley, Sørensen, and Torfing 2013). External third party certification organizations certify industry against high environmental standards and aim to give the consumer the confidence that they are buying and consuming environmentally sustainable produce (Gale and Haward 2011) These approaches step outside state based governance and address market and consumers directly through product certificates and ecolabels (Potts and Haward 2007). Certification and labelling initiatives have adjusted the way products are viewed and valued in the market (Teisl, Roe, and Hicks 2002) while encouraging industry best practices that influence shareholders and other market actors They can add another layer of legitimacy for community groups in providing their social license to operate (SLO). This paper examines the collaborative efforts between third party assessment and certification organizations, other non-state actors and the state It begins by addressing hybrid governance and collaboration followed by community acceptance and trust.
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