Understanding Conflict in Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives: Corporate Responsibility and Deliberation

Abstract

Following the debate on the political perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), this paper studies Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives (MSIs) as deliberative forums. In contrast to other theoretical perspectives, which see MSIs mainly as spaces to find solutions to market problems (economic approach), as spaces of conflicts and bargaining (political approach), and as spaces of consensus (idealist approach), in this paper we follow the critical strand of deliberative democracy proposed by John Dryzek that synthesizes what we call the idealist and political approaches giving equal value to both conflict and consensus. We analyze MSIs as contested deliberative forums including actors with competing discourses in global politics. We find four different types of organizational or internal conflicts that arise in MSIs–procedural, inclusiveness, epistemic, and ultimate-goal– and suggest different ways to manage them. Based on Dryzek’s concept of meta-consensus and the four organizational conflicts, we extend theory on political CSR and consider the implications for research and practice of this new perspective.