Private Governance Research Articles

Urban informality and the state: Repairing Cairo’s waters through Gehood Zateya

Equitable and just access to urban water presents challenges for global policymakers. In Egypt, providing and maintaining access to water has always been associated with the state. Recently, however, in cities such as Cairo, water shortages have led to the inclusion of multiple actors in the complicated processes of water access and repair. This paper argues that the state’s hegemonic control over water governance is contested by increasingly blurred binaries of formal and informal everyday practices. I show how water governance in Cairo operates through a plurality of informal practices – gehood zateya (individual and community efforts) – which cross boundaries of class, legality and space. By drawing on theories of hybrid infrastructures and urban informality, water access and repair in Cairo emerge as relational processes shaped by socio-technical practices of state and non-state actors. This paper explores two case studies demonstrating the politicization of repair in a marginalized informal area and elite/middle-class gated communities. These cases illustrate how residents living in informal areas maintain relations with the state through community water systems and ‘cultures of repair’, while elite residents engage in ‘private governance’ schemes and rely on networks of privilege. This article offers insights into changing state-society relations during transitions to water privatization and the shaping of Cairo’s uneven urban waterscape.

Do business ethics really matter?

Do business ethics really matter?

Evolving Perspectives of Stewardship in the Seafood Industry

Humanity has never benefited more from the ocean as a source of food, livelihoods, and well-being, yet on a global scale this has been accompanied by trajectories of degradation and persistent inequity. Awareness of this has spurred policymakers to develop an expanding network of ocean governance instruments, catalyzed civil society pressure on the public and private sector, and motivated engagement by the general public as consumers and constituents. Among local communities, diverse examples of stewardship have rested on the foundation of care, knowledge and agency. But does an analog for stewardship exist in the context of globally active multinational corporations? Here, we consider the seafood industry and its efforts to navigate this new reality through private governance. We examine paradigmatic events in the history of the sustainable seafood movement, from seafood boycotts in the 1970s through to the emergence of certification measures, benchmarks, and diverse voluntary environmental programs. We note four dimensions of stewardship in which efforts by actors within the seafood industry have aligned with theoretical concepts of stewardship, which we describe as (1) moving beyond compliance, (2) taking a systems perspective, (3) living with uncertainty, and (4) understanding humans as embedded elements of the biosphere. In conclusion, we identify emerging stewardship challenges for the seafood industry and suggest the urgent need to embrace a broader notion of ocean stewardship that extends beyond seafood.

Magnetic law: Designing environmental enforcement laws to encourage us to go further

AbstractThe European Union has some of the world's most ambitious and highly developed environmental laws on its books, but their effectiveness is severely compromised by non‐compliance. With the UNECE Aarhus Convention (1998), Europe launched an innovative legal experiment, democratizing environmental enforcement by conferring third party citizens and environmental non‐governmental organizations (ENGOs) with legal rights of access to environmental information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental matters. Based on some 2000 surveys and over 150 interviews with stakeholders from three Member States – France, Ireland, and the Netherlands – we adopt a holistic, 360° perspective, capturing the views of regulated parties, NGOs, and the general public on this private governance experiment. Our data provide important new insights into the practical effectiveness of Europe's laws enabling private environmental enforcement, its (intended and unintended) effects on farmers' compliance decisions in the vital area of nature conservation, and how law might be used to stimulate pro‐environmental predispositions.

Global value chains, private governance and multiple end-markets: insights from Kenyan leather

AbstractThis article analyses how the private governance of global value chains (GVCs) varies across multiple end-markets. This is explored through a two-stage mixed-methods analysis of Kenya’s participation in leather value chains serving Europe, China, India and the COMESA region. We first draw on transaction-level customs data to analyse private governance in terms of the stability of buyer–supplier interactions and presence of intermediaries. We then interrogate these results through supplier interviews. Our article highlights the combined role of product specifications and trust in shaping private governance, and heterogeneity of GVCs across the global North and South, as well as within the South. It further questions commonly held assumptions that lower quality products (generally characterising Southern end-markets) are necessarily governed by market-based coordination mechanisms. We therefore challenge links established in the GVC literature between product standards and private governance.

From Global to Local Tea Markets: The Changing Political Economy of Tea Production within India's Domestic Value Chain

ABSTRACTThe growth of emerging economies has led to a significant expansion of domestic markets in the global South. Yet, the vast majority of studies examining contemporary patterns of trade and production continue to use a global value chain (GVC) lens, therefore obfuscating important spatial and temporal shifts occurring within domestic geographies of production in the early decades of the 21st century. This article explores how a rapid increase in domestic consumption in the case of Indian tea production has transformed the industry, and how institutional and regulatory actors have responded to these changes. Using a value chain framework to explore the key actors and processes shaping the political economy of domestic production, this article identifies three processes which have driven the creation of new trade and production structures within India's domestic tea market: a significant rise in the outsourcing and fragmentation of the production process; the expansion of smallholder‐led production; and the introduction of private standards and governance programmes within the domestically oriented segment of production. These trends have important implications for the tea industry and shed light on how domestic markets in the global South are being transformed under 21st century geographies of trade and consumption.

Validating an information privacy governance questionnaire to measure the perception of employees

PurposeThis study aims to conduct a survey in a bank to measure the perception of employees towards the effective governance of information privacy and at the same time validating the information privacy governance questionnaire (IPGQ) used in this study.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative research approach was followed using an online survey questionnaire to collect data in a bank in South Africa.FindingsThe survey results showed that employees perceived the governance of privacy in the organisation in a positive way. Three significant differences were identified, namely, Generation-Y being significantly more positive than Generation-X regarding privacy control assessment. Also, that the contractor/vendor group was significantly more positive than permanent employees regarding organisational commitment and privacy control assessment. Exploratory factor analysis was used to validate the IPGQ and four factors were identified: privacy control assessment, personal information awareness assessment, privacy governance reporting and organisational commitment towards privacy. Cronbach’s alpha was used to establish the internal reliability of the factors and indicated good internal consistency.Research limitations/implicationsOne of the potential empirical research limitations for this study is that the study was conducted in a single organisation; therefore, when generalising the results, caution must be taken.Practical implicationsOrganisations, academics and the industry may find the questionnaire useful to determine employee perception towards privacy governance and to identify recommendations that could be used to improve their privacy policies, privacy programme controls and organisational commitment towards privacy. In this study, it was identified that for Generation-X employees to be more accepting towards the privacy controls, the organisation needs to implement focussed awareness training for them. To ensure permanent employees’ commitment and accountability, internal audits, monitoring and risk assessment measures need to be implemented. These can be directed through the outcomes of the survey.Originality/valueThe IPGQ can aid organisations in determining if they are governing privacy effectively, and thus assist them in meeting the accountability condition of data protection regulation.

Venture Capital and Private Equity Investors, Governance and Success of IPOs – Evidence from India

In this study, we are the first to examine the role of domestic and foreign venture capital and private equity firms (VCPEs) in Indian firms. We find robust evidence to indicate that portfolio firms backed by foreign VCPEs incorporate effective governance structures in the post-IPO period. Specifically, these firms are associated with smaller, more independent and gender-diverse boards. Furthermore, our results suggest that foreign VCPEs continue their association with their portfolio firms in the post-IPO period by nominating directors to the boards. Our results also suggest that portfolio firms backed by foreign VCPEs are associated with better long-term operating performance and profitability. We note that this positive effect is exacerbated by the presence of VCPE nominated directors on the boards. Collectively, our results provide credence to the view that good governance practices are key to long term success of a business, especially in economies that may lack good legal systems, developed financial markets and a variety of alternative investment opportunities and where developing trust between parties involved in a transaction is more important.

“That’s the Area of Affluent People Where We Have No Access”: Spatial Inequality, Gated Communities, and the End of Public Space in Dhaka, Bangladesh

ABSTRACT The literature suggests that the rise of gated communities causes a number of problems, creates spatial fragmentation and social exclusion, and works as a barrier to promoting urban diversity. Gated communities have grown in popularity in recent decades in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In contrast to the popular view that gated communities provide an extreme example of residential segregation, this article argues that the rise of gated communities creates a differentiated citizenship by blocking poor people’s access to public space, which is vital for their livelihoods. Weaving together observation and ethnographic research in the Sattola slum in Dhaka and its adjacent gated community, Niketon, this article argues that poor slum residents’ access to public space for livelihoods is regulated—in the name of security and preventing criminal activities—by the local gated community members’ association, which reproduces spatial inequality. The study contributes to the literature on gated communities and social segregation by revealing that private governance takes various forms and is not always separate from local government bodies; rather, local government actors and homeowners’ associations may work together to exclude other groups from gated communities in the name of security.

What rules the Internet? A study of the troubled relation between Web standards and legal instruments in the field of privacy

There is a wide variety of policy instruments that political entrepreneurs wishing to influence policy outcomes in the field of Internet Governance may choose from. There is a strategic dimension to this choice. This paper studies how standards and laws interact in the governance of Web privacy, by looking at the case of two groups within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): the Tracking Protection Working Group and the Privacy Interest Group. Despite the prevalence of discourses stating that the realm of Internet standards are free from the “weary giants of flesh and steel” John Perry Barlow referred to in his Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, laws, or at least some of them, do exercise a significant amount of influence in the shaping of Web standards dealing with privacy. Laws were quoted as arguments by participants trying to settle disagreements. They influenced certain – but not all – sections of the proposed Do Not Track specifications. This influence should not, however, be understood as meaning that there is a clear recognition by standard-setters that laws are, or even should be superior to standards in a hierarchy of norms that would be impossible to establish due to the nation-bounded nature of laws against the global scope of Web standards.

Private authority and public policy interactions in global context: Governance spheres for problem solving

AbstractPrivate organizations play a growing role in governing global issues alongside traditional public actors such as states, international organizations, and subnational governments. What do we know about how private authority and public policy interact? What are the implications of answering this question for understanding support for, and effects of, policy development generally? The purpose of this article is to reflect on these questions by introducing, and reviewing, a special issue that challenges explicit claims, and implicit methodologies, that treat private and public governance realms as distinct and/or static. We do so by advancing a theoretical and conceptual framework with which to explore how the contributions to this special issue enhance an understanding about governance interactions across a range of empirical, sectoral, and regional domains. We specifically introduce the concept of governance spheres to capture the proliferation of issue domains denoted by highly fluid interactions across public and private governance boundaries.

State-industry relations and cybersecurity governance in Europe

Recent analyses of international affairs highlight that states are increasingly exploiting the key position of some private industries in critical hubs of global economic networks to gain an advantage over their competitors. The key role of private companies in international competition has also significant implications in the cyber-domain, where private actors are the main owners of data and digital infrastructures. In contrast to those who see a transformative effect of cyber, this article draws on comparative political economy and defense policy to identify two different models of state-industry relations in the governance of cybersecurity. The theoretical framework distinguishes between public and private governance ecosystems and identifies different hypotheses on how states and industries interact in cybersecurity governance in France and in the UK. The French public governance is characterized by the presence of formal and informal relations between state and industries, a high degree of public investment in the private sector and centralized institutions. France has also used the EU mainly to advance its industrial interests. In contrast, the UK private governance is characterized by more arm's length relations between the state and industries and a less centralized system. Moreover, the UK, differently to France, has not used the EU channel to advance its industry-related preferences. These results confirm the macro-differences between public and private governance ecosystems and open new relevant avenues to investigate the interplay between political economy structures and European and international pressures in policy-areas with both economic and security implications.

Governing the fashion industry (through) intellectual property assets: systematic assessment of individual trade marks embedding sustainable claims

With an upsurge of international movements calling for greater environmental and social responsibility, the fashion industry is witnessing a proliferation of socio- and nature-inspired trade marks, conveying subtle and nuanced messages related to intangible and—possibly—sustainable business practices. These IP assets allow companies to transfer information on the so-called credence attributes, which empower consumers to select products reflecting, not only their instrumental preferences, but also their values. In such a context, trade marks are leading the shift from official regulatory regimes to information-based forms of private governance that merge elements of IP, human rights, and environmental law. The prominent role of trade marks as a governance tool in the fashion industry is not an isolated phenomenon, but is rather part of a wider shift from public regulation to non-state market-driven schemes, where the latter are seen among the few viable responses to overcome political and economic barriers to transnational business...

Expansion of soybean farming into deforested areas in the amazon biome: the role and impact of the soy moratorium

In the 1990s and 2000s, soybean farming grew sharply, particularly in states located in Brazil’s mid-west region. To curb deforestation, the Federal Government implemented command and control policies and, at the same time, soy-buying companies and Civil Society Organizations implemented the Soy Moratorium. This paper focused on the major role of these initiatives in decreasing soybean farming in areas deforested after 2006 and their importance in achieving this result. We considered rich database deforestation, and soybean planted area based on highly detailed remote sensing images, combined with explanatory variables of different sources, forming a panel data of 287 municipalities over 8 years. Spatial panel data models are implemented to avoid any spatial correlation problems and to analyze relationships through regional units and time. The results confirm that lower deforestation rates in the biome laid the foundation for reducing soybean farming in the Amazon biome. However, since 2008, when the Soy Moratorium was launched, there was a structural decline in this relationship that was decisive for a decoupling of soybean farming from deforestation. Therefore, government programs to reduce deforestation made room for a new environment for agricultural expansion in line with Brazilian law and environmental commitments. The Soy Moratorium reinforced this new order, and this production chain became a case study on public and private governance, given its importance in reducing soybean farming in deforested areas after the cut-off date. These public and private effects stress the importance of coordinated actions to achieve efficient results, especially in a large social and environmentally complex region as the Brazilian Amazon, to halt biodiversity degradation and increase participation in value added markets.

Are Higher-Education Institutions Ready for Learning Analytics? Governance, Ethics, Confidentiality and Privacy

University governance on the use of student feedback was studied by looking at the availability and clarity of public policies, FAQ’s, websites, and other documents made available by a sample of Canadian higher education institutions. Educational data, including student feedback data, offers institutions new opportunities to analyze and evaluate their programs in order to improve teaching and learning. However, it is imperative that datasets be used and protected in a manner that respects student privacy and promotes trust and transparency. The research revealed a number of inconsistencies in privacy governance practices, information availability, and proactivity of Canadian higher education institutions.

Let’s coordinate! The reinforcement of a ‘liberal bastion’ within European Industrial Federations, 1978-1987

This article focuses on the establishment in the 1970s of a new international private governance forum, the so-called ‘Interlaken Conferences’, which gathered together the leading figures of the Industrial Federations of the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. It therefore contributes to the literature dealing with business interest associations’ (BIAs) international alliances, and to the growing corpus analysing BIAs’ political strategies in tackling the 1970s social unrest and economic crisis. Thanks to archival sources from the Swiss Federation of Commerce and Industry, this article examines the calculated efforts by Interlaken participants to secure a ‘liberal bastion’ of European industrial federations that could impose its views within other official international BIAs. By improving coordination, the participants sought to defend common liberal economic principles and to fight against adverse economic policies such as protectionism and state intervention in the economy.

Shaping the sustainable supply chain of organic milk in Brazil

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion about how a sustainable supply chain is implemented, and its effects on suppliers. The sustainable supply chain and the concept of upgrading were used to analyze the proposed phenomenon. One in-depth case study was conducted, based on fourteen interviews with multiple stakeholders involved in the process of converting the traditional milk production chain into the organic system of one of the global leaders in the food industry, and the largest buyer of raw milk in Brazil. This empirical effort allows us to examine how a focal company shapes the organic milk supply chain, and the effects this process bears on farmers, highlighting theoretical contributions which also relate to the paper’s contributions. The outcomes indicate that private governance shapes sustainable supply chain through captive and relational links leading to social upgrading.

Governance of Eswatini Apparel Regional Value Chains and the Implications of Covid-19

There is a growing literature on the impact of Covid-19 on commercial and labour conditions at suppliers in apparel global value chains (GVCs). Yet much less is known about the implications for suppliers operating in regional value chains (RVCs) in the global South. In this article, we focus on Eswatini, which has grown to become the largest African manufacturer and exporter of apparel to the region. We draw on a combination of firm-level export data and interviews with stakeholders before and after the Covid-19 lockdown to shed light on the influence of private and public governance on suppliers’ economic and social upgrading and downgrading. We point to the coexistence of two separate private governance structures: the first characterised by direct contracts between South African retailers and large manufacturers (direct suppliers); the second operating through indirect purchasing via intermediaries from relatively smaller producers (indirect suppliers). While direct suppliers enjoyed higher levels of economic and social upgrading than indirect suppliers before Covid-19, the pandemic reinforced this division, with severe price cuts for indirect suppliers. Furthermore, while retailers provided some direct suppliers with support throughout the crisis, this was not the case for indirect suppliers, who remain comparatively more vulnerable. In terms of public governance, the negative consequences of the lockdown on firms’ income and workers’ livelihoods have been compounded by the state’s ineffective response. Our paper contributes to the research on RVCs in the global South, enhancing our understanding of how different governance structures and external shocks affect firms’ and workers’ upgrading and downgrading prospects.

Developing a matrix framework for protein transition towards more sustainable diets

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to propose a matrix framework to understand the interdependencies of domains and scales of protein transition towards diets based on plants and alternative sources of proteins.Design/methodology/approachThe abductive research approach is used in building the framework, and the proposed framework is illustrated using the regional food system in Central Finland as an example. Focus groups and interviews were used to collect qualitative data from 28 respondents.FindingsThis study provides a framework for protein transition, with five domains and five scale levels. Interactions between public and private governance activities at different scales, domains and governed niche and regime levels are discussed. The study shows how micro-level activities at individual or community levels are linked with broader governance activities.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the relatively narrowed set of empirical data, further research is required to test the framework in different regional and cultural settings.Practical implicationsThis paper presents a practical illustration of the matrix framework, and considering this, the paper discusses the possible implications of matrix interdependencies for protein transition management.Social implicationsThis study proposes that understanding the coevolution of domains and scales, with the help of accurate policies and business models, can lead to effective protein transition.Originality/valueThis study fulfils an identified need to study protein transition in a broader frame, which highlights the structural activity interdependencies between different scale levels and domains.

How Migrations Affect Private Orders: Norms and Practices in the Fishery of Marseille

The major aim of this article is to examine how migrations affect private governance, taking as a case study the Prud'homie de pêche, a private order that has governed the fishery of Marseille for the past six centuries. Scholarship generally argues that social norms guarantee the efficiency of private orders and their ability to resist the arrival of newcomers. My data suggest that the Prud'homie has failed to accommodate social changes prompted by migratory flows, not despite but because of its social norms. This paper suggests that social norms are not only powerful tools of governance for private orders, but also forces of inertia that can prevent these orders from accommodating social changes.