Multi-stakeholder Initiatives Research Articles

The Micro-Elimination Approach to Eliminating Hepatitis C: Strategic and Operational Considerations.

The introduction of efficacious new hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatments galvanized the World Health Organization to define ambitious targets for eliminating HCV as a public health threat by 2030. Formidable obstacles to reaching this goal can best be overcome through a micro-elimination approach, which entails pursuing elimination goals in discrete populations through multi-stakeholder initiatives that tailor interventions to the needs of these populations. Micro-elimination is less daunting, less complex, and less costly than full-scale, country-level initiatives to eliminate HCV, and it can build momentum by producing small victories that inspire more ambitious efforts. The micro-elimination approach encourages stakeholders who are most knowledgeable about specific populations to engage with each other and also promotes the uptake of new models of care. Examples of micro-elimination target populations include medical patients, people who inject drugs, migrants, and prisoners, although candidate populations can be expected to vary greatly in different countries and subnational areas.

Between norms and practice: Civil society perspectives on the legitimacy of multistakeholder initiatives to eliminate child labor

AbstractChild labor in global supply chains is increasingly addressed through multistakeholder initiatives. However, the participation of stakeholders with distinct views and interests can generate tensions. Based on interviews with civil society actors, this research finds that tensions exist between the normative‐ethical and political‐strategic dimensions of multistakeholder initiatives, which are manifest in the existence of international and national norms and their contextual application, in definitions of child labor, risk and responsibility, and in doubts about corporate incentives to join multistakeholder initiatives. In addition, tensions exist concerning the effectiveness of supply chain auditing, enabling broader labor rights as a means to remediate child labor, and whether standards need to be mandatory or self‐regulation suffices. The success of collaboration depends on the effective navigation of these tensions. Failure to do so can undermine the legitimacy of multistakeholder initiatives from the perspective of civil society actors. The research finds that due diligence, in the shape of human rights risk assessments, is not subject to normative‐ethical/political‐strategic tensions, and can play a key role in the success of multistakeholder initiatives and the fight against child labor.

What is National Internet Governance? A Study on the Brazilian Multistakeholder Model

This work examines the multistakeholder model of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br), a pioneering experience of national Internet Governance, since 1995. It assumes that building a multistakeholder institution is defining what multistakeholder governance is, and analyzes CGI.br based on latent questions of the multistakeholderism scholarship related to the role of government, the mechanisms of participation and the institutional design and procedural rules of a multistakeholder initiative. The paper argues that although legally sponsored by government, other sources of legitimation, aspects of design and the business model can be counterweights to the power of the government at a national multistakeholder institution. The article also identifies and problematizes different multistakeholder models that may coexist within an organization—participatory and representative—and proposes recommendations to leverage multistakeholder initiatives in terms of its participation structure and the diversity of interests within them. This study is informed by documentary research and ethnography at the executive office of CGI.br and at events supported by it.

The Dutch Banking Sector Agreement on Human Rights: An Exercise in Regulation, Experimentation or Advocacy?

The role of banks in projects which result in adverse human rights impacts has been brought to the fore in recent years. However, there are serious obstacles to regulate the (often extraterritorial) financing activities of banks under national law. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises attempt to respond to this ‘governance gap’, stipulating that all business enterprises have a responsibility to respect human rights. However, banks’ compliance with such standards has been frustrated by a failure to understand how these standards apply to them.In 2016, the Dutch Government collaborated with the Dutch banking sector and civil society to create the Dutch Banking Sector Agreement: a multistakeholder initiative initiated to improve adhering banks’ performance with respect to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises. This article reviews how the actors involved drafted the Agreement in light of prevalent divergences in understandings over how human rights apply to banks’ financing activities. It then looks to scholarship on transnational private regulation, experimentalism governance, and social constructivism in mapping three roles the Dutch Banking Sector Agreement could play: regulation, experimentation, and advocacy.

Aquaculture innovation system analysis of transition to sustainable intensification in shrimp farming

The shrimp sector has been one of the fastest growing agri-food systems in the last decades, but its growth has entailed negative social and environmental impacts. Sustainable intensification will require innovation in multiple elements of the shrimp production system and its value chain. We use the case of the shrimp sector in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam to explore the constraints in the transition to sustainable intensification in shrimp farming, using an analytical framework based on innovation systems thinking, i.e., an aquaculture innovation systems framework. Using this framework, we conduct a systemic diagnostic of blocking mechanisms, interrelated sets of constraints within the aquaculture sector that hinder a transition toward sustainable intensification. Our findings show that the major constraints are institutional, with limited enforcement of the regulatory framework for input quality control, disease control, and wastewater management, and a lack of coordination between government bodies to design and enforce this framework. At farm level, limited access to capital favors pond mismanagement and the use of low-quality inputs. The absence of multi-stakeholder initiatives to foster dialog between actors in the value chain constrains the response to new regulations dictated by international market demand. Because of shrimp farming’s connectivity with the wider ecosystem, sustainable intensification in shrimp farming will require collective management of water resources at the landscape level for disease and water pollution control. Ecological principles for pond management need to be promoted to farmers in order to reduce farmers’ inefficient practices and build their capacity to understand new techniques and inputs available in the Vietnamese market. Our paper demonstrates for the utility of a multi-level, multi-dimension, and multi-stakeholder aquaculture innovation systems approach to analyze and address these blocking mechanisms in the transition to sustainable intensification in shrimp farming and aquaculture more broadly.

Transnational civil society and informal public spheres in the nuclear non-proliferation regime

Scholars charting the emergence of transnational public spheres often focus on the socio-spatial sites that are generated by civil society organisations in their interactions with the institutions of global governance. These sites can reflect either strong public spheres within the formal decision-making structures of international regimes, or segmented and general public spheres on their periphery. In practice, they all suffer key democratic deficiencies in the ability to either communicatively generate public opinion or achieve collective will-formation. I argue that if civil society organisations can successfully weave together both general and segmented public spheres on the periphery of international regimes, their individual democratic deficiencies could be addressed. To demonstrate evidence of these interconnected ‘informal public spheres’, I turn to the nuclear non-proliferation regime, where public deliberation has been largely invisible and ineffectual within the formal decision-making structures of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The emergence of a new civil society organisation-led ‘humanitarian initiative’ on the periphery of the regime, comprising multi-stakeholder initiatives in conjunction with civil society organised social forums, reflects the interconnection of segmented and general public spheres. This innovative initiative has effectively enhanced transnational public debate on disarmament, while gaining crucial political traction within the regime.

Instrumental PCSR: Irreconcilable Contradiction or Viable Management Approach?

Political CSR and instrumental CSR are widely believed to be irreconcilable. This explorative study suggests that the Creating Shared Value framework opens up potential for integration of political and instrumental CSR. Based on a comparison of ontological properties of political CSR and Creating Shared Value, a shared assumption of corporate illegitimacy within both concepts is identified. Consecutively, a best-case scenario is offered that integrates multi-stakeholder initiatives into the corporate decision-making process for shared value initiatives. A discussion of this new approach and its possible less-than-best case scenarios suggests that the major limitations of the parent concepts can be mitigated, while increasing the need for a more trustful stakeholder communication and management. The concept at core stays close to political CSR, but the notion is introduced that Creating Shared Value and Corporate Political Activity can be considered hand in hand and the proceeds from profit-generating CSR activities can be funneled into costly Corporate Political Activity. While the proposed approach does dilute some notions of its parent concepts, the paper suggests to add it to a manager’s toolbox in cases of pursuit of moral legitimacy without forfeiting strategic benefits from CSR activities.

70 Ensuring Beef’s Domestic Market.

Since its 2015 inception, the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (USRSB) has sought to ensure the U.S. beef value chain is the trusted global leader in environmentally sound, socially responsible and economically viable beef. The multi-stakeholder initiative is representative of all sectors of the beef community including cow-calf producers, auction markets, feedyard producers, packers, processors, restaurant owners, food service providers, civil societies, and many other allied industries. The USRSB focuses on advancing, supporting, and communicating continuous improvement of beef sustainability through developed tools: USRSB High Priority Indicators, USRSB Sustainability Metrics, and USRSB Sustainability Assessment Guides. Overreaching categories known as High Priority Indicators recognize areas where the beef supply chain can have a significant sustainability footprint. The USRSB High Priority Indicators include: Land Resources, Employee Safety & Well-being, Efficiency & Yield, Water Resources, Air & Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Animal Health & Well-being. The USRSB High Priority Indicators were developed to be applicable across all segments of the beef supply chain. USRSB Sustainability Metrics are tools to assess and measure personal progress within corresponding USRSB High Priority Indicators. Unlike USRSB High Priority Indicators, USRSB Sustainability Metrics cannot be applied across all sectors. Each USRSB Sustainability Metric is unique to a segment of the beef supply chain. Development of USRSB Sustainability Metrics was led by individual constituency groups and Allied Industry and Civil Society membership, but included feedback from all other sectors. The USRSB is developing supporting documents to accompany each specific USRSB Sustainability Metric. These documents consist of guidance, descriptions, self-assessment tools, and resource libraries. Collectively, these documents are known as Sustainability Assessment Guides (SAGs). The USRSB embraces the Theory of Change and follows the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Standard Number 629 Framework to evaluate the sustainability of agricultural production systems. This model was also used throughout the development of USRSB High Priority Indicators, USRSB Sustainability Metrics, and USRSB Sustainability Assessment Guides. In addition, USRSB Sustainability Metrics reflect the SMART model, promoting sustainability efforts that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. The entire work-product to date of USRSB, including the USRSB High Priority Indicators, Sustainability Metrics and Sustainability Assessment Guides will be made available for public review in the Spring of 2018.

Ownership dynamics in local multi-stakeholder initiatives

The nature and dynamics of ownership are often neglected features of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs). Seventeen cases in four countries illustrate characteristics of narrow government or broad societal ownership and forces for change over time. Refinements to the application of Gaventa’s Power Cube are used to analyse such shifts from the perspective of invited and closed spaces for participation. Observations about ways in which stakeholder groups can create a more enabling environment for their collaboration are discussed. Sensitivity to sub-national conditions by weaving endogenous and exogenous forces appears to be crucial if MSIs are to be effective vehicles of choice for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.

Communicative management of tensions by MSIs for water resilience

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to undertake a comparative case study (Stake, 2006) of two multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) building resilient water systems to address how they communicatively frame and manage key tensions. “Glacier” is the North American convener of an MSI focused on developing reliable and measurable standards of water stewardship in catchment areas around the world. “Delta” convenes a MSI centered on the water economy, with the goal to connect and help diverse organizations around “the business of water.”Design/methodology/approachQualitative data were analyzed using Tracy’s (2013) pragmatic-iterative method, which envisions ongoing cycles of theme generation and refinement, and draws on both induction and deduction to identity and sort themes. The “reflexive circular process” it involves helped trace how tensional poles were framed and managed.FindingsFor Glacier, the key tensions were: creating new and distinct standards while reiterating extant measures; collective decision making although privileging corporate interests; and fixed impact performance that is nevertheless fluid. Delta also displayed three tensions: focus on the ecological issue connecting the MSI or partner benefits; broader ethics of water stewardship vis-à-vis local considerations; and avowing a bipartisan agenda although politics remained central to its everyday work.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper underlines how communicative framing and management of tensions are key to developing resilience for socioecological systems. It highlights how traditional organizational boundaries and collectives are disrupted in seeking resource system resilience, and suggests that texts and conversations might emphasize tensions differently.Practical implicationsFirst, MSI conveners and members working for resource system resilience should use visioning exercises to see how tensional poles might be dialectical, rather than focus on stark differences. Second, ongoing dialogue and evaluation can help trace alternative tension frames. Third, since context and MSI purpose matter in framing tensions, practitioners should be careful while transferring lessons learned across MSIs.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to resilience scholarship by underlining how the communicative management of tensions is vital to developing adaptive complexity and learning capabilities within broader socioecological systems – especially with MSIs working on complex wicked problems.

Assessing the Outcome Effectiveness of Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives in the Field of Corporate Social Responsibility – The Example of the United Nations Global Compact

Abstract This article proposes a new approach to the assessment of outcome effects of Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility. Based on the conceptual distinction between output, outcome, and impact effectiveness, we develop a set of indicators that allows the differentiated assessment of outcome effects related to Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives. Furthermore, we apply this set of indicators in an empirical assessment of the UN Global Compact. Our empirical study utilizes a quantitative survey completed by members of the UN Global Compact Network Germany as well as qualitative interviews. Our results show a differentiated picture of the outcome effectiveness of the UN Global Compact, highlighting a paradoxical combination of strong outcomes on strategic management levels together with significantly weaker enforcement outcomes, such as employee trainings or measurement of goal attainment.

Contested compliance regimes in global production networks: Insights from the Bangladesh garment industry

This article reports the findings of a field study on the emergence of collective agreements led by global brands enacting compliance measures to improve safety and working conditions in the Bangladesh garment industry. We explore how key actors in the Bangladesh garment sector who constitute the local production system of the global supply chain experienced the implementation of global agreements on factory safety. We argue that global safety compliance measures through multi-stakeholder initiatives provide legitimacy to multinational corporations and their global brands but do little to address the structural problems arising from exploitative pricing and procurement practices, which are the key reasons for deplorable working conditions in garment factories. Our findings indicate that neoliberal development policies of the state, where local economies are incorporated into global production networks, resulted in differential treatment and regulation of specific populations that comprise garment factory workers. The reconfiguration of state power to meet the demands of global supply chains also involved use of state violence to suppress dissent while undermining labour rights and working conditions. Our article contributes to the politicization of multinational corporations in global production chains by showing how contestations between workers, factory owners, the state, trade unions and multinational corporations create new private forms of governance and new regimes of compliance in the industry.

Challenges and Opportunities for the Sustainability Transition in Global Trade (Introduction)

In this special issue, we explore the challenges and opportunities arising with respect to normative goals of shifting production and international trade in agriculture towards greater sustainability. Private voluntary sustainability standards have experienced substantial growth in various global markets, reaching 40% of global coffee production, 25% of cocoa, and 15% of palm oil1. Given the rapid expansion of private standards, whether third-party certifications, corporate codes of conduct (Vermeulen 2010), or ‘newer’ regulatory approaches such as multi-stakeholder initiatives, public-private partnerships, and efforts to develop new sustainable business models, it is important to consider what such approaches offer. All of these approaches are seeking to contribute, at differing levels of ambition, towards a sustainability transition.

Highly-integrated programs for the prevention of obesity and overweight in children and adolescents: results from a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Since overweight and obesity has become epidemic in children and adolescents, the aim of this study was to determine the role of highly-integrated programs in preventing and reducing prevalence of children and adolescent obesity and overweight, even evaluating if this approach has properly been effective in communities with different determinants as in the Pacific Area. According to PRISMA guidelines, a systematic review of literature was conducted and a meta-analysis was performed to compare obese/overweight prevalence between the intervention and the control group. We identified 23 studies describing 14 programs. For 11 out of 14 programs, obese/overweight prevalence changing from baseline were definable and meta-analysis of them showed a significant change of obese/overweight prevalence (-0.03; 95% CI = -0.04 to -0.01; P < 0.0001). Secondary outcomes as dietary (such as vegetable intake, carbonated beverages, fruit juice, drinks, healthful food consumption), physical activity and TV-time-spent was analyzed in many of the studies to define community readiness and behavioral changes. Macro-interventions, based on what was observed in our systematic review have a high potential to reach the entire population. Adoption of coordinated cross-sectoral, multi-component and multi-stakeholder initiatives to oppose obesity remains a challenge, but it is also desirable as one of the possible solutions to this major public health issue.

How can stakeholders promote environmental and social responsibility in the shipping industry?

The highly globalized and competitive nature of the shipping industry poses serious governance challenges. Recently, the use of voluntary measures, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, has been explored in terms of moving towards environmentally and socially responsible as well as safe shipping industry practices. Limited attention has been paid on the role of stakeholders such as consumers, employees, NGOs, and academia in pressuring the shipping industry towards greater environmental and social responsibility. Here, by applying stakeholder theory and drawing on examples of already materialized stakeholder actions and multi-stakeholder initiatives, we study the potential ways that stakeholders can promote CSR in the shipping industry: we explore the resource dependencies between stakeholders, the stakeholder influence strategies, and the importance of multi-stakeholder pressure. We show that stakeholders can gain more power by using indirect strategies such as working via and/or in alliances with NGOs, trade unions, banks and financers, and/or different national or international regulatory bodies, as well as with the industry itself. Our results reveal the potential of multi-stakeholder pressure and action to promote the adoption of CSR activities, support the transparency, legitimacy, and enforcement of the practices, as well as widen the scope and focus of CSR initiatives and practices by focusing on a broad range of social and environmental issues. Finally, stakeholder pressure can push towards improved regulations. The study suggests that increased attention needs to be paid on the multi-stakeholder demands, especially considering the accentuated importance of effective maritime governance in the future.

Material Realities: Why Indonesian Deforestation Persists and Conservation Fails

ABSTRACT Indonesia’s deforestation is a crisis of global proportions. Its causes are highly complex, spanning local social and community dynamics to national political hierarchies and global corporate politics, current and historic. Development plays a key role, with global neo-liberal imperatives leveraged, resisted and competing with myriad multi-level agendas and actors. Gramscian analysis of logics and ideology, which combine to construct a global and local “common sense,” helps to explain the mixed messages of policy and conservation, which themselves make Indonesian deforestation and its solutions so complicated. Solutions to forest destruction, presented in the form of payment for ecosystem services, multi-stakeholder initiatives, improved governance and transparency within a neo-liberal market framework, have had limited success. The reason for this limited success lies in the notion, encouraged by multilateral and development thinking, that commodification of communities and nature will also conserve forests. Drawing on fieldwork in Indonesia and the United States, this article argues that discrepancies in development and economic policy, which lead to ecologically destructive outcomes like tropical deforestation, cannot be patched up by innovative market tools. Rather, they reflect irreconcilable flaws in contemporary political economy.

Closing the gap: a multi-stakeholder initiative of health promotion in 20 suburban Roman districts

Closing the gap: a multi-stakeholder initiative of health promotion in 20 suburban Roman districts

Multi-stakeholder initiatives and the divergent construction and implementation of sustainable agriculture in the USA

AbstractMulti-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have emerged as a leading institutional approach for advancing sustainability globally. This paper examines three prominent MSIs that have developed sustainability metrics and a standard for US agriculture: Field to Market, the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops and the National Sustainable Agricultural Standard Initiative. Using data from interviews and content analysis of initiative reports, two sets of analyses are presented. First, building on Paul Thompson's tri-partite theorization of sustainability, how each initiative is conceptualizing agricultural sustainability is analyzed. We find that two contrasting visions of sustainable agriculture for the USA have emerged from the three MSIs. One vision is a resource sufficiency approach focused on eco-efficiencies and the other vision is a functional integrity approach that emphasizes the maintenance of resilient agricultural and ecological systems. Second, we examine the governance practices of the MSIs to explain why such divergent conceptualizations of sustainability have been mapped out. We find that far from being a neutral forum, the internal dynamics of MSIs often reflect and reproduce existing power relationships among stakeholders. In concluding, we suggest that incremental improvements in sustainability can be achieved using MSIs, but more transformative changes may require other forms of governance.

In search of a living wage in Southeast Asia

PurposeDebates over the definition, processes and outcomes of minimum and “living” wages are heated and often politically contentious in garment-producing countries. Internationally, there have been various initiatives to promote and support the implementation of a living wage for workers in labour-intensive manufacturing, ranging from corporate-driven social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives to the long-standing living wage campaign of the global unions. One prominent regional initiative is the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA). The purpose of this paper is to assess its reach and effect in Southeast Asia.Design/methodology/approachA living wage campaign is assessed with reference to Indonesia and Cambodia, two important garment manufacturing countries in Southeast Asia. The paper draws on data collected in interviews with garment manufacturers, brand representatives, trade unionists and labour NGO activists, including members of the AFWA Steering Committee in Indonesia and Cambodia, complemented by a systematic review of documents and reports produced by the AFWA.FindingsAs the paper shows, despite a series of initiatives, the Asia Floor Wage has failed to gain traction in Cambodia or Indonesia. This is so, the paper argues, because national economic, political and institutional contexts are the primary drivers of the strategies and priorities of constituent organisations, governments and industry stakeholders. In the absence of robust local and regional coalitions of trade unions, efforts towards a common and coordinated regional approach to living wages are thus unlikely to gain traction.Originality/valueTo a large extent, the literature on the concepts and practices associated with the living wage has focussed on developed rather than developing countries. This paper extends the literature by providing a systematic examination of a transnational wage campaign in developing Asian countries.

Revisiting Global Governance in Multistakeholder Initiatives: Club Governance Based on Ideational Prealignments

Multistakeholder initiatives that bring together actors from the state, the business sector and society to formulate, implement and/or monitor rules governing different policy fields have assumed a prominent role in global governance since the 1980s. In the governance literature, it is generally assumed that the actors from the three sectors have diverse interests, but contribute different resources. This should allow to address transnational problems more effectively. While cooperation among the various collective actors in these initiatives might be based in part on complementary resources, we argue here that such cooperation is also shaped and conditioned by ideational prealignments of the participating actors. Such ideational prealignments are consequential, because they predetermine (1) the composition of multistakeholder forums in terms of which actors participate and which do not, (2) the processes that govern these forums, (3) the results of these forums and (4) the relations among the collective actors who participate in these forums and the stakeholders they are deemed to represent. When viewed from this perspective, multistakeholder initiatives are a form of club governance that is based on ideational factors. We illustrate this argument by drawing on research that examines the setting of standards for private military and security companies (PMSCs).