Global Governance

Introduction

Derived from governmental public management, global governance strengthens international societal progress by enhancing social responsibility in market systems, improving governmental efficiency and complementing governmental social service endeavors.

CSR contributes to global governance in social service provision and as a multistakeholder conflict resolution means in public private partnership (PPP) solutions. PPPs incorporate social responsibility into the business agenda and combine public and private forces in providing social services as an innovative and flexible global governance form. Partnering endeavors build on different constituents’ interest in pursuing shared social objectives by mutual resource exchange (Steurer, 2010). PPPs feature voluntary information sharing and regulatory flexibility, which are key for solving transnational social constraints. Rising economic and institutional cross linking let PPPs appear as a viable means of flexible social service provision.

Throughout recent decades, corporate executives increasingly paid attention to tackle international problems out of reach for national entities. Various political and societal trends have increased corporate contributions to global governance. The decline of nation state social service provision in the wake of the reinventing government idea gave market actors a greater role in social welfare provision. Innovative public management concepts – such as outsourcing, networked governance and multi-stakeholder partnerships – have leveraged social responsibility into corporate obligations and let CSR become part of corporate conduct.

As corporations gained ground in global governance, nowadays corporate and governments attribute social responsibility in PPPs. CSR has become an essential component of international social service provision and leveraged international corporations into global governance entities. Global governance provided by CSR opened a new frame of reference on which to evaluate corporate impacts on society. Corporate goal setting became an opportunity to address societal concerns and promote CSR to quasi-democratic constituents.

In response to the CSR trend, governments have become interested in flexible corporate social service provision as these voluntary business efforts redistribute corporate resources to public causes. From the governmental perspective, CSR complements hard-regulations with a visionary soft-law approach benefitting from comparatively low resistance (Moon, 2007 in Steurer, 2010). For the public sector, PPPs offer flexible and efficient social responsibility provision. PPPs address governance gaps and foster international development. Governments therefore assist and stimulate corporations to raise the voluntarily social performance beyond minimum legal requirements (Liston-Heyes & Ceton, 2007 in Steurer, 2010). Governmental CSR initiatives form a cross-sectoral policy field that is based on voluntariness and collaboration of public and private sector entities.

The novelty of PPPs brings along an absence of standardized legislative or regulatory frameworks that guideline disparate entities administering global governance. Multistakeholder constituents feature conflicts of interest hindering agreements on policy ratifications and implementations. Expertise imbalances can counterweight effective dialogues and multi-stakeholder solution finding (Ruggie, 2008). As a remedy CSR serves for multi-stakeholder management and conflict resolution between multiple PPP constituents that contribute to global governance.