During the past decade, Corporate Responsibility – the voluntary engagement of business for social and environmental ends above legally mandated minimum standards – has risen to prominence, if not pre-eminence in global economic governance. However, Corporate Responsibility is not uniformly...

What drives European Union (EU) policy change in a sensitive and contentious area? To answer this question, this article tells the story of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the EU from its beginnings until the present. The EU's role in EU CSR has changed from social-liberal...

This chapter provides an overview of empirical developments and scholarly debates concerning global CSR standards. Although global CSR standards are by no means the totality of CSR, they are arguably its most prominent, visible and well-recognized manifestations. These standards include the UN...

The literature on new forms of governance suggests important trade-offs regarding the role of government in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Theories associate state regulation with clear minimum standards and high compliance, but also suggest advantages of...

In recent years, scholars and policymakers have become interested in the idea of a smart mix of voluntary and regulatory measures in private governance. If public and private actors are to share the work load of governing the commons, this presupposes that both sides can agree on this compromise...

A new EU Directive represents an important step towards greater corporate accountability: it will require large companies to report on their social, environmental and human rights impacts and the risks their activities pose for third parties. While the circumstances leading to the Directive were...

My chapter addresses the question: to what extent did global CSR frameworks shape national-level business-led CSR organizations? I find that national CSR associations were already successfully consolidated in several countries in the 1970s and 1980s and were relatively autonomous from global CSR...

German Abstract: Deutsche Zusammenfassung: Die CSR-Richtlinie der EU erhöht die Transparenz der sozialen und ökologischen Auswirkungen unternehmerischer Tätigkeit. Die Verhandlungen über diesen Gesetzentwurf waren jedoch hoch umstritten. Dieser Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit dem...

What are the prospects for the upward harmonization of regulatory standards, and why do governments support or oppose more stringent supranational regulation? To answer these questions, this paper examines an important case of upward regulatory harmonization, the European Union's non-financial...