A corporate governance model built around hierarchical structures, in which authority and empowerment flows through the board of directors to management and eventually staff, and the board is responsible to shareholders (the owners) of a company, worked well in an era of industrial capitalism,...

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 present study involves the US GAAP and IFRS accounting frameworks, and how these are evaluated by accounting professionals in four (4) European countries, two of which have been severely impacted by the global economic crisis (Greece and Portugal) and two that remained relatively strong...

In the field of global rule-setting for responsible business behaviour, multi-stakeholder standards have emerged in recent years because of their potential for effective consensus-building, knowledge-sharing and interest representation. Proponents also hold that multi-stakeholder standards could...

Purpose: This paper examines the multiplicity of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards, explaining its nature, dynamics, and implications for Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) and International Business (IB), especially in the context of CSR and global value chain (GVC)...

This paper analyzes how national institutional factors affect the adoption of the international environmental management standard ISO 14001, using a panel of 139 countries from 1996 to 2006. The analysis emphasizes that during the emerging phase of the standard, the potential lack of consensus...

The relationship between a company’s influence and its social responsibilities is the subject of persistent controversy, manifested for example in the debate over the use of the concept of “sphere of influence” (SOI) to define the scope of a company’s social responsibility. Early drafts...