Institutionalizing global governance: the role of the United Nations Global Compact

Abstract

the areas of human rights, labor standards, environmental protection, and anticorruption -has turned into the world's largest corporate responsibility initiative. Although the Global Compact is often characterized as a promising way to address global governance gaps, it remains largely unclear why this is the case. To address this problem, we discuss to what extent the initiative represents an institutional solution to exercise global governance. We suggest that new governance modes, which have arisen in the context of globalization, often adopt a multiactor, multilevel, and network-based approach. We then analyze how far the Global Compact's institutional design reflects this multiactor, multilevel, and network-based steering mode. Drawing on this discussion, we offer suggestions regarding how the initiative can be further developed.

The Environmental, Social, Governance, and Financial Performance Effects on Companies that Adopt the United Nations Global Compact

“…The augmented sample consists of 396 companies (i.e., 198 firms committed to the UNGC and 198 that are not committed to that initiative). On the augmented sample, the following restricted panels have been estimated: CGP =β +β SIZE +β LEV +β R&D +β UNGC + β SECTOR +μ +ε  (6) where UNGC is a dummy variable that takes a value equal to 1 if the company "i" is committed to the UNGC and zero otherwise; the rest of the variables are previously defined. These models have been estimated with consideration given to the independents in levels and lagged one period to test for robustness in the estimates.…”

“…Examples of these initiatives are the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) [2], Social Accountability 8000 [3], and the ISO 14000 [4]. Among this catalog of voluntary CSR initiatives, the United Nations Global Compact (hereafter, the UNGC) is one of the most prominent and widespread CSR initiatives implemented by companies around the world [5,6]. As of December 2014, more than 12,700 business and non-business participants are part of the initiative.…”

Human Rights in the Management Literature: Leading Publications and Research Agenda

“…However, it could go further: while the latter consists of a set of actions taken voluntarily by organizations, the first concerns the inalienable responsibilities of states and companies in general. Thus, the path taken seems to be slowly directing towards the establishment of minimum criteria on human rights that may serve as a guide for companies' actions, but also to demand action (Rasche and Gilbert, 2012). This proposal, then, goes beyond the idea of a bottom line of not acting irresponsibility but highlights that this is a risk that organizations should avoid (Lin-Hi & Muller, 2013).…”

Corporate Social Responsibility Applied for Rural Development: An Empirical Analysis of Firms from the American Continent

“…Every supporting firm is accountable for the reported information and the reliability depends on their integrity. Although no specific assessment is performed by UN officers, companies have external observers (customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders) which evaluate its accuracy [25][26][27].…”

“…Then empirical data from 100 firms from a variety of industries, sizes, and countries is analyzed to determine the type of companies who are involved in rural development and the kind of activities they deploy. For this analysis firms were selected from the list of supporting companies of the United Nations Global Compact, which is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to align their operations and strategies with 10 globally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption [10,25,26]. The UN Global Compact is a non-compulsory initiative, in which its supporting members deliberately decide to participate and to report their performance through a periodical report known as Communication on Progress "CoP" [10].…”