Public orchestration, social networks, and transnational environmental governance: Lessons from the aviation industry

Abstract

This article contributes to current debates on the potential and limitations of transnational environmental governance, addressing in particular the issue of how private and public regulation compete and/or reinforce each other – and with what results. One of the most influential approaches to emerge in recent years has been that of “orchestration.” But while recent discussions have focused on a narrow interpretation of orchestration as intermediation, we argue that there is analytical traction in studying orchestration as a combination of directive and facilitative tools. We also argue that a social network analytical perspective on orchestration can improve our understanding of how governments and international organizations can shape transnational environmental governance. Through a case study of aviation, we provide two contributions to these debates: first, we propose four analytical factors that facilitate the possible emergence of orchestration (issue visibility, interest alignment, issue scope, and regulatory fragmentation and uncertainty); and second, we argue that orchestrators are more likely to succeed when they employ two strategies: (i) they use a combination of directive and facilitative instruments, including the provision of feasible incentives for industry actors to change their behavior, backed up by regulation or a credible regulatory threat; and (ii) they are robustly embedded in, and involved in the formation of, the relevant transnational networks of actors and institutions that provide the infrastructure of governance. © 2017 JohnWiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

Orchestrating Governmental Corporate Social Responsibility Interventions through Financial Markets: The Case of French Socially Responsible Investment

“…As a whole, our analysis suggests that a government mindful of the interactions produced by its CSR interventions can orchestrate its policies to maximize its influence on business actors (Abbott et al, 2015(Abbott et al, , 2017. In line with prior political studies (Henriksen & Ponte, 2018), we found that orchestration is relevant to making sense of the regulatory efforts of not only international organizations, NGOs, or "weak" governments but also "strong" governments, such as the French government, which can and do engage in orchestration work; by regulating-in partthrough a reliance on intermediary organizations (delegated rowing), or the creative capture and shaping of standards or labels (microsteering). While subjected to a path-dependency effect, this governmental orchestration work can be deployed by a cognizant government (Knudsen & Moon, 2017), which seeks to maximize the impact of its CSR interventions while keeping their costs down (that is, most of the rowing costs are covered by intermediaries).…”

“…Orchestration is defined as "the mobilization of an intermediary by an orchestrator on a voluntary basis in pursuit of a joint governance goal" (Abbott et al, 2017: 722) and refers to the enrolment of several intermediaries -through soft governance means-to achieve specific political objectives. Although this notion has primarily been used to investigate how transnational governance organizations or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) deploy their policy activities (Abbott et al, 2015(Abbott et al, , 2017, Henriksen and Ponte (2018) show its empirical relevance to investigations on how governments coordinate many forms of interventions in the aviation industry. In this article, we focus on the mechanisms underlying the orchestration of governmental CSR interventions in financial markets.…”

Green Capital Accumulation: Business and Sustainability Management in a World of Global Value Chains

“…through mandating principles, transparency, and codes of conduct. Facilitative orchestration relies on softer instruments, such as the provision of material and ideational support, in order to kick-start new initiatives and/or to further shape and support them (Abbott and Snidal, 2009a, Abbott et al, 2015, Lister et al, 2015, Hale and Roger, 2014, Henriksen and Ponte, 2018, Schleifer, 2013).…”

“…It can combine a variety of instruments, including: (1) intermediation, when a governor uses intermediary actors to achieve governance goals (soft instruments, indirect influence); (2) regulatory hierarchy (hard instruments, direct influence) (Abbott et al, 2015); (3) collaboration (soft instrument, direct influence); and (4) delegation (hard instruments, indirect influence) (Green, 2013). Public orchestrators may thus combine straight regulation (or the threat of future/stronger regulation) with collaboration, delegation, intermediation and other hybrid mechanisms, such as placing their own representatives in key positions in intermediary organizations (Henriksen and Ponte, 2018), or harnessing civil society pressure and consumer influence, to achieve specific environmental benefits. What we lack so far in existing public orchestration approaches is an understanding of the GVC factors that shape sustainability governance and a clearer set of options on how this knowledge can be used strategically and with what limitations.…”

Improving Aviation Safety through Modeling Accident Risk Assessment of Runway

“…In addition to threatening human lives, accidents are often associated with severe environmental and pollution consequences [ 3 ]. Therefore, the environment and safety have always been of interest to engineers in this industry [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Process optimization can be effective in solving these problems and their impact on public health [ 2 , 5 ].…”