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The article examines the effects of non-financial disclosure (NFD) on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We conceptualise trade-offs between two ideal types (government regulation and business self-regulation) in relation to CSR. Whereas selfregulation is associated with greater flexibility for businesses to develop best practices, it can also lead to complacency if firms feel no external pressure to engage with CSR. In contrast, government regulation is associated with greater stringency around minimum standards, but can also result in rigidity owing to a One-size-fits-air approach. Given these potential tradeoffs, we ask how mandatory non-financial disclosure has been shaping CSR practices and examine its potential effectiveness as a regulatory instrument. Our analysis of 24 OECD countries using the Asset4 database shows that firms in countries that require non-financial disclosure adopt significantly more CSR activities. However, we also find that NFD regulation does not lead to lower levels of corporate irresponsibility. Furthermore, our analysis demonstrates that, over time, the variation in CSR activities declines as firms adopt increasingly similar practices. Our study thereby contributes to understanding the impact of government regulation on CSR at firm level. We also discuss the limits of mandatory NFD in addressing regulatory trade-offs between stringency and flexibility in the field of corporate social responsibility.

This piece recounts the efforts by NGO Sign of Hope (SoH) to rectify human rights violations in South Sudan, which manifested themselves as drinking water pollution by the oil industry. Committed to exposing and remediating this water contamination, SoH was able to prompt the automobile company Daimler’s CSR to engage in extended dialogue with the oil industry stakeholders in Unity State. Despite a tactful use of various methods ranging from cooperation to confrontation, SoH’s campaign did not lead the oil producers to reverse the harm inflicted on the people of Unity State. When SoH tried to hold these companies accountable, SoH had the impression that it was hitting an elastic wall. This piece identifies lessons which may help to counter corporate human rights violations and compensate for the weakness of CSR in fragile states and in the face of corporate irresponsibility.

This article examines the responses of the US Chamber of Commerce and state- and local-level chambers of commerce to Black Lives Matter (BLM). The US Chamber of Commerce's Equality of Opportunity Initiative stresses the business case for racial equity and the economic benefits that can be attained by overcoming race-related inequalities. Many chambers are adopting racially progressive positions, often at some cost to themselves. This article contributes a typology of stances and actions and draws on interviews with American business leaders to characterize American business organization responses to BLM. There is some movement beyond a progressive neoliberal vision of nondiscrimination to acknowledge that it is necessary to “level the playing field.” And the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives of state- and regional-level chambers suggest that they are making genuine and, in some cases, bold and meaningful attempts to advance the cause of racial equity. The evidence suggests that popular mobilization and social pressure following George Floyd's brutal murder played a critical role in enabling this progress. However, the parallels and similarities between current chamber and business DEI efforts and business stances in the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s raise the question: Can current efforts succeed where previous efforts have failed?

Do countries with high corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance support more stringent supranational regulation? Following this logic, existing scholarship claims that Nordic countries push for tougher regulations to sharpen their competitive advantage. On the basis of an examination of the negotiations over the EU Directive 2014/95/EU, a corporate transparency law that requires firms to report on their social, environmental, and human rights impacts, this paper argues that strong CSR performance does not necessarily entail strong support for regulation. Nordic companies perform well when it comes to sustainability, but except for Denmark, Nordic governments’ support for the Directive was lukewarm. To explain why, I examine the dynamics between CSR leaders, business associations, and party politics. I find that business associations are key for explaining this outcome. While some Nordic CSR leaders provided support, business associations, in which SMEs with lower CSR performance comprise the bulk of the members, were forceful opponents of regulation, unless domestic regulations are in place, in which case these associations support supranational regulations to level the playing field. I also stress the importance of partisan politics and extend the analysis to mandatory human rights due diligence. In sum, Nordic countries are much more heterogeneous than what the literature often suggests.

Scholars studying the global diffusion of \"corporate social responsibility\" (CSR) practices and the associated rise of privatized forms of economic governance have tended to shift attention away from the role of corporations in motivating these processes to the one played by nonbusiness forces seeking social control of corporations. We bring corporate power back in by turning the spotlight to the agency of business classes, the business entities capable of pursuing transcorporate, societal-level, macro-political endeavors. Building on a comparative investigation of two of the world's earliest mass CSR adoptions, in postwar Venezuela and Britain, we argue that business classes responding to anti-capitalist challenges were the original diffusers of CSR practices and, interrelatedly, promoters of CSR-based, privatized forms of regulation and governance. Organized by peak business associations, the purpose of these \"business-class CSR mobilizations\" was to weaken the state in its relation to corporations and increase the control of business over social trends. We discuss the contribution of our historical perspective and analytical approach to a more complete and balanced picture of the global rise of CSR in late capitalism.

To address future challenges of planetary decision-making on key ecological and social issues in an increasingly nationalistic world, we propose a new global governance model of technocratic ascendancy that can be integrated with quasi-democratic norms. Our model proposes the creation of a series of self-organized “Hybrid Leadership Assemblies” (HLA) led by “Hybrid Leadership Councils (HLC)” and supported by a number of more specialized Issue Action Committees (IACs) in five key issue areas: Environmental Protection and Climate Change Management, Security from Armed Conflict, Fighting Poverty and Inequality, Managing Population Growth, and Women’s Inclusion. Inspired by the popular environmental slogan, “Think global, act local,” our proposed governance model makes a revived subsidiarity principle central to its re-imagination of global governance as a non-hierarchical system of organization. In addition to creating opportunities to approach challenges at multiple levels of governance, our broadly participative model also makes innovative networking across different groups, levels of governance, and issues integral to solving complex socio-ecological problems.

Right-wing populist parties who obtain governmental power rely on ethno-nationalist mobilization for domestic legitimacy. They may therefore adopt policies that explicitly seek to disadvantage foreign multinational corporations (MNCs). Understanding what factors increase a foreign MNC’s exposure to adverse action by right-wing populists is an understudied question in the field of international business policy. We investigate this question in post-socialist member states of the European Union, which constitute extreme cases of right-wing populist government power. As such, they constitute a fertile ground to further our theoretical understanding of the distinction between calculable political risk and incalculable political uncertainty. Through a case study-based theory-building approach, which draws on existing literature and interview data, we derive a series of propositions and develop a research agenda. We identify factors at the country-, sector-, and firm-level that influence exposure to adverse policy action by host-country governments. We explore when political risk may turn into political uncertainty and provide suggestions to foreign MNCs operating in right-wing populist contexts on how to reduce this uncertainty. Our study provides insights for policy makers too, who should be aware of the impact political shifts towards right-wing populist governments have on political uncertainty for foreign companies.

Do the observable preferences and behavior of economic actors correspond to microeconomic models? I address this question by examining the microfoundations of firms' exchange rate preferences and lobbying activity between 1960 and 2008 in Germany, one of the most internationally exposed and export-oriented economies. The phenomena to be explained are twofold. First, lobbying activity appears to have declined over time. Archival sources provide evidence of strong preference articulation and exchange rate lobbying during the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years, by contrast, the intensity of firms' lobbying activity has gone down, despite greater exchange rate fluctuations and currency appreciations, which are costly and potentially ruinous for producers of tradable goods. Second, there is substantial variation in the propensity of tradables producers to lobby over exchange rate levels. I argue that the extent of firms' internationalization is key for explaining both of these observations and the political economy of exchange rate preferences and lobbying more generally. Firms and sectors with a low degree of 'operational hedging' or diversification across different currency areas are much more likely to have preferences for a low exchange rate and to lobby over exchange rate levels than their more diversified counterparts. As globalization proceeds apace, we may be moving towards a world in which 'no preference' is the stable equilibrium.

This article takes issue with 'Varieties of Capitalism's' portrayal of German employer preferences as structurally conservative. Since the mid-1990s, German employers have overcome their internal disunity and have been subverting existing institutions from without (politically) and from within (in the industrial relations realm). Scholars of German political economy have focused on continuity of structure and, having established this, have inferred continuity of content. Focusing on continuity in formal structures is misleading because this blinds analysts to important changes in content/practices; we see this most clearly in new management strategies, which alter the very essence of workplace labor relations. In addition to new management practices, this paper examines a large-scale public relations initiative founded and funded by German employers -- the 'New Social Market Initiative.' Programmatically, the New Social Market shows that many German employers desire deregulation and liberalization -- a move towards a Liberal Market Economy. The German employer offensive is a result of severe competitive pressures, the failure of the traditional institutions of the German model to satisfy employers' needs, and a set of circumstances that enable employers to transform the existing system from within while leaving many of its formal structures intact. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]