Consequences of Collaborative Governance in CSR: An Empirical Illustration of Strategic Responses to Institutional Pluralism and Some Theoretical Implications

• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Author: Lars Moratis
• Date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12093

Consequences of Collaborative

Governance in CSR:

An Empirical Illustration

of Strategic Responses to

Institutional Pluralism and

Some Theoretical Implications

LARS MORATIS

ABSTRACT

Collaborative governance (CG) is becoming the common cur-

rency of decision-making, able to surmount existing institu-

tional constraints to effectively address challenges related to

sustainability and social and environmental corporate

behavior. CG approaches may however result in institutional

complexity. As an illustration of CG in the domain of corpo-

rate social responsibility (CSR), the ISO 26000 standard is a

legitimate point of reference for organizations worldwide. The

standard represents a pluralistic institutional logic that reso-

nates several tensions arising from the domain it tries to

standardize, the nature of its development process, its inter-

pretation of CSR and the type of standard it represents. This

article aims to identify and examine strategic responses

to ISO 26000 by various standards-related organizations

Lars Moratis is Academic Director of the Competence Center Corporate Responsibility at

Antwerp Management School and professor of Sustainable Business at the NHTV Breda

University of Applied Sciences, p/a Het Brantijser, Sint-Jacobsmarkt 9-13, 2000 Antwerpen.

E-mail: lars.moratis@ams.ac.be.

V

C2016 W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University. Published by

Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington

Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.

Business and Society Review 121:3 415–446

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(including national standardization institutes, certification

organizations, and service providers) and to contribute to the

understanding of strategic responses of organizations to plu-

ralistic institutional logics that result from CG.

INTRODUCTION

Collaborative governance (CG) is becoming the common cur-

rency of decision-making, able to surmount existing institu-

tional constraints to effectively address challenges of

sustainability and social and environmental corporate behavior

(Zadek 2008). The ISO 26000 standard represents an ambitious step

in the institutionalization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in

the global business environment (Hahn 2012). The publication of

this standard in 2010 resulted from stakeholder-inclusive develop-

ment process governed by the International Organization for Stan-

dardization (ISO). It interprets the roles and responsibilities of

business in society and specifies expectations toward companies on

what constitutes responsible business conduct.

1

As an illustration of

CG in the CSR domain, ISO 26000 is a legitimate point of reference

for organizations worldwide (Hahn and Weidtmann 2013; ISO 2012).

Although CG approaches hold important promises for the CSR

domain (Albareda 2008; Mena and Palazzo 2012; Rasche 2010), it

may result in institutional complexity. ISO 26000 represents a plu-

ralistic institutional logic that resonates several tensions arising from

the domain it tries to standardize, the nature of its development pro-

cess, its interpretation of CSR and the type of standard it represents.

This institutional complexity has consequently provoked strategic

responses to the standard by various standards-related organiza-

tions (SROs), including national standards institutes (NSIs), certifica-

tion organizations (COs) and service providers (SPs), including

accountancy and consultancy firms.

This article aims to empirically identify and examine strategies

that SROs are pursuing to respond to the institutional complexity

engendered by ISO 26000. The empirical material that this article

includes information from ISO’s ISO 26000 post-publication sur-

veys, relevant news articles and research reports. As initiatives in

the Netherlands in this context are among the pioneering

416 BUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW

responses to ISO 26000, the article is partly based on the Dutch

standards environment and the author’s own experience as a prac-

titioner in this field. It also aims to contribute to the understanding

of strategic responses of organizations to pluralistic institutional

logics that result from CG, inferring theoretical insights through a

grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967). The article

answers the call of Greenwood et al. (2011) who identified a lack of

empirical accounts in this nascent field of inquiry. It also contrib-

utes by exploring a category of organizations, namely SROs, that

operate in the context of firms instead of taking the dominant per-

spective of an individual organization or an intra-organizational

approach (cf. Pache and Santos 2010).

Drawing on the insights from recent reviews from scholars of

institutional theory such as Kraatz and Block (2008) and Green-

wood et al. (2011), the article sets out with a brief overview of devel-

opments within institutional theory that focus on institutional

complexity and strategic responses of organizations. Second, it

characterizes ISO 26000, specifying the nature of the standard, its

objectives and its most salient aspects. It then frames the trajectory

of this example of CG and the objectives that guided its develop-

ment as processes of institutionalization in the CSR domain mani-

fested as a field-level mechanism. The consequences of choices

that were made during the standard’s development, which are

root-causes of the emerged pluralistic institutional logic manifested

in and by ISO 26000, are subsequently discussed. The article then

examines the strategies pursued by SROs to respond to the institu-

tional complexity and the variety of institutional pressures they

experience. Finally, the article discusses the implications of the

empirical findings on strategic responses to multiple institutional

logics from a theoretical perspective and formulates several

research questions for further investigation.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION, INSTITUTIONAL PLURALISM,

AND STRATEGIC RESPONSES

Institutional theory suggests that organizations are influenced by

pressures in their institutional environment for compliance or con-

formity, enabling and constraining organizational actions exerted

through their referent audiences. Such pressures are exerted on

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