Issue Professionals in Transnational Networks

Professionals and organizations both seek to exploit and cooperate with each other. Professionals seek alliances in their own peer networks while organizations do the same. These networks carry not only information that inform incentives but norms about appropriate forms of governance and practices that guide how they actually work. In this paper we outline how professionals and organizations operate in two-level networks through a focus on issue control over issues of transnational governance. As such, this interdisciplinary paper brings together insights from Organization Studies and International Relations to discuss how professionals and organizations battle over issue control through the designation of tasks and the creation of overlapping networks. We outline the emergence of ‘issue professionals’ and how they attempt network management. We do so via a case on transnational sustainability certification that demonstrates how issue professionals are engaged in two-level networks.