Collaboration Between Multistakeholder Standards: A Governance Perspective

Public interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has resulted in a wide variety of multistakeholder CSR standards in which companies can choose to participate. While such standards reflect collaborative governance arrangements between public and private actors, the market for corporate responsibility is unlikely to support a great variety of partly competing and overlapping standards. Increased collaboration between these standards would enhance both their impact and their adoption by firms. This report examines the nature, benefits, and shortcomings of existing multistakeholder standards, and it discusses how businesses can better coordinate their participation in a variety of initiatives.