Fostering Corporate Responsibility through Self- and Co-regulation

4. Success factors of sector-specific initiatives
There are five success
factors for the performance
of an ideal sector-specific
initiative.
By contrast, those striving for quick wins on
specific issues may pursue high effectiveness
while perhaps deliberately sacrificing a degree
of legitimacy.
It is difficult to compare directly the performance
of different types of sector-specific initiatives
owing to their varying goals and rationales
and the different contexts in which they
were created. Nevertheless, in the course of our
research, we developed several performance
criteria for evaluating sector-specific initiatives
regardless of their particular type. The criteria
were informed by interviews with experts and
an extensive review of the existing literature,
and they assume the construction of an ideal
initiative (see Appendix). 22
Against this backdrop, we identified five success
factors of sector-specific initiatives. Correspondingly,
successful initiatives: (1) offer a
common ground for public and private actors in
terms of a common understanding of problems
and shared goals; (2) generate high degrees of
participation by both public and private actors;
(3) prove reliable in terms of having feasible
and measurable goals; (4) offer transparency in
terms of providing information and permitting
evaluation; and (5) are sustainably designed
in terms of resources and duration of support
(see Box 5).
Box 5: Success factors of sector-specific initiatives
Common
ground
Participation Reliability Transparency
Resources
Good performance of sector-specific initiatives
Source: Bertelsmann Stiftung.
18