Fostering Corporate Responsibility through Self- and Co-regulation

6. Recommendations for policymakers
6. Recommendations for policymakers
Through sector-specific initiatives, policymakers
can foster public-private collaboration and
thereby enable the creation of new governance
instruments that help address societal problems.
Based on the five success factors we indentified
and the empirical evaluation of the
cases in this study, we have defined several
steps that policymakers can take in order to increase
the performance of self- and co-regulation
through sector-specific initiatives. However,
these can also be helpful to other stakeholders,
such as business and trade associations or individual
companies, that are actively involved in
developing and managing such initiatives.
Help sector-specific CR grow
strong roots
One of the central preconditions for the success
of self- and co-regulation in general is the degree
to which they are institutionalised or, in other
words, embedded within political structures and
processes. The same holds true for sector-specific
initiatives. Therefore, in order to promote
self- and co-regulation through sector-specific
CR, the first thing public actors could do is establish
such governance mechanisms in order to
help them grow strong institutional roots.
might be advisable. Secondly, public actors
can set up intermediary institutions to serve as
hubs for public-private collaboration at the sectoral
level. Thirdly, they can integrate sectorspecific
clauses and measures into economic
and CR strategies as well as (co-)develop strategies
for particular sectors.
Focus on solutions
Another thing that public actors can do to promote
self- and co-regulation is to consider the
appropriate type of public-private collaboration
with regard to the problem to be solved.
As demonstrated above, although there are
four general types of sector-specific initiatives,
these vary widely in terms of their specific
goals and rationales. Likewise, each type has
certain performance-related strengths and limitations
in terms of their legitimacy, effectiveness
and efficiency. Therefore, especially in
public-led or jointly launched initiatives, public
actors can make sure that they have a say
in choosing the type of initiatives that is best
suited to solve the particular societal problem.
Stay involved through
the entire process
As can be seen in the Appendix, governments
across Europe have been practicing three institutional
approaches to sector-specific CR:
evolutionary, intermediary and strategic (Box
A1). Regarding the first, public actors can promote
sector-specific CR by practicing new governance
through public institutions (e.g., ministries
or regulatory agencies) or by creating
multi-stakeholder institutions (e.g., forums or
working groups) in which public actors are one
among several stakeholders. As organisational
backbone is regarded as essential for increasing
social impact, 26 creating such institutions
Public actors can contribute to the success of
self- and co-regulation by assuming appropriate
roles in such structures and processes.
While the roles public actors perform often depend
on the initiative’s type, we identified two
roles that can particularly advance good performance
of sector-specific initiatives: facilitating
and managing. On the one hand, initiatives
(co-)launched by public actors perform better
than those that public actors joined at a later
stage. On the other, having public actors steer
and monitor sector-specific initiatives increases
their chances of success.
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