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Governance Through Voluntary Sustainability Standards: An Introduction

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Business Responsibility and Sustainability in India

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Indian Management ((PAIM))

Abstract

Regulation of supply chains and associated actors has emerged as a predominant theme with the institutionalization of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development. Private, voluntary transnational standards and industry and corporate codes of conduct have grown in numbers, geographic spread and coverage across a range of commodities, products, services, themes and industry sectors. The phenomena of multi-stakeholder-based and certifiable voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) are amongst a class of voluntary regulatory approaches and a new model of governance. This chapter sets the context and lays the plan for the book. Specifically, it outlines the context for examination of the experience of VSS in India and broadly reflects on how the voluntary governance landscape is shaping in India and the roles played by policymakers, businesses and civil society organizations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Four goals of ISEAL are to improve the impacts of sustainability standards, define credibility for these standards, improve their effectiveness, and increase their uptake globally, and in developing countries in particular (ISEAL 2017).

  2. 2.

    The State of Sustainability Initiatives Review reports annually on systems and market trends across standards initiatives operating across key commodity sectors, which account for a substantial trade value. Also, the reports claim that the average annual growth rate of standard-compliant production across all commodity sectors in 2012 was 41%, significantly outpacing the annual average growth of 2% in the corresponding conventional commodity markets.

  3. 3.

    WHO Global Air Pollution Database (with data on more than 4000 cities in 100 countries), released in May 2018, revealed that India has 14 out of the 15 most polluted cities in the world in terms of PM 2.5 concentrations (ToI 2018).

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  1. Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Bimal Arora, Pawan Budhwar & Divya Jyoti

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  1. Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Bimal Arora

  2. Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Pawan Budhwar

  3. Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Divya Jyoti

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Arora, B., Budhwar, P., Jyoti, D. (2019). Governance Through Voluntary Sustainability Standards: An Introduction. In: Arora, B., Budhwar, P., Jyoti, D. (eds) Business Responsibility and Sustainability in India. Palgrave Studies in Indian Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13716-8_1

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