Socially Responsible Interference in Inter-Organizational Relations

The goal of this article is to analyse the influence of the socially responsible instrumentation of key firms on the modes of employment management of their partner businesses. Through examples of International Framework Agreements (IFA) and of Codes of Conduct (CC), we will simply try to show to what extent the problematic of the management of inter-business relations cannot be exclusively conceptualized, as the economy of transaction costs suggests, in an institutional comparative approach where economic calculation plays a predominant role. First, we will present a critical analysis of the notion of social responsibility for the firm. Without being exhaustive on this question, we will discuss five difficulties.

First of all, in keeping with its normative beginnings, it presents all the characteristics of a natural normative “anthropologized” order within a logic where equity, ethics and morality almost take the place of legal rules of behaviour. Considered from this perspective, it can lead to demanding of a private operator that he become an active subject for the maintenance of public order in his sub-contracting network, that is to say, that he replaces the states in the handling of social and environmental risks. It can also lead businesses to unduly adjust their practices to the fluctuating normative demands of involved parties whose institutional legitimacy can be inversely proportional to their capacity to damage their brand image and their reputation.

A second difficulty comes from the absence of a normative and substantive definition of SRE which leaves its meaning extremely vague and ill-defined. It seems less constructed around the moral personality of the business except in reference to its relations, its commitments and/or its contracts. This shift is not neutral in character. It reflects on the personalization of responsibility which distances itself from a legally inspired retrospective vision to give a prospective responsibility marked by an ethic of solicitude and a positive commitment on the part of businesses. As well, academic definitions may reduce SRE to a question of management of stakeholders without considering the implications brought about by the usage of the term “responsible.” This reductionism, which finds a legitimation in the politicized theory of governing, risks reducing it to aggregation or to the equilibrium of the interests of the involved parties, while supposing that these reflect the general interest.

A third difficulty arises from the breaking up of forms of intelligibility linked to SRE. Pulled between doctrinal and scientific aspects, it is part of an academic field which is particularly prolix and vague. It is saturated with meanings which do not make it possible to identify what makes up the theoretical unity of the field, even formal and uncertain, of which it is a part.

A fourth difficulty arises from the supposed voluntary nature of socially responsible involvement. In general, this chosen responsibility appears as an echo to the legal deregulation movement which translates into a shift from the production of heteronomy standards to autonomy. This perspective is ambiguous for at least two reasons. First of all, it leads to a neglect of the structuring influence of institutional frameworks and the pressure of involved parties on the behaviours of organizations. Next of all, in maintaining a confusion between a voluntary standard, and a standard of private origin, it sometimes hides the fact that a rule which is adopted voluntarily in the framework of the exercise of a private power is not, and far from it, without inevitable effects when put into practise.

A fifth and final difficulty comes from the numerous reasons for involvement in socially responsible actions. Do these derive from ethics or from morality? From a rational strategic instrumentalization? From a search for legitimacy with reference to institutional pressures which are as varied as they are many? The positions of authors on this question appear very heterogeneous and not very integrated into a federal theoretical space and create confusion on the justification systems of businesses as concerns what is socially responsible.

With regards to socially responsible instrumentation, we will show that the CCs and the IFAs, beyond their structural differences (type of standards produced, conditions of their control, etc.), have points of convergence relative, notably, to the choice of principles or of referentials adopted by businesses so as to materialize their socially responsible commitments (ILO declarations and conventions, etc.). These instituted international suprastate standards necessarily provide a certain degree of homogeneity, universality and stability to managers according to which issuing transnational businesses regulate their contractual cooperation relations. They also confer a strong legitimacy while simplifying the arbitration of businesses in their choice of normative referentials. Situated between public and private standards, these tools prove to be instruments of regulation whose institutionalization guarantees the domination of the strongest of the private powers so as to impose the respect of the fundamental rights of workers in the different links of the value chain. As concerns the capacity of transnational business to go above and beyond national social legislation in certain countries, these tools may signify true progress for salaried employees further down the chain, placed in a position of functional subordination (notably those implanted in emerging countries.) Faced with incomplete national state rights, these may make it possible to improve the social conditions surrounding the relation. Since the law continues to consider businesses in an economic network as legally autonomous entities, these regulation tools make it possible to avoid a too definite break of the link between the economic power of a key company and the responsibility associated with the social consequences of its activity within its partner network.