Governance and Change Management
Content
Governance
Power
• Fuchs (2005) - Commanding Heights? The Strength and Fragility of Business Power in Global Politics
• Fuchs and Kalfagianni (2010) – The Causes and Consequences of Private Food Governance
• Newell (2009) - Bio-Hegemony: The Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology in Argentina
Effectiveness
• Kalfagianni and Pattberg (2013) – Fishing in muddy waters: Exploring the conditions for effective governance of
fisheries and aquaculture
• Kolk (2013) – Mainstreaming Sustainable Coffee
• Marx and Cuypers (2010) – Forest certification as a global environmental governance tool: what is the macro-
effectiveness of the FSC?
• Lister et al. (2015) – Orchestrating transnational environmental governance in maritime shipping
Normative considerations
• McDermott (2013) – Examining Equity: a multidimensional framework for assessing equity in payments for
ecosystem services.
• Dingwerth (2005) – The democratic legitimacy of public-private rule making: what can we learn from the World
Commission on Dams?
• Hatanaka (2014) - McSustainability and McJustice: Certification, Alternative Food and Agriculture, and Social
Change
• Cheyns (2014) - Making “minority voices” heard in transnational roundtables: the role of local NGOs in
reintroducing justice and attachments
Private governance of the firm
• Vigneau et al. (2015) – How do firms comply with International Sustainability Standards? Processes and
Consequences of Adopting the GRI.
• Eccles (2014) – The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Processes and Performance
Change management
Fundamentals of organizations and models of change management
• Jansen and Chappin (2010) – Themes in Organization Studies
• Wright and Nyberg (2017) – An Inconvenient Truth: How Organizations Translate Climate Change Into Business
as Usual
• Jones (2013) – Types and Forms of Organizational Change
• Martinuzzi and Krumay (2013) – The Good, the Bad, and the Successful – How CSR Leads to Competitive
Advantage and Organizational Transformation
Drivers and barriers for change
• Jones (2013) – Forces for and Resistance to Organizational Change
• Lozano (2015) – A Holistic Perspective on Corporate Sustainability Driver
• Bovey and Hede (2001) – Resistance to organizational change: the role of cognitive and affective processes
• Burnes (2015) – Understanding Resistance to Change – Building on Coch and French
Leadership and strategies to promote change and overcome resistance
• Jones (2013) – Organizational Development
• Benn et al. (2014) – Leading Towards Sustainability
• Doppelt (2003) – Overcoming the seven sustainability blunders
,Part 1: Governance
1. Power
Concepts
Power: the ability to pursue successfully a desired political objective
Power to govern vs. Authority to govern: difference is mainly in legitimacy. (It is the aspect of legitimacy
that turns private power into private authority).
(Bio)hegemony: alignment of material, institutional and discursive power in a way which sustains a
coalition of forces which benefit from the prevailing model of agricultural development (context). This
requires the successful projection of particular interests as general interests.
- Instrumental power: Instrumental power allows business actors to relax or stop state regulation
from developing in key issue areas;
- Structural power: Control over economy/markets/knowledge allows business actors to develop
own rules and standards;
- Discursive power: Ability to frame norms and ideas allows business actors to have the consent of
society for their role as governance actors.
Literature
Fuchs (2005) - Commanding Heights? The Strength and Fragility of Business Power in Global Politics
Aim: Analyzing the political power of businesses, a non-state actor, along the dimension’s instrumental,
structural and discursive power.
Short summary of argument on strength and fragility:
Strength: TNCs have obtained increasing rule-setting power by:
- Taking on a more active role in governance processes through self-regulation and participation in
public private partnerships (PPPs).
- Exercising discursive power by actively participating in public debates on the definition of political
problems and solutions, as well as offensively and defensively shaping their image as economic,
political, and societal actors.
Fragility: TNCs are confronted by a growing potential for political challenges and vulnerabilities because:
- Their rule-setting activities work both ways as they invite scrutiny of the effectiveness of
business’s contribution to governance as well as the imposition of further governance tasks on
business.
- The acceptance of a growing political role for business in the end depends on the public
perception of its legitimacy, and the appearance of failure to fulfill governance tasks can easily
destroy this legitimacy. -> discursive power as an accelerator and Achilles heel for business power.
- In the face of a scandal, moreover, not only the political but also the economic base of a TNC’s
political power may decline or even disappear.
Playing their most extensive political role ever, TNCs simultaneously appear to be at their most vulnerable.
,Power: to pursue successfully a desired political objective
Power-Theoretic Framework:
- Instrumental Power: is captured in assessments of businesses influence on political/policy output
-> direct influence
o ‘Ability of A to make B do something that they would otherwise not do’.
o Measured for example by looking at lobbying, campaign / party finance (actor specific
resources)
- Structural Power: stresses the importance of inputs and focuses on predetermined behavioural
options by existing structures that allocate (in)direct political power -> dependence
o In-directly: for example, indirect agenda setting power, threating to move investments
etc. example of Unilever. Constraining policy choices by making alternatives more or less
desirable for empowered decision-makers. (agenda-setting power)
o Directly: Structural context allow companies to set rules directly through standards, PPPs
and ‘private authority’ (rule-setting power)
- Discursive power: focuses on how businesses can shape the discourse (shared language) on
power (as a function of norms, and ideas) so as to create legitimacy as a political actor. -> ability
to frame norms and ideas
o Focuses on media, public relations and framing.
o Is powerful because it influences both other powers: it can strengthen instrumental and
structural power, and even discursive power itself.
Framing of policy issues can generate public support for business policy objectives
(instrumental)
Perceived legitimacy of self-regulation and private authority can increase
businesses legitimacy as political actors (structural power)
Discursive power can enhance itself by shaping norms and values around societal
organizations, for example through support of influential opinion formers.
Analysis of Business Power
- Instrumental:
o Businesses have a lot of information and resources that are valuable for the political
process, especially for IGOs who are underfunded, as such they rely on interest groups,
such as business, for information.
Why should we care?
1. The relative strength of business lobbying has increased over that of
other interest groups.
2. Regulation is gradually turned into a manifestation of corporate
authority rather than a counterforce to corporate power.
3. As countries get caught into the ‘golden straightjacket’ a number of
issues including human rights and environmental sustainability are
evaluated on purely economic terms.
- Structural Power
o Globalization, financial capital in the global economic system that is easily movable, has
led to more influence of businesses (refers more to agenda-setting power).
, Countries (politicians) compete for investments -> Competitive over comparative
advantage.
Problem: largely invisible dimension of power and difficult to research in its
agenda-setting form.
o Because of structural economic resources and networks, businesses are able to pursue
rule-setting activities, for example PPPs, private authority, self-regulation.
Important, despite that they regulate themselves, because:
1. Influence on other companies, especially SMEs
2. Distributional consequences affect employees and consumers, therefore
societies at large
3. Prevents or undermines rule-setting by public actors
- Discursive Power
o Sources of discursive power:
Financial resources to by media time and space for example.
Its acquisition of legitimacy as a political actor through growth in trust placed in
(free) markets, businesses, neo-liberalism, growth, efficiency etc. People have
trust in businesses to deliver goods and carry out tasks according to these
principles, business might better at it than governments.
Fragility of business power (legitimacy) come from two sources:
1) Scandals arising from illegal behavior, environmental and social misconduct.
2) Changes in societal norms and ideas concerning businesses, for example concerning globalization,
free markets, efficiency and growth.
Accordingly, businesses engage in activities that protect their legitimacy, e.g. self-regulation is not just a
motor for a change in conduct, but also to communicate to the public that are able to do this and therefore
maintain political legitimacy. Another way businesses secure their legitimacy is by engaging with NGOs in
PPPs.
Fuchs and Kalfagianni (2010) – The Causes and Consequences of Private Food Governance
This paper analyses the processes that serve to create, maintain, and reproduce private regulation in food
governance. Two conditions for emergence and diffusion of private food regulations are:
1) Power to govern
2) Authority to govern
This paper contains two parts: 1) discusses manifestations and consequences of private food regulation
for environmental well-begin and food security, 2) discusses causes and facilitating conditions of the
emergence of private food regulation.
Manifestations and consequences of private food governance
- Manifestations
o Environmental well-being
Good Agricultural Practices (GAP)
