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Bargaining for corporate responsibility: The global and the local of framework agreements in the USA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Michael Fichter ,
Dimitris Stevis  and
Markus Helfen
Dimitris Stevis
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Colorado State University, 200 West Lake Street, Fort Collins, CO 80523–1782, USA
Markus Helfen
Affiliation:
Department of Management, School of Business and Economics, Free University Berlin, Boltzmannstr. 20, 14195 Berlin, Germany
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Abstract

Global Framework Agreements (GFAs) are still a marginal topic in political and academic discourses over global governance and corporate responsibility. In functional terms, GFAs are a commitment to include global labor standards with respect to human resource management as part of this broader turn to CR. But to what extent are these intentions and goals actually realized? Are corporations able and willing to implement GFAs in a joint effort together with the unions across a vastly diverse range of institutional settings and national arrangements? And do GFAs have an influence on core elements of a company's business policy decisions? Drawing on the insights from an interdisciplinary and multinational project, this paper uses four case studies to explore the conditions and variations in GFA implementation in the USA. Although we observe, as have others before us, that key matters of business strategy such as investments, acquisitions, restructuring, or relocation are more centralized than corporate policies on labor relations, we provide some evidence that the implementation of GFAs can be moved forward by a confluence of external actor involvement and of corporate strategies motivated by a desire to streamline HRM practices (that include the goals covered by GFAs in their core business practices). This finding of the influence of external actor voice in implementation processes may also have broader explanatory power with respect to CR initiatives in general. And in theoretical terms it allows us to explore the interplay between macro structural explanations like the Varieties of Capitalism approach, and the strategic “micro-political” explanations. Our study, in fact, suggests a strong need to combine these in a more systematic fashion.

Type
Corporate Responsibility, Multinational Corporations, and Nation States
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 14 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Corporate Responsibility, Multinational Corporations, and Nation States , October 2012 , pp. 1 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2012 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

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