In the field of global rule-setting for responsible business behaviour, multi-stakeholder standards have emerged in recent years because of their potential for effective consensus-building, knowledge-sharing and interest representation. Proponents also hold that multi-stakeholder standards could...

This paper aims to shed some more light on the current debate related to corporate social responsibility (CSR), specifically considering multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the complexities they face when dealing with international issues and a range of stakeholders. It discusses notions of CSR...

This article examines the case of sustainable coffee as faced by Sara Lee’s International Coffee and Tea Division (SL), asking which strategic direction the company should take considering its regulatory, competitive and societal contexts. More than a decade after sustainable coffee became a...

This chapter examines partnerships and their peculiarities, based on recent research from various disciplines, in the context of the large problems faced by (global) society. These problems are very complex, often cross national boundaries, and cannot easily be 'solved' by one single actor....

This overview article examines the various dimensions of sustainable coffee as well as the actors involved and their perceptions on how to advance the market from niche to mainstream. The issues at hand are very complex, with different types of coffee producers, manufacturing/roasting companies...

In recent years, corporate social responsibility (CSR) of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in developing countries has received more attention. However, in this literature Africa is much less well represented than other regions, and existing studies about Africa have mainly focused on South...

In the debate on how to combat poverty, the positive role of MNCs is frequently mentioned nowadays, although doubts and criticism remain. Facing this societal debate, MNCs feel pressure to formulate a position. This paper analyzes MNCs' policies on their poverty-alleviating potential....

Since the collapse of the international coffee agreement in 1989, attention has increasingly focused on the role of multinational corporations in this sector. As the main actors in the international coffee chain, companies such as Sara Lee/Douwe Egberts, Nestle and Kraft have been pressurised to...

How do multinationals address conflicting norms and expectations? This article focuses on corporate codes of ethics in the area of child labor as possible expressions of Strategic International Human Resource Management. It analyses whether fifty leading multinationals adopt universal ethical...

While business-NGO partnerships have received much attention in recent years, insights have been obtained from research in ‘stable' contexts, not from conflict-ridden countries where such collaboration may be even more crucial in building trust and capacity and in addressing governance...