`In this book, Tamm Hallstroem and Bostroem provide us with useful tools to make sense of the proliferation of new rules and standards established by multi-stakeholder initiatives. Focusing on cases of the International Organization for Standardization, the Forest Stewardship Council and the Marine Stewardship Council, they examine struggles in the development of legitimate authority for these standards. Their critical analysis highlights the obstacles and problems these initiatives face and seeks to correct what they see as overly optimistic assessments of these developments in the current literature.' - Jennifer Clapp, University of Waterloo, Canada `This book contributes to the lively contemporary exploration of transnational governance in the making. It brings a welcome focus on practices, strategies and conflicts in complex multi-stakeholder processes of standardization. As such, it answers current calls, in the literature, to take the question of power seriously - power struggles in the process of governance making but also power and authority as a result of that process. The question of power and authority in the context of transnational governance in the making is, undoubtedly, our collective new frontier. The type of well-crafted and theoretically informed comparative study proposed by Kristina Tamm Hallstroem and Magnus Bostroem is just what we need today to move forward on this frontier.' - Marie Laure Djelic, ESSEC Business School, France This enriching book provides a novel analysis of the organizational processes behind the establishment, maintenance, and challenges of non-state authority. In doing so, it compares three transnational, multi-stakeholder standard-setting processes: those of the Forest Stewardship Council, the Marine Stewardship Council, and the International Organization for Standardization on the subject of social responsibility (ISO 26000). The authors theorize the fragility of authority defined as legitimate power. They examine the problematic nature of the long-term transnational multi-stakeholder work upon which this authority is based, including the risks of being ruled out by competing rule setters or being split apart by the centrifugal forces inherent in the multi-stakeholder logics. Scholars of organization studies, sociology, political science, and related disciplines will find this eloquent book of great importance to their field. Practitioners, including standardization experts, managers, management consultants, movement intellectuals, as well as policymakers, should not be without this important book.

This book offers a critical analysis of core concepts that have influenced contemporary conversations about environment-society relations in academic, political, and civil circles. Considering these conceptualizations are currently shaping responses to environmental crises in fundamental ways, critical reflections on concepts such as the Anthropocene, metabolism, risk, resilience, environmental governance, environmental justice and others, are well-warranted. Contributors to this volume, working across a multitude of areas within environmental social science, scrutinize underlying worldviews and assumptions, asking a common set of key questions: What are the different concepts able to explain? How do they take into account society-environment relations? What social, cultural, or geo-political biases and blinders are inherent? What actions or practices do the concepts inspire? The transdisciplinary engagement and reflexivity regarding concepts of environment-society relations represented in these chapters is needed in all spheres of society-in academia, policy and practice-not the least to confront current tendencies of anti-reflexivity and denialism.

This book offers a critical analysis of core concepts that have influenced contemporary conversations about environment-society relations in academic, political, and civil circles. Considering these conceptualizations are currently shaping responses to environmental crises in fundamental ways, critical reflections on concepts such as the Anthropocene, metabolism, risk, resilience, environmental governance, environmental justice and others, are well-warranted. Contributors to this volume, working across a multitude of areas within environmental social science, scrutinize underlying worldviews and assumptions, asking a common set of key questions: What are the different concepts able to explain? How do they take into account society-environment relations? What social, cultural, or geo-political biases and blinders are inherent? What actions or practices do the concepts inspire? The transdisciplinary engagement and reflexivity regarding concepts of environment-society relations represented in these chapters is needed in all spheres of society-in academia, policy and practice-not the least to confront current tendencies of anti-reflexivity and denialism.

This book adds a multi-disciplinary organizational perspective to the theoretical analysis of political accountability and argues for a broadening of the conventional understanding of the concepts of responsibility and accountability. There is increasing pressure for accountability, driven by such factors as the globalization of markets, media reports of corporate misconduct, environmental destruction and the violation of human rights. In response, this book focuses on the development of accountability tools and techniques as well as on the organizational arrangements and political struggles behind such endeavours. This unique study theorizes the emerging accountability and corporate social responsibility movement at the transnational level. It focuses on an increasingly recognized aspect of transnational organizational life, which is often mentioned in recent literature, yet sparsely analysed. Organizing Transnational Accountability will be an important and invaluable read for researchers, policymakers and students of social anthropology, sociology, organization theory, political science and critical accounting at graduate levels and above.