Who is Governing Whom? Environmental Responsibility among Government, Business and Civil Society

What is it about?

Although there is much literature and practitioner discussion about personal and consumer values and preferences, environmental responsibility is not adequately addressed due to standards that favor society over business and government. Societal governance is often portrayed as ‘good governance’ with the leading role of non-state actors to counteract the evils of big business and government. Consequently, this one-sided view of societal governance is depicting civil society as an innocent underplayed actor that is more responsible than business and government. Furthermore, similar to business and government, civil society has its own competing self-interests. It is the focus of this manuscript to propose that civil society plays a much more integral role in environmental responsibility with business and governments due to social movements and other civil society governing actions and initiatives that deem society more responsible than business and government.

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Why is it important?

Pursuing environmental responsibility through the lens of common pursuits can obscure how societal governance can also undermine government and business efforts and goals, especially when business and government is strongly focused on outcomes to improve environmental responsibility, rather than fragmented relational processes that prevent environmental responsibility. It is high time that business and government leaders pay attention to constraining factors in environmental responsibility such as self-regulatory regimes and social legitimacy as windows of opportunity to address the good, the bad, and the ugly in societal governance through sustainability and corporate responsibility initiatives and reporting, and in government performance management reporting.

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