In recent decades, claims have increasingly been made on transnational corporations to take responsibility for the promotion and protection of human and labour rights in countries where they operate or otherwise conduct business. This change in the expectations on the behaviour of companies results from the persistent advocacy of non-governmental organizations commonly labelled corporate social responsibility.
This study is about the development of corporate social responsibility understood as a new international norm and how this norm has become an issue on the international agenda. With a point of departure in the 1970s, different stages of norm emergence, "norm cascade" and norm internalization of corporate social responsibility are traced through five selected non-governmental organizations. These organizations are seen as norm entrepreneurs involved in a process of international norm construction. The argument made in this study is that these norm entrepreneurs through ideational commitment and persuasion have been successful in making corporate social responsibility an international concern with a subsequent "cascading" of organizations and initiatives seen from the mid-1990s. At present there is a clustering of actors around specific initiatives, a norm consolidation, which could be taken in support of a norm internalization of corporate social responsibility.
Lisbeth Segerlund is currently working as a researcher and lecturer in International Relations at Stockholm University. Her research interests are in the areas of constructivism, human rights, international norms, transnational civil society, and global governance. Making Corporate Social Responsibility an International Concern: Norm Construction in a Globalizing World is her doctoral thesis.
