Visible Hands
Government Regulation and International Business Responsibility
Business, Value Creation, and Society Series

A growing number of states are regulating the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of domestic multinational corporations relating to overseas subsidiaries and suppliers. In this book, Jette Steen Knudsen and Jeremy Moon offer a new framework for analysing government-CSR relations: direct and indirect policies for CSR. Arguing that existing research on CSR regulation fails to address the growing role of the state in shaping the international practices of multinational corporations, the authors provide insight into the CSR issues that are addressed by government policies. Drawing on case studies, they analyse three key examples of CSR: non-financial reporting, ethical trade and tax transparency in extractive industries. In doing so, they propose a new research agenda of government and CSR that is relevant to scholars and graduate students in CSR, sustainability, political economy and economic sociology, as well as policymakers and consultants in international development and trade.

1. Government and CSR: hands visible and invisible; 2. National government and international corporate social responsibility; 3. Government and corporate social responsibility: from domestic to international spheres; 4. Government and non-financial reporting: public policy in Denmark; 5. Governments and ethical trade: the ethical trading initiative and responses to Rana Plaza; 6. Governments and tax transparency: the extractive industries transparency initiative, Dodd-Frank, and the European Accounting Act amendments; 7. Conclusion: visible hands for responsible international business.

Jette Steen Knudsen is Professor of Policy and International Business at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts. She previously worked as a Professor of Political Science at Copenhagen University and before that at Copenhagen Business School, and she headed a government think-tank, the Copenhagen Centre for CSR. She has published in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, Policy and Politics and Regulation and Governance.
Jeremy Moon is Velux Professor of Corporate Sustainability at Copenhagen Business School. He has published extensively on corporate social responsibility, including the edited textbook Corporate Social Responsibility: Strategy, Communication and Governance (2017), which is also published by Cambridge University Press, and the Very Short Introduction to CSR (2014). He was founding Director of the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, University of Nottingham.