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This paper sets out to argue for rethinking governance through the prism of Montesquieu's model of checks and balances within state powers. It aims to explore the parallel between the eighteenth century concept of division of power and the current need to engage and balance the powers of the state, industry/markets and civil society in governance for global sustainability. It also takes Montesquieu's doctrine of balance of powers beyond static checks and balances into more dynamic innovation.

This is a conceptual paper that translates seventeenth and eighteenth century state theory into twenty‐first century governance. It also explores how models from innovation may be applied to discuss dynamic aspects of governance.

Drawing on the product‐cycle model, the paper shows how governance entrepreneurship may be explored and understood in innovation terms. The paper explores extractive industries' transparency initiative (EITI) as an illustration of governance innovation to address a gross governance and market failure in the extractive industries – the “resource curse”, particularly in developing countries. It shows how much of EITI's remarkable success in building institutional support is due to actors expanding from their traditional domains into new complementary roles. Each of the three powers – civil society, business, and politics – has exploited their comparative advantages in bringing the governance project forward.

Given the limitation of conventional governance models, the originality/value of the paper lie in its launch of new supplementary governance approaches and their application to the EITI case.

This paper seeks to take stock of core arguments in some of the most central governance traditions and to discuss their capacity to deliver solutions. It starts with an appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the ideas of market‐, state‐ and civil‐society‐led governance, but also factors in the effect of media and communication as governance arenas in their own right. Then it aims to review core arguments put forward in broader approaches to governance where multiple governance mechanisms are combined.

This is a conceptual paper that reviews central approaches in the governance literature and their ability to further sustainable development. The review is taken as a basis for tentative formulations of new supplementary governance approaches.

Out of the critical analysis the paper distils is an approach to governance that combines three basic elements: First, a re‐interpretation of Montesquieu's principle of checks and balances – applied not only to state institutions, but also to the interplay between the state, markets and civil society. Second, an argument for polyarchic, multilevel governance, where flexible institutional frameworks, at various levels of aggregation, allow actors to jointly engage in developing governance. Third, it argues that open communication may constitute an important governance element. It ends by recognising that global governance, going forward, will include a mix of parallel governance models, in some ways competing for hegemony, but supporting one another in other ways.

The originality/value of the paper lies in its critical assessment of central current governance theories and in its launch of new supplementary governance approaches.

This article aims to explore the character of an emerging model of corporate social responsibility (CSR)‐oriented societal governance in an exchange theoretical perspective and to examine the distinctive characteristics of the relations between civil society, business and government in the new model and the drivers behind it.

By analyzing typical roles and role‐sets in political, commercial and regulatory exchange, the article pin‐points characteristics of the embedded relational governance/CSR model contrasted against liberal governance and the Keynesian welfare state. The analysis is stylized and conceptually based, in line with the Weberian ideal type concept and brings out stylized juxtapositions of the three governance models based on previous studies.

An emerging model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or embedded relational governance seems to share the basic market orientation of the liberal model, yet, at the same time, sharing many of the social and collective goals of the welfare state. This combination is apparently achieved by embedding the social dimension into civil society and self‐regulatory market processes. Finally, the paper reflects on the drivers behind the new governance approach, in the context of a globalizing economy. The paper argues that NGO‐driven communicative intermediation interfacing with an increasing CSR and corporate governance focus in financial evaluation may serve to retain some of the social agenda from the welfare state, under the CSR‐ or embedded‐relational model, an agenda that seemed to be gradually losing out with the global competitive exposure of the welfare state.

The article presents a stylized analytical framework of CSR/embedded relational governance that lays a basis for further exploration and systematic testing through comparative empirical studies.

The paper brings out the interplay between political, regulatory and commercial processes and gives a broader understanding of the societal implications of CSR.

Original contributions of this paper: first, the analytical formulation of the societal governance implications of CSR; second, the exchange theoretical conceptualization of this mode of societal governance.

This paper seeks to explore the interplay between corporate social responsibility and innovation and questions the premise, often underlying EU communications, that the two agendas are in general mutually supportive. In order to accommodate a closer fit the paper argues for a dynamic reinterpretation of CSR.

This is a conceptual paper that presents discussions and conclusions at the theoretical level. It provides a brief overview of core parts of the CSR and the innovation literature and then analyses how the perspectives on the firm in these two literatures fit together. The final section raises normative and theoretical issues with respect to innovation and CSR.

The paper documents the difficulties of assuming that innovation policy and CR policy can easily be mutually supportive. While the assumption of compatibility and synergy may be reasonable for some types of innovation, and some types of CR, it can hardly be argued on a general basis. A core finding is the need to differentiate between complementary static and dynamic views. While much of the innovation literature is dynamic in its nature, much of the CR literature has traditionally been given a static interpretation.

The original value of the paper is that it highlights inconsistencies in the dominant static interpretation of CSR with important sides of the innovation economy. It also shows the way towards a more dynamic interpretation, but then also recognizing some of the important limits of CSR, even in a dynamic mode, calling for engagement from the state in certain types of industrial restructuration.

The increasing engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) potentially indicates an attempt to “re‐embed” the economy in a wider societal context, following a period of neoliberal market exposure, deregulation, and separation of commercial and societal concerns. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between this new social embedding of the economy and older traditions of social embeddedness, such as the welfare state, neocorporatist arrangements, and other socio‐political and labour market arrangements.

The paper explores the relationship between old and new embeddedness by examining how 17 West European nations and the USA are ranked on “old” embeddedness dimensions and comparing this ranking with “new” CSR rankings of nationally aggregated industrial performance.

The overall findings at an aggregate level provides some support for the idea of a symmetric relationship between the “old”, politically‐driven embeddedness and the “new”, industry‐driven embeddedness. However, a finer inspection of the results reveals interesting diversity and variation between countries and between scores, indicating more complex national story lines.

Despite the limited set of countries and some measurement challenges, the analysis illustrates that the patterns of national industrial adaptation to the CSR agenda is strongly shaped by regional and national institutional contexts. While some of the institutional patterns shaping CSR in the “old” EU 15++ have been analysed in this paper, much work still remains to be done in extending and deepening our knowledge in this field.

The findings may help understand how a general framework like CSR interplays with political and institutional contexts as it trickles down into different West European political economies.

The systematic analysis of old political and new corporate social embeddedness of the economy based on a broad set of indicators is new and sheds light on the institutional preconditions for‐ and shaping of CSR.

The purpose of this paper is to note the remarkable expansion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. Taking this as point of departure, it aims to discuss the potential for aligning CSR‐oriented industrial self‐regulation with public governance to fill some of the governance gap in the global economy.

The paper provides a conceptual discussion, empirically underpinned by three case studies.

The paper finds that it is plausible, and empirically supported by the case studies, to conceive of a considerable role for CSR based self‐regulation in the global economy. A central precondition is the ability of civil society organizations to establish “moral rights” as credible voices for “just causes” in a media‐driven communicative society, and thereby put pressure on brand sensitive industry. The paper finds that corporate self‐regulation may fill a larger part of the governance gap if public policy is oriented to engage with industry in a partnered mode.

The paper establishes a conceptual base for exploring the governance implications of CSR, casuistically underpinned by three case studies. Further studies are needed, however, to explore the scale and scope of partnered governance in the global economy.

The paper provides insights into an approach to increase governability of the global economy.

The originality of the paper lies in exploring the implications of CSR for governance, and for highlighting how the governance potential may be enhanced by reorientation of public policy.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate failures of self‐regulation among RI actors following the current economic crisis. It also seeks to propose specific regulations for the investment business. The paper questions whether financial capitalism can support sustainability.

The paper summarizes the crisis; defines what is at stake; critically reviews the various forms of responsible investment; describes conflicts of interest in CSR and RI; and suggests regulatory measures to correct systemic problems. It tests RI/SRI/ESG against the reality of portfolio construction, and identifies the implications of their shortcomings.

The paper finds that RI/SRI/ESG best in class portfolios are challenged for various reasons; engagement activities are challenged due to the structural inadequacies in the industry; SRI fund managers themselves do not use SR; CSR does not address strategic core business matters; conflicts of interest on the way plague the investment supply chain; and private equity may enable progress in RI.

More research is required on the theory of RI and current systemic constraints.

Specific regulatory measures to counteract systemic failures are identified here.

The scope of the critique and findings is original. Value is the real experience of a working practitioner who is sympathetic to RI/SRI/ESG.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the challenges of integrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) with other strategic foci into the supply/contractor chain, both conceptually and empirically, with a focus on one sectorial case: the Norwegian upstream petroleum industry. It compares contradictory theories of strategic focus and explores their implications for the organisation of the supply chain and discusses challenges and solutions for operative CSR‐oriented supply chain management

The empirical analysis, inspired by the cognitive mapping approach, seeks to elicit the strategic profiles of the oil majors and suppliers/contractors in the petroleum industry. This is based on textual analysis of core statements of overall business strategy such as the CEO's and the Chairman's statement letter to the shareholders. The paper also draws on research and workshops with petroleum companies and their suppliers in the North Sea, as well as contracting experts and researchers taking part in the EU‐TRENDS project which focused on satisfying Europe's future demands and needs for sustainable, secure, safe and clean energy supplies.

The strategic profiles of the petroleum companies and their suppliers/contractors indicate that, while they coincide on many points, there is considerable discrepancy as far as CSR and HSE are concerned. The suppliers/contractors tend to emphasise the technology dimension more strongly than the petroleum companies. HSE and CSR are, on average, strategically under‐communicated within the supply industry compared with the petroleum companies, but there is also considerable variation within each group.

The paper explores how transaction cost theory may help frame managerial challenges and approaches in integrating CSR consistently throughout supply chains. It shows some of the limitations of the “rationalist” model of industrial organisation both at the firm level and at the supply chain level and discusses possible expansions into broader managerial approaches.

The paper highlights some of the managerial challenges and basic approaches for integrating CSR consistently throughout the value chain.

The originality of the article lies conceptually in linking the CSR literature to transaction cost theory of industrial organisation. Empirically the article presents new insights into strategic foci of the petroleum companies and their supply chain.