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The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether the global policy on sustainability, United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), is in alignment with the complexity of the sustainability landscape utilizing complex adaptive system (CAS) theory and theory of change.

An original Complex Adaptive Policy System (CAPS) framework is used as a qualitative instrument with a constant comparison of 11 CAS themes in analyzing 117 UNGC speeches listed on the Global Compact Web site.

Although this study is intended as a preliminary study, the findings raise important questions regarding the long-term impact of the Global Compact as a global policy on sustainability.

The limitations of the study include the preliminary study design and limited source of information. Future research should include a comprehensive evaluation of the UNGC to yield specific recommendations for aligning policy with the landscape.

The study offers an original systems framework to evaluate public and private organizational polices on sustainability.

The continued rise of the multinational and debate as to what constitutes global business values is predicated on the UN Declaration and Global Business Compact. This research suggests both documents explicitly exclude the existence of a foundational ethereal power creating morals thereby nullifying two thirds of the general population’s belief system. The authors argue against humanism as a global value beginning and suggest theism as a better origin and use the scientific method to introduce mathematical axioms supporting theism and complimenting humanism. Ontologically, the theist becomes a stronger base for the scientific inquiry into morals, values and business ethics. A comparison of major religious morals revealed eight factors: assurance; candor, fairness and honesty; character, integrity, truthfulness and exacting in truth; charity and compassion; environment; perseverance and tolerance; sacrifice; and seriousness. The research suggests that the UN documents do not adequately reflect these morals suggesting a change for businesses especially in Islamic regions.

A comprehensive review of religious materials emphasizing morals rather than customs, eternal entity description or negative behaviors yielded 1,243 morals and associated synonyms via six religions (Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism) representing 4.5 billion people. All positive morals were cross-referenced and only common items across all six religions were included. With the 29 common morals, the authors completed a word meaning search and did a second comparison that yielded 8 moral factors or constructs.

Eight moral factors were found to be common in all major religions (assurance, fairness/honesty, character/integrity, charity/compassion, environment, tolerance, sacrifice and seriousness). By using the scientific method (Axioms), the authors argue that theism is a better beginning to researching morals and values within business and marketing.

Multinationals should be made aware of the disconnect between the underlying problems of the Global Business Compacts’ values and the global morals identified. The results suggest adopting a codification system based on the pertinent morals as related to economic theories: capitalism, socialism and theism. The use of theism as a base to business and marketing ethics includes billions of customers and employees and their belief systems that should increase the validity and reliability of actions associated with corporate social responsibility, the environment and best practices.

The UN Declaration and subsequent Global Business Compact are argued to be flawed by its exclusion of religious morals and the historical period in which it was created. By using the scientific method and creating two axioms, the base to all business and marketing ethics must shift to the common moral factors identified.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a global trend involving corporations, states, international organizations and civil society organizations. It is far from clear what CSR stands for, what the trend really is, where it comes from, where it is heading and who the leading actors are. If one views it as a social movement, one must ask: a movement of what and for whom? The purpose of this paper is to examine the CSR trend in all its complexity and draw conclusions regarding its development and potential impact.

Analysis of central documents and publications on CSR is combined with interviews with driving corporate actors.

This article portrays the CSR trend in three ways: as a regulatory framework that places new demands on corporations; as a mobilization of corporate actors to assist the development aid of states; and as a management trend. Each of these portraits suggests certain actors, relations, driving forces and interests as being central. An analysis shows that no one of these views seems to be more accurate than the others: rather the movement comprises a collection of diverse interests, actors, origins and trajectories. These multiple identities may partially describe the trend's success, but could equally well describe its contestation, fragility and fluidity.

The conceptual distinction shows the likely development and potential impact of a corporate social development. Moreover, the discussions help us reflect on the formation of management trends and how certain models come to flow rapidly and extensively around the globe, following and adding to institutional change – especially to changes in the roles, relations and boundaries between and among states, business corporations and civil society organizations.

Essays on social responsibility call the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) “by far the world’s largest corporate responsibility initiative”. The authors look at two avenues to encourage responsible business behavior. First, at law, where law is not the answer and, second, at the UNGC. This paper aims to increase awareness of the UNGC, an umbrella organization supporting corporate good conduct.

The goal is to make corporations socially responsible. Law by nature addresses misconduct. The UNGC is more positive, encouraging responsible behavior in ten areas. The UNGC could be more effective. The authors suggest that social media and management education can help the UNGC positively impact corporate behavior.

The UNGC represents a significant opportunity. If the UNGC lives up to its potential, corporate misconduct may be lessened and corporate good behavior could be publicized, rewarded and increased.

The time has come to let readers start thinking about the UNGC and its goals. This can help bring greater social responsibility in tomorrow’s businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the highlights of the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit, the Principles for Responsible Management Education Global Forum and the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative General Assembly held in New York and Boston in June 2010. It discusses the potential of the connections and collaborations between these organisations and others to lead to change.

The paper draws out key themes of these concurrent events; connections and collaborations between these initiatives and others; and considers the potential of further collaborations to facilitate change.

There is an acceptance on the part of business of the need to be more socially and environmentally responsible, but a lack of technical know‐how and leadership capacity. Universities generally, and business schools in particular, need to do more to develop graduates for a changing business context with specific reference to the overarching challenge of the twenty‐first century to achieve global environmental sustainability and social justice.

Further collaboration between these organisations is important to drive change through, e.g. sustainability performance management at universities; accreditation processes; and, partnerships between business schools, business and civil society organisations.

The originality and value of this paper is in summarising the highlights of three key interconnected events, the collaborations that led to them, the connections that are strengthening between the organisations and potential of those connections to facilitate change.

This paper aims to explore sustainability‐related perceptions of proponents of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from 53 countries in order to shed light on contextual differences regarding the conceptualization of the role of CSR in global governance.

The results of a survey of corporate UN Global Compact participants are presented, focusing on respondents' perceptions regarding 23 key issues in sustainability. Non‐parametric statistics are applied to identify regional and country‐level patterns within the overall sample.

While general perceptions regarding the urgency of key global sustainability challenges appear to be relatively homogeneous around the globe, significant differences can be identified regarding the specific roles and responsibilities respondents attribute to their own companies in countries from the global North and South, respectively.

The paper focuses on generic patterns within the overall sample; more detailed analysis is needed in future work to explore their origins and impact on corporate practice.

There is a need for an improved integration of Southern stakeholders in CSR practice and policy making in order to fully unfold the potential of CSR in global governance.

The paper uncovers generic differences between conceptualizations of the corporate role in global sustainability between the global North and South.

This paper aims to explore how existing collaborative governance arrangements in the context of corporate responsibility (e.g. the Global Reporting Initiative and Social Accountability 8000) need to collaborate more directly in order to enhance their impact. The objective of this paper is twofold: primarily, to explore existing and potential linkages between multi‐stakeholder standards; but, at the same time, to explore the potential for standard convergence.

The paper follows a conceptual approach that is supported by a variety of case examples. First, the nature and benefits as well as shortcomings of multi‐stakeholder standards are explored. Second, a categorization scheme for the availability of such standards is developed. Third, linkages between the different standard categories are explored and discussed. Last but not least, the paper outlines practical implications.

A variety of linkages between existing multi‐stakeholder standards exist. These linkages need to be strengthened, as the market for corporate responsibility is unlikely to support a great variety of partly competing and overlapping initiatives.

The paper offers a structured discussion of potential linkages between multi‐stakeholder standards and thus complements the literature where such initiatives are discussed (usually without much mention of linkages). Practitioners will find the discussion useful to explore how their participation in a variety of initiatives can be better coordinated.

Sustainability-oriented strategies involve considering all possible environmental, social and economic factors that impact stakeholders and sustainable development. They could be a crucial contribution of the private sector to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study’s objective is twofolded. First, the authors want to discover if enterprises doing business in Brazil are contemplating the SDGs in their strategies. Second, the authors want to identify the external and internal factors that motivate them.

The authors collected data through an online survey with employees from Global Compact signatories in Brazil. From a list of 335 for-profit enterprises, the authors got back 132 answers. The sample comprises Brazilian enterprises that only operate in the Brazilian market, Brazilian multinational enterprises (MNEs) and foreign multinationals operating in Brazilian and international markets. For this study, the MNEs’ group comprises Brazilian multinationals and foreign multinationals (MNEs). To characterize the sample and identify the motivating factors, the authors conducted a descriptive analysis. To compare the domestic and MNEs’ mean differences regarding the factors that influenced their strategies and the SDGs, the authors performed Mann–Whitney's U-test.

The results of the study show that enterprises are addressing the SDGs in their strategies. All internal and external driving factors are similar for domestic and MNEs, except for the value chain's negative externalities. MNEs are more prone to consider their negative externalities, which is a positive trend. Finally, results suggest that both groups of enterprises consider the 17 goals in their strategies, contrary to the theoretical argument that multinationals suffer more pressure because of their broad geographic scope.

The database of the study involves data collected through a self-response survey. Thus, the authors cannot discuss the effectiveness of real SDGs' strategies once enterprises' discourse on sustainability does not always correspond with practices. Therefore, the authors suggest that researchers address the results of implemented strategies on the SDGs over time to check for improvements and new developments.

The authors suggest frequent materiality assessment of domestic enterprises' supply chain and articulation of explicit purposes around the selected SDGs, including setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitoring progress.

The authors believe that enterprises and decision makers should recognize their essential role to bend the curve on SDGs and shift their behavior toward strategic choices that could contribute to their positive performance over time, without contributing to environmental degradation and socioeconomic chaos.

Publication on how enterprises address the SDGs in Brazil is relatively scarce. This study provides some answers to that by focusing on the factors influencing sustainability-oriented strategies on the SDGs. Besides, most previous studies consider a small sample of enterprises and are industry specific or focus on the effects of the SDGs in public policy. The sample of this study is diverse and represents 42% of the for-profit signatories of the Global Compact in Brazil.

The purpose of this study is to document the concrete practices put in place by United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) affiliated firms and their application of the UNGC Communication on Progress (COP).

The paper examines the practices implemented by firms on the Fortune 500 list that have affiliated with the UNGC and issued a COP separate from their annual report or a sustainable development report. According to the UNGC, the COP policy sets out a description of practical actions the company has taken or plans to take to implement the ten principles.

The findings tend to show that firms affiliated with the UNGC use a variety of practices to integrate these principles. Many adopt policies based on an international standard relating to a UNGC principle. However, the reporting process supported by the UNGC does not seem to fully promote the widespread application of these practices.

The documentation of these practices will serve as a reference for any business interested in adopting the UNGC principles or for government and non-government organisations, including accounting standard setters, aiming to promote and support the universal principles on human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. In addition, the study reveals weaknesses in the UNGC COP policy that could limit more extensive application of these practices.

The UN Global Compact promotes values of precautionary approach to environmental changes and business sustainability, which are eagerly embraced by MNCs; however the recognized emerging country risks pose a challenge for continuous commitment to those principles in the subsidiaries. Especially political and currency risks are considered significant in the subsidiaries located in the emerging markets. Therefore, those risks are often shifted to the local partners as the pursued core principle of the risk management strategies. The objective of MNCs is in fact to limit MNCs responsibility for the liabilities and losses in the emerging markets in case of market downturns, and in effect the advocated risk management practices exacerbate the severity of the emerging market crises.

The chapter explores those corporate practices on the examples of numerous major international market players in case of several historical, but recent examples of the emerging market currency crises.

The concerns addressed in the chapter include: the preference for local financing exposing at risk local banking sectors in the emerging markets, excessive liquidity and minimal capital commitments and investments leading to weaker currency fluctuations and resulting in private capital speculations and capital flight (to safety or to quality). The intensified global competition for international investments in form of FDIs resulted in the erosion of the capital requirements, reduced social and business infrastructure commitments requested, limited currency controls, and other components of the regulatory framework easing in the emerging markets. Other identified in the research key components of the risk management strategies applied by MNCs, destabilizing the emerging markets in financial (both fiscal and currency) crises include: intercompany payments and financing such as: transfer pricing, local sourcing and reimbursements for both tangible and intangible assets transfer.

Demonstrated approach of MNCs appears ethically questionable and reflects the disparity of the bargaining powers. It also undermines the intentions of the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact. The corporate citizenship is found difficult to dominate over the conflicting self-centered interests of MNCs operating in the emerging markets, especially in times of crises. The consideration of the non-compulsory ethically based initiative, as the alternative to the failing effectiveness of the international market regulations, requires restoration of the public and an individual value of the reputation (image, name) built on social responsibility and accountability, unfortunately so much diluted over the last two decades.

The chapter examines the effect of MNCs risk management of their foreign operations on the crises in the emerging markets with focus on inward FDIs flows and inward FDIs stock fluctuations and debt financing. The results evidence the repetitive nature of the self-interest driven corporate behavior.