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This study examines how accounting tools and techniques are used to create and support membership and reporting boundaries for a multi-entity sustainability scheme. It also considers whether boundary setting for this initiative helps to connect corporate activity with planetary boundaries and the SDGs.

A case study of a national agrifood sustainability scheme, analysing extensive documentary data and multi-entity sustainability reports. The concept of partial organising is used to frame the analysis.

Accounting, in the form of planning, verification, target setting, annual review and reporting, can be used to create a membership and a reporting boundary. Accounting tools and techniques support the scheme's standard-setting and monitoring elements. The study demonstrates that the scheme offers innovation in how sustainability reporting is managed. However, it does not currently provide a cumulative assessment of the effect of the sector's activity on ecological carrying capacity or connect this activity to global sustainability indicators.

Future research can build on this study's insights to further develop our understanding of multi-entity sustainability reporting and accounting's role in organising for sustainability. The authors identify several research avenues including: boundary setting in ecologically significant sectors, integrating global sustainability indicators at sectoral and organisational levels, sustainability controls in multi-entity settings and the potential of multi-entity reporting to provide substantive disclosure.

This paper provides insight into accounting's role in boundary setting for a multi-entity sustainability initiative. It adds to our understanding of the potential of a multi-entity reporting boundary to support connected measurement between corporate activity and global sustainability indicators. It builds on work on partial organising and provides insight into how accounting can support this form of organising for sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to show that, instead of replacing trade retaliation with alternatives that are equally problematic, such as monetary damages, mandatory trade compensation, or formal membership sanctions, the World Trade Organization (WTO) might gain from relying exclusively on informal remedies.

The paper critically reviews the main proposals brought forward in the literature and by WTO members on how to reform WTO remedies. It takes a fresh look at whether any viable, both economically and legally sensitive, alternatives exist.

First, the fact that WTO dispute settlement does not rely on monetary damages and on reparation for past losses is economically justified. Second, switching to an alternative remedy of mandatory trade compensation is not a viable alternative to proportional countermeasures. Third, introducing formal membership sanctions into the WTO would either remain ineffective or turn out to be counterproductive for progressive trade liberalization. Fourth, in order not to provoke an excessive increase of the total cost for WTO members to breach their obligations, any strengthening of the WTO's informal remedies should not be undertaken on top of existing remedies, but as part of a major paradigm shift built on the abrogation of trade retaliation.

The article contributes to the ongoing debate on how to reform the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism.

This article joins an already vast body of literature dealing with potential reforms of the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism. It provides a holistic review of the main existing reform proposals under both legal and economic aspects and adds original insights in discussing the replacement of trade remedies by strengthened informal remedies.

The current political situation in Europe has amplified economic sanctions as a retaliatory measure for states not directly involved in the conflict but wanting to influence the political situation. The purpose of this paper is to further understand the interplay of the neutrality principle and employment of economic sanctions.

Through an extensive literature review, heavily based on the publications of the Swiss Confederacy, neutrality as a foreign policy serving to promote Swiss interests is explored. The room for interpretation and freedom of action in the neutrality principle is highlighted above all.

Economic sanctions are compatible with the neutrality principle, but do not necessarily further the same purpose. Political pressure to participate in sanctions does not take into consideration the ways in which the credibility of neutrality can be implicated, as well as the value of protecting Switzerland’s role as an international mediator.

The consistency with which the neutrality principle is translated into the modern geopolitical context is crucial for its longevity. The novelty of the current political sanctions, still unfolding, demands a careful examination into the history of neutrality and the use of sanctions. No better insight can be offered than by the development of neutrality in the history of the titan of neutrality, Switzerland.

Accession to the European Union is one of the most powerful foreign policy tools exercised within the European arena and enlargement negotiations have been a major stimulus to reform in Central and Eastern Europe. Conditionality has evolved as over time into a dynamic instrument used to ensure that new members are sufficiently prepared to take on the responsibilities of EU membership, whilst also satisfying existing member states that new members will not prove too burdensome. This paper aims to examine some of the lessons learnt from the first stage of the Fifth Enlargement and the stricter use of conditionality mechanisms for Romania, Bulgaria and beyond.

The article is based on interviews with EU officials involved in the enlargement process.

The article finds that the use of conditionality in the 2004 enlargement has had a far from uniform effect on candidates and policy areas and that the commission has learnt much from this experience. The integration of Bulgaria and Romania will offer more significant challenges and conditionality has evolved as a mechanism to address these.

The article offersboth an empirical as well as theoretical evaluation of the use of conditionality in the context of the EU enlargement process.

The use of economic sanctions has grown dramatically in recent decades. Nevertheless, many arguments are presented in the public policy space regarding their effects on target populations. The author presents the first systematic analysis of the effects of sanctions on living conditions in target countries.

This paper provides a comprehensive survey and assessment of the literature on the effects of economic sanctions on living standards in target countries. The author identifies 31 studies that apply quantitative econometric or calibration methods to cross-country and national data to assess the impact of economic sanctions on indicators of human and economic development. The author provides in-depth discussions of three sanctions episodes—Iran, Afghanistan and Venezuela—that illustrate the channels through which sanctions affect living conditions in target countries.

Of the 31 studies, 30 find that sanctions have negative effects on outcomes ranging from per capita income to poverty, inequality, mortality and human rights. The author provides new results showing that 54 countries—27% of all countries and 29% of the world economy— are sanctioned today, up from only 4% of countries in the 1960s. In the three cases discussed, sanctions that restricted the access of governments to foreign exchange limited the ability of states to provide essential public goods and services and generated substantial negative spillovers on private sector and nongovernmental actors.

This is the first literature survey that systematically assesses the quantitative evidence on the effect of sanctions on living conditions in target countries.

This paper aims to analyse sanctions regimes of multilateral development banks and to examine some of the topical issues surrounding sanctioning practices of these institutions. Under the Agreement for Mutual Enforcement of Debarment Decisions (the “Mutual Enforcement Agreement”), sanctions covering the sanctionable practices that are imposed and made publicly available by any participating MDB may be enforced by other participating MDBs. This dramatically amplifies the impact of debarment decisions taken by any one of the participating MDBs, while affirming the MDBs’ commitment to combating the sanctionable practices. Consequently, companies will need to invigorate their procedures with a view to managing their risks not only in relation to national legislation, but also in relation to the MDBs’ sanctioning frameworks, which have much broader geographic scope than that of national legislation. This paper first provides an overview of the tenets established by the Mutual Enforcement Agreement. Further, as all MDBs maintain their own sanctions mechanisms, the paper analyses individual sanctions regimes of the WBG, EBRD and ADB. The paper then describes the types of sanctions that may be imposed by MDBs and examines some of the challenging issues surrounding the banks’ sanctions practices.

This paper draws on the experience of senior lawyers who were intimately involved in the set-up of the sanctions regimes at the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the EBRD and the ADB and are currently involved in the work of sanctions boards at their respective institutions.

Companies and individuals dealing with MDBs should be aware of the fact that, as a result of the Mutual Enforcement Agreement, the profile of MDBs’ fraud and corruption cases has been raised significantly and could result in global sanctions for prohibited practices in a single country. Consequently, a company engaging in a prohibited practice in its business dealings with one MDB might find itself unable to obtain financing from the four other MDBs participating in the Mutual Enforcement Agreement, and furthermore its debarment would be published by all five participating MDBs (subject to the above-described limitations of ADB’s publication regime). As MDBs continue to develop their sanctions regimes, greater harmonisation among sanctions processes is to be expected and companies doing business with MDBs should, at the very minimum, ensure that their compliance and ethics programmes are up to date, both as a preventative measure or, if wrongful actions have already taken place, as a means of mitigating the severity of possible sanctions.

A lot has been written about the consequences of criminal convictions for bribery and other corrupt practices. However, much less attention has been paid to the evolution of anti-corruption policies and procedures which have been developed by a group of leading MDBs. In fact, for many corporates, sanctions regimes of MDBs remain unchartered territory, even though these sanctions proceedings can have far-reaching business consequences. This paper will, therefore, be of interest to all companies directly or indirectly involved with MDB-financed projects, as they need to be alert to the scope of MDB sanctions proceedings and the wide-ranging adverse business consequences that may result from any enforcement action.

This chapter suggests that the key to entrepreneurial success lies in the ability to maintain trust-based networks and respect social norms. In elaborating this proposition, this chapter draws on the results of an exploratory study of 30 Nigerian traders to demonstrate how using an ‘institutional’ lens provides new insights into the influence of trust and indigenous norms on entrepreneurial behaviour. The concept of morality which presupposes an understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour is introduced to offer a supple and adaptable explanation for how actors rely on social norms to build trade networks. At the centre, trust was found to be indispensable to networks relationships and necessary for enforcing sanctions. The results facilitate a rich understanding of how a range of trust-based networks relationships and hybrid indigenous norms underpin entrepreneurial behaviour in Nigeria. The study contributes by providing well founded insights into the entrepreneurship within an African context.