Comparisons for Conclusions: Different Paths to Corporate Norm-entrepreneurship

Abstract

As the causal analysis in the previous chapters has shown, a number of factors influence corporations’ decisions to engage in norm-entrepreneurship. Therefore, any attempt at explaining the conditions under which corporations are likely to act as norm-entrepreneurs is necessarily a complex undertaking. Causal factors can result from characteristics of the corporations themselves (Chapter 3) or their environment (Chapter 4) and act as push factors for individual norm-entrepreneurship. Other factors emanate from institutional designs of self-regulatory initiatives (Chapter 5) which may be attractive to corporations. The latter can be regarded as pull factors, in the sense that they direct corporate norm-entrepreneurship toward engaging in certain collective initiatives, rather than others, or from individual toward collective norm-entrepreneurship. These factors do not explain norm-entrepreneurship itself but the unilateral or collective shape it is likely to assume.