Corporate social responsibility and quality governance in shipping

: Yliskylä-Peuralahti Johanna, Gritsenko Daria, Viertola Jenna

Publisher: Brill Nijhof Publishers

: Leiden, The Netherlands, Dalhousie university/Marine & Environmental Law Institute, Halifax, Canada

: 2015

: Ocean yearbook

: 29

: 1

: 417

: 440

: 24

: 0191-8575

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22116001-02901018

: http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/22116001/29/1

This article aims at investigating the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the governance of quality shipping. The specific emphasis is on the relationship between CSR as a form of private self-regulation and mandatory public regulation. By governance of quality shipping we refer to a process by which rules, norms, and strategies that aim at improving safety, environmental protection, and economic sustainability in shipping are formed, applied, interpreted, and reformed. The concept of governance draws our attention to the fact that there is no single actor, institution, or source of authority that defines and steers quality in shipping, but there is instead a plurality of policy arrangements, understood here as “the substance and the organisation of policy domains in terms of policy discourses, coalitions, rules of the game and resources.” Our study seeks to identify how CSR fits within the broader maritime governance arrangements from the point of view of private actors, such as shipping companies and ports. The topic is approached empirically by studying the shipping industry in the Baltic Sea region (BSR).