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Firm self-regulation through international certifiable standards: determinants of symbolic versus substantive implementation

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Abstract

International certifiable management standards that have been advocated as a governance mechanism for firm self-regulation of corporate social responsibility issues are effective only if certified firms comply with the requirements of the standards. Our empirical analysis shows that ISO-certified firms in China strategically select their level of compliance depending on customer preferences, customer monitoring, and expected sanctions by customers. Our findings have implications for the effectiveness of a global system of self-regulation based on certifiable standards, research on certifiable standards, and for practicing managers who require suppliers to obtain standard certifications.

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Notes

  1. Factor analysis results and more information about the reliability of individual measures are available from the authors upon request.

  2. Our dependent variable was constructed based on survey items on a five-point Likert scale. This scale has ordinal values, but distances between adjacent categories are unknown. To test the sensitivity of our results to potential differences in the distances between categories we also performed an ordered logit regression analysis (Long, 1997). Results showed that it is appropriate to treat differences between adjacent categories as identical, so that the use of linear regression models such as robust regression and OLS is appropriate. Results with respect to our hypotheses were identical between the ordered logit and the two linear models. Detailed results are available from the authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for completing the research leading up to this paper received from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Darden Foundation, the Batten Institute of the Darden School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, and a Faculty Research Grant from Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick. We would like to thank the China Quality Certification Center (CQC) for their help with the data collection for this study. We would like to thank Margaret Cording and Jim Wade, the guest editor Donald Siegel, two anonymous reviewers and participants at the JIBS Three Lenses Workshop in Phoenix, AZ, for insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. All errors and omissions remain our responsibility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rutgers Business School – Newark & New Brunswick, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA

    Petra Christmann

  2. Sykes College of Business, University of Tampa, Tampa, FL, USA

    Glen Taylor

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  1. Petra Christmann
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  2. Glen Taylor
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Correspondence to Petra Christmann.

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Accepted by Lorraine Eden, Amy Hillman, Peter Rodriguez and Donald Siegel, Guest Editors, 20 April 2006. This paper has been with the author for two revisions.

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Christmann, P., Taylor, G. Firm self-regulation through international certifiable standards: determinants of symbolic versus substantive implementation. J Int Bus Stud 37, 863–878 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400231

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