Inside the Velvet Glove: Sustaining Private Regulatory Institutions Through Hollowing and Fortifying

The forces that threaten to break apart private regulatory institutions are well known, but the forces that sustain them are not. Through a longitudinal inductive study of the Toward Sustainable Mining (TSM) program in the Canadian mining industry, we demonstrate how private regulatory institutions are sustained by strategically manipulating different aspects of an institution’s stringency. Our findings show how shifts in external conditions decreased benefits of participation for firms, triggering institutional destabilization. We demonstrate how the interdependent mechanisms of hollowing—actions that ratchet down aspects of stringency associated with high compliance costs—and fortifying—actions that ratchet up aspects of stringency associated with low compliance costs—worked together to stabilize the institution by rebalancing the competing pressures that underpin it. However, these same mechanisms can hinder the ability of these institutions to substantively address the targeted issues, even as they become more stringent in some areas. Our study advances research on private regulation by showing how different aspects of stringency can be simultaneously ratcheted up and ratcheted down to sustain private regulatory institutions. Further, in positioning institutional stability as an ongoing negotiation, we elucidate the key custodial role of governing organizations like trade associations in institutional maintenance.

Financial sector transparency and bank interest margins: do quality of political and financial regulatory institutions matter?

Purpose This study aims to examine the effect of private (PRST) and public (PUST) sector-led financial sector transparencies on bank interest margins (BIM) termed as social cost of financial intermediation in different institutional quality setups. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a two-step dynamic generalized method of moments panel data and bootstrapped quantile models with 91 economies between 2004 and 2016. Data is sourced from World Development Indicator and Global Development Finance databases. Findings The results show that under strong and weak political and financial regulatory institutional setups, the reducing effect of PRST on BIM are observed and reported while the full sample reports no significant nexus between PRST and PUST on BIM. Furthermore, under political institutional quality sample, economies with strong corruption control and regulatory quality are able to reinforce the dampening effect of PRST on BIM while under the same political institutional quality sample, economies with weak rule of law are able to heighten the reducing effect of PRST on BIM. Moreover, under financial regulator institutional quality sample, economies with strong overall weighted and unweighted, chief executive officer and policy dependent central banks are able to intensify the diminishing effect of PRST on BIM while under the same financial regulator institutional quality sample, economies with weak limits on lending are able to amplify the reducing effect of PRST on BIM. However, PUST is reported to propel lower levels BIM in the bootstrap models, especially in strong institutional economies. Practical implications These findings imply that policymakers may rely on PRST to reduce BIM, especially under financial regulatory institutional quality. Additionally, economies must be careful on their reliance on PRST because the effectiveness of PRST to tame high BIM is dependent on the strength of political and financial regulatory institutions. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study presents first time international evidence on the effect of private and public sector-led financial transparency on BIM in strong and weak political and financial regulatory institution economies.

Defining and deterring corporate social irresponsibility: embracing the institutional complexity of international business

Purpose This paper aims to put forward a definition of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) which is relevant to the study of complex organizations and in particular, the multinational enterprise (MNE). This paper then offers a framework as a foundation to discuss the institutional complexity of CSI to aid international business (IB) scholars, practitioners and policymakers achieve a clearer understanding of the mechanisms that may penalize and subsequently deter MNE irresponsibility. Design/methodology/approach In presenting the approaches taken by social regulation researchers and IB policy scholars to understand MNE irresponsibility, this paper proposes a definition of CSI and explicates the various mechanisms associated with deterring MNEs from behaving irresponsibly. Findings Therefore, how can MNEs be deterred from behaving irresponsibly? To further the research agenda concerning CSI in IB, far less common are a definition of CSI relevant to the complex IB context; and a framework that explicates both the legal and social components of CSI, particularly as they unfold in a complex, diverse and often divergent institutional landscape. Overcoming these two primary obstacles is important because when complexities associated with CSI emerge, researchers need to be able to ascertain and expound upon what they are observing so that comparisons can be made and more MNE CSI research can be accrued over time. Research limitations/implications To help the development of future research, we offered a more precise definition of CSI, one which is more relevant to the study of the MNE and the complex contemporary IB environment. By embracing complexities, this paper also outlines an institutional complexity approach, one which highlights both the role of formal and informal regulatory institutions. Though IB has traditionally focused on the role of formal regulation, there is much more to be unearthed by exploring the additional and concurrent influence of social regulatory institutions. Practical implications There is a high level of heterogeneity in the motivations and modes used by MNEs to enter international markets, which likely influence efforts made by these firms to adapt to different types of formal and social institutional pressures. When firms invest significantly in a market, they have a greater economic dependence in that market and institutions have a greater opportunity to exert pressures. For instance, foreign direct investment requires a higher level of (longer-term) commitment, transfer of capital, exchange of expertise and learning, meaning that firms depend much more on local authorities to perform in the market and accomplish their goals. Social implications Enabled by new technologies and, particularly, social media platforms, stakeholders can now engage in organized forms of regulatory activities, as is evident in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, black lives matter and gender equality social activist movements. Through prominent collective actions, the impacts of globally organized social movements may be increasingly non-location bound, placing MNE managers at the heart of new challenges and opportunities to engage with global stakeholders. Infomediaries such as the press, have always been of historical importance, due to their role in shaping stakeholder expectations and opinions of the firm and thus, the reputation and legitimacy of that firm. Originality/value This study enriches the understanding of what CSI is, why we are likely to observe it in practice and how it affects MNEs. This paper offers a definition of CSI that is sufficiently nuanced to capture the complexity of the contemporary IB environment, as well as a framework that, this paper proposes, presents a clearer understanding of the institutional mechanisms that may deter MNEs from behaving irresponsibly. By encouraging scholars to examine the institutional complexity of MNE CSI, the paper hopes to contribute toward building a bridge which connects the IB policy and social regulation research streams.

Regulatory Politics in South Africa 25 Years After Apartheid

This paper explores debates and politics over the place of regulatory democracy in contemporary South African constitutionalism. Twenty-five years after the formal legal transition from apartheid, regulatory institutions – by and large not the focus of negotiations in the early 1990s – have increasingly assumed prominence within the South African state. Such organisations and their functions do not fit easily within one ‘branch’ of the classic legal theory of the separation of powers into three parts, namely the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive. A typology of regulatory institutions in the South African polity includes at least four distinct types. The work of these regulatory organisations in formulating and implementing law in post-apartheid South Africa has become significant in politics, especially over the past decade. While the existence and operation of regulatory institutions does not itself comprise the whole of regulatory politics, such organisations do constitute a crucial component of and locus for such politics.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF CYBERSPACE

The work examines the formation of digital space as a social institution. The main features of the institutionalization of cyberspace are analyzed, such as the regulatory function, a set of roles, ritualized interaction, a set of regulatory institutions and the system of public control of this institution. The author makes a number of conclusions and forecasts regarding the formation of the institution of cyberspace.

Banks’ Digital Challenges

Digital currencies make transfers in digital markets, providing transaction participants with many advantages: easy access to markets, maintaining the identity of participants in transfer transactions, even their application is constantly expanding when buying new and innovative goods. Banks are an integral and significant part of this turnover, which gives them additional advantages and direct effects and exposes them to additional difficulties and dangers. The increased interest in them was noted mainly due to the continuous growth of their market rate and the additional growth of cryptocurrency extraction. Most transactions with them are based on the regulations of the applicable law. Still, the possibility of being the object of a crime has provoked a backlash from financial supervisors to protect the rights of other market participants and especially banks as the most accessible of all. Although it is a legal system in place to prevent banking institutions from being involved in money laundering operations, digital currencies are now a new opportunity with the specific advantages that ensure their smooth transfer to the network. The leading business companies such as TESLA have offered the opportunity to buy electric cars with digital currencies, with the growing demand for cryptocurrency services. Partly aided by the rising value of essential natural resources, important components for building information infrastructure, and the Covid-19 pandemic, significant financial institutions have permanently established themselves in digital markets such as JPMorgan, BNY Mellon, and Morgan Stanley, BlackRock and many others. Despite the targeted actions of state regulatory institutions, whose duty is to ensure the public good “cybersecurity”, the mass entry into these markets leaves consumers relatively unprotected. Money laundering or terrorist financing often provokes crises among regulatory institutions because they are usually accompanied by arms deals, drug trafficking, tax evasion, and others, as well as tax fraud, terrorism, and drug trafficking. A current application of digital currencies is their use to pay for services related to cyber attacks on financial institutions, objects of national security, etc. when the entire population suffers the damage. The new roles of financial institutions in the digital markets strengthen the notion of compliance as possible risk threats, realizing through compliance functions to automate and implement the integrated approach to all types of risk that accompanies the movement of digital financial assets. For some banking intermediaries, this has changed their cybersecurity strategy.

Institutionalization of Public Administration in the Field of Budget Security: Subjective Renewal

The article aims at forming a general vision of the institutionalization of public administration in the field of budget security and summing up the latest trends in the sphere. Systematic, integral, complex and logical approaches are used in the research. It is suggested to understand the institutionalization of public budget security management as the process of identifying relevant institutions, formalizing and systematizing fundamental provisions (object, purpose, principles, functions, tasks, forms, and norms), their connections and communications within public budget security management in particular and in general, as a whole or in the context of a particular focal request. Regulatory institutions of direct and indirect action as for budget security are identified in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine, namely: the Ministry of Finance and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine are institutions of direct action; the Ministry of Economy, the Accounting Chamber, the State Audit Service of Ukraine, the State Customs Service of Ukraine, the State Treasury Service of Ukraine, and the State Financial Monitoring Service are institutions of indirect action. A general institutional activity model for the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine is designed on the basis of the elaboration of legislative documents. The analysis made of its provisions provides grounds for formulating a proposal to clarify the Law of Ukraine "On the Bureau of Economic Security in Ukraine" by introducing a new section III "Lines of Activity of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine" with a specific structure; provisions of budget security are presented in three draft articles of the law, enumerating the objects of regard for the Bureau of Economic Security and the grounds for starting activity and communication. Prospects for further research are seen in continuing to detail the institutional provisions for all the declared regulatory institutions, while identifying vulnerabilities for each of them with regard to the object of the research, i.e., public budget security management, and in suggesting recommendations for their solution.