How do civil society organizations (CSOs) use state-backed supranational institutions to call multinational enterprises (MNEs) to account? There are few studies of precisely how CSOs—union and other—use institutional power in global value chain (GVC) governance or the impact of institutional change on actor behaviour. To address this gap, we assess the impact of changes in the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on CSO engagement with MNEs, comparing complaints lodged by CSOs before and after the Guidelines were revised in June 2011 to accommodate the rise in global prominence of the human rights and business frame. In our analysis, we focus on how constitutive and institutional power plays out in GVC governance, with special attention to the impact of institutional change on actor behaviour. Our analysis reveals that this state-backed mechanism provides CSOs with a structure through which to address human rights violations in some MNEs’ supply chains but also that, despite its high degree of reflexivity, ongoing design flaws limit its capacity to address the uneven distribution of power not only between CSOs and MNEs, but among CSOs themselves. In doing so, we draw attention to the need for further research on the dynamic multilevel interactions between the configuration and adjustment of supranational institutions and how these mediate CSO and MNE interactions.

中文翻译：

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要求跨国企业承担责任：南半球的公民社会组织、超国家机构和商业实践

民间社会组织（CSO）如何利用国家支持的超国家机构追究跨国企业（MNE）的责任？关于公民社会组织（工会和其他组织）如何在全球价值链（GVC）治理中使用制度权力或制度变革对行为者行为的影响的研究很少。为了弥补这一差距，我们评估了经合组织《跨国企业指南》的变化对公民社会组织与跨国企业交往的影响，比较了 2011 年 6 月修订该指南以适应全球人权重要性日益提高的情况之前和之后公民社会组织提出的投诉和业务框架。在我们的分析中，我们重点关注构成性权力和制度性权力在全球价值链治理中的发挥作用，特别关注制度变迁对行为者行为的影响。我们的分析表明，这种由国家支持的机制为公民社会组织提供了一个解决一些跨国企业供应链中侵犯人权问题的结构，但同时也表明，尽管其具有高度的反身性，但持续存在的设计缺陷限制了其解决供应链中的人权分布不均问题的能力。权力不仅存在于公民社会组织和跨国企业之间，而且还存在于公民社会组织自身之间。在此过程中，我们提请注意需要进一步研究超国家机构的配置和调整之间的动态多层次相互作用，以及它们如何调解公民社会组织和跨国公司的相互作用。