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This article explores the advantages and risks of a new form of self-regulation in the Netherlands. The focal point is the environmental cooperative: a regional organization in which farmers collaborate to integrate environmental values into their production process. The body of this article begins with a discussion of the background of these innovative collectives. It then examines a few concrete examples in greater detail. The question guiding the discussion is if and how the environmental cooperative can contribute to such a broad national planning goal as a more sustainable development of the rural area.

This article focuses on the questions of the effectiveness of the instruments of environmental policy. After an inspection of the tool kit, a discussion of advantages and disadvantages of various control models is started. The legal, the economic, the communication and the spatial control model are distinguished. On the basis of this discussion elements of a practical instrumentation theory for environmental policy are introduced. The lessons learned provide the principles on which strategies to deal with complex environmental problems may be based.

The effectiveness of environmental policy instruments is evaluated, & the advantages & disadvantages of various control models are weighed, including the legal, economic, communication, & spatial control models. Elements of a practical instrumentation theory for environmental policy are introduced, laying the groundwork on which to base strategies for dealing with complex environmental problems. 8 References. Adapted from the source document.

Social scientists have the freedom to adopt different methodological approaches when researching development. This article illustrates how four common social scientific methodologies (positivism, social constructivism, action research, and normative political theory) differently conceptualise the effects of sustainability certification on Indonesian smallholder farmers. It shows that each approach results in different insights, offering a web of information to practitioners. Better understanding the different methodologies may help practitioners to take position in dilemmas, not in a linear process of knowledge accumulation, but in an iterative process of research consultation and practices.

This article discusses a new development in the relationships between private sustainability standards and governments, one in which Southern governments reclaim the authority from mainly Northern-based businesses and nongovernmental organizations. It examines how the Indonesian government, a forerunner in this field, responds to the private certification of palm oil. The results of this in-depth study are compared with similar trends in the coffee and cocoa sectors in Indonesia. The article observes that a change takes place from a nonresponsive stance, a modest involvement in terms of sustaining the implementation of private certifications, to an active development of alternative public national standards and certifications. The article defines some factors that facilitate the development of Southern public standards as an addition or alternative to private regulations and reviews the implications for the future of private standards and certification.

The emergence of the network society has major consequences for the role played by environmental scientists. They are assumed to be able to contribute to new institutional arrangements for collective action. Through deliberations and organised discourses, environmental scientists are expected to help stakeholders to define common ground for action and the sharing of individual problem solving capacities. This paper discusses the consequences of changes in the nature of decision‐making in the area of sustainability for the concepts and instruments to be used. As a new learning context the policy laboratory is introduced. Special attention is given to three major types of instruments: gaming, interactive methods and group decision support systems.

ABSTRACTThe main purpose of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of the conditions under which Business–nongovernmental organization (NGO) interactions lead to improvements in corporate social responsibility (CSR), by assessing the role that the stakeholder context of the firm plays in the processes. As a case study it takes an interaction process between one NGO and one company with both collaborative and confrontational traits, spanning eight years and two issue fields, palm oil and soy, which are characterized by varying stakeholder contexts. The analysis demonstrates that the business–NGO interaction induced a change from a direct to an indirect corporate responsibility, and clarifies how interdependencies between the company and other stakeholders than the NGO influenced the interaction. The stakeholder interdependencies vary per issue field: In some issue fields, the stakeholder context allows for effective, collaborative interaction between business and NGO, while in another issue field, characterized by different stakeholder interdependencies, collaborative, constructive interactionbetween the same business and the same NGO is not feasible and, in addition, less effective in terms of CSR than confrontational interaction.

AbstractThis paper looks for patterns in the emerging dialogue practice between multinationals and NGOs (non‐governmental organizations). It examines what drives the practice, where stakeholder management is located in the organizational structure, how topics and partners for stakeholder dialogue are selected, which types of dialogue occur and what outcomes they have. The practice is evaluated in terms of the strategic management model and the sustainability model. While strategic management considerations may be recognized in all elements of the dialogue practice, sustainability considerations are less prominent. It is concluded that corporate stakeholder dialogues with environmental NGOs have a high instrumental value for strategic management. For corporate environmental sustainability, however, current dialogues are a possible but not a necessary instrument. Nonetheless, the apparent learning process among the individual participants might be the added value of stakeholder dialogue in sustainability terms. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.