Community structure and the behavior of transnational sustainability governors: Toward a multi‐relational approach
研究了农业领域跨国私人治理组织之间的多重关系，发现存在一个由老牌组织主导的松散社区，但实际协作、协调和趋同行为仍面临障碍。
Abstract Hundreds of transnational private governance organizations (TPGOs) have emerged in recent decades to govern social and environmental conditions of production using voluntary standards. A debate persists over whether the ties among different TPGOs and other organizations create a professional community that affects the behavior of TPGOs. To help resolve this debate, we analyze multiple ties among agriculture TPGOs to offer a more robust exploration of community structures and their potential effects for three forms of TPGO behavior – coordination, collaboration, and isomorphism. Our aggregate measure of ties reveals a thin community dominated by older TPGOs and TPGOs advancing a broad notion of sustainability that were created by Solidaridad, the World Wildlife Fund, and/or Unilever. The clearest community structures are built from ties that exhibit the potential for not actual collaboration, coordination, and isomorphism. Thus, while there exists convergence toward an emergent TPGO‐community, obstacles remain to more intense behavioral effects for TPGOs.