I'm not unaware of business self-regulation processes. They spend many millions of euros every year informing me of their desires not to fall under legal obligations. :-)
I am hesistant of business self-regulation as a single tool in this case for two reasons:
- it's been shown not to work unless one has proper transparency procedures in place. Corporate Social Responsibility schemes at the end of the day fail when they are put against the strong obligations on companies, in law, to serve interests of share-holders and creditors. Compliance with business self-regulation is also difficult to ensure without transparency. In network and information security we additionally have strong governmental interests positioned to weaken effects of self-regulatory schemes.
- one has to be careful not to allow self-regulating businesses to become a de facto establisher of social norms and contracts. We have democratized the establishment of social norms because we need legitimate transfers of powers than can occur non-conflictually. It's to my view for a good reason that we apply democratic procedures for this purpose. Corporate self-regulation by definition is not democratic.
I'm not unaware of business self-regulation processes. They spend many millions of euros every year informing me of their desires not to fall under legal obligations. :-)
I am hesistant of business self-regulation as a single tool in this case for two reasons:
- it's been shown not to work unless one has proper transparency procedures in place. Corporate Social Responsibility schemes at the end of the day fail when they are put against the strong obligations on companies, in law, to serve interests of share-holders and creditors. Compliance with business self-regulation is also difficult to ensure without transparency. In network and information security we additionally have strong governmental interests positioned to weaken effects of self-regulatory schemes.
- one has to be careful not to allow self-regulating businesses to become a de facto establisher of social norms and contracts. We have democratized the establishment of social norms because we need legitimate transfers of powers than can occur non-conflictually. It's to my view for a good reason that we apply democratic procedures for this purpose. Corporate self-regulation by definition is not democratic.