ABSTRACT
This book details a wide terrain of engagements between businesses and NGOs, in many parts of the world and often for very specific objectives. Whether it is a collaboration to set up a new certification council, or to mitigate the impacts of oil exploration or market a new product, relationships between businesses and NGOs can be exciting. challenging. sometimes painful and, as this book shows, increasingly powerful tools for change. However, on the horizon there is something altogether more powerful. The time has
This frontier has opened up because of the seismic shifts in societies around the world, which have undermined the traditional means by which organisations achieve and maintain legitimacy with the public. These global shifts are described in detail by Peter Newell (Chapter 1) and their implications for business legitimacy covered by Cheryl Rodgers (Chapter 2). It is our contention that transparency and accountability are the essential components in the legitimating of an organisation, be it private, public or civil. This chapter charts some of the NGO work on strengthening transparency and account-
ability in business, a new frontier which includes areas such as criteria for investors, national and international corporate governance codes, reporting standards, stock mar-
ket listing rules and company law .
