How Due Diligence Transforms Private Sustainability Governance
The Case of the Global Organic Textile Standard
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19226804 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Marx (0000-0003-1474-0539, KU Leuven), Kari Otteburn (0000-0002-5938-7057, KU Leuven, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-08 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Global Policy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1758-5880 • E-ISSN: 1758-5899 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1758-5899.70188 |
| OpenAlex | W7163866205 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 54 |
Growing awareness of social and environmental risks in global supply chains has driven a shift from voluntary corporate responsibility toward mandatory due diligence legislation. These emerging regulatory frameworks require businesses to identify, prevent, and mitigate adverse human rights and environmental impacts, thereby redefining the boundaries of corporate accountability. Within this evolving context, voluntary sustainability standards (VSS), which have hitherto functioned as central actors in transnational governance through standard‐setting, certification, and capacity building, must reconsider their roles and strategic orientations. This paper examines the implications of due diligence legislation for VSS through a qualitative case study of the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), a leading certification scheme in the textile sector, leading to two key findings. First, rather than weakening VSS, public regulation can strengthen voluntary standards by establishing a legal floor that empowers private regulators to raise sustainability requirements more ambitiously than market constraints allow. Second, international organizations, through the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD), play a critical role in orchestrating public–private alignment through benchmarking and guidance, mitigating risks of fragmentation in complex governance regimes. The paper thereby contributes to debates on hybrid and “smart mix” regulatory approaches
Certification · Corporate governance · Corporate social responsibility · Due diligence · Globalization · Legislation · Supply chain · Sustainability · Sustainable development · Corporate Law and Human Rights · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Regulation and Compliance Studies
The Brussels Effect
The Politics of Global Regulation
Sustainability Standards
Dispute Settlement for Labour Provisions in EU Free Trade Agreements
Grievance Mechanisms in Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives
Muddying the Waters
Business Actors’ Interest in Harder and Softer Regulation of Human Rights Due Diligence
Fostering compliance with voluntary sustainability standards through institutional design
Governing Global Supply Chain Sustainability through the Ethical Audit Regime
Regulating transnational corporations at the United Nations – the negotiations of a treaty on business and human rights
Varieties of legitimacy
Smart mix politics
Effects of stakeholder input on voluntary sustainability standards
Effectiveness and synergies of policy instruments for land use governance in tropical regions
The politics of numbers
Orchestrating sustainability
Dynamic governance interactions
The politics of supply chain regulations
Transnational private governance between the logics of empowerment and control
A comparison of stakeholder engagement practices in voluntary sustainability standards
Private authority and public policy interactions in global context
Transnational governance and the re‐centered state
Private regulation, public policy, and the perils of adverse ontological selection
Transnational business governance interactions
Two Logics of Indirect Governance
Unbundling the Regime Complex
Institutional Emergence in an Era of Globalization
| Highly cited | No |
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