NGO credibility as private or public good? A governance perspective on how to improve NGO advocacy in public discourse

Though research in the field of business and society is increasingly involved with the sector of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and their advocacy function, in particular in relation to business corporations, the literature remains largely silent on how feasible reforms can help establish public trust in and credibility of NGOs by improving the quality and reliability of their contributions to real-life public discourses. In an effort to fill this gap, we argue that fostering the collective credibility of NGO advocacy requires focusing on the level of governance of NGO accountability. Based on a fundamental conceptual distinction between a private-goods dimension and a public-goods dimension of NGO accountability, we can show that semantic confusion can complicate functional solutions to establish collective NGO credibility and public trust. We illustrate our argument with a case study of a worldwide governance initiative in this sector, the „INGO-Accountability Charter“, including qualitative-empirical results on five expert interviews with representatives of NGO member organizations.