Power and Institutions in Global Standardization: The Role and the Importance of Ambiguity in Institutionalizing New Standards of OSR

This paper seeks to understand the success of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in creating a platform for the development of ISO 26000, a standard of organizational social responsibility (OSR). The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, neo-institutional theory combined with political theory will help us to understand how ISO successfully managed to attract and maintain the participation of several opposing groups in the development process of its ISO 26000 standard. Second, we introduce here the concept of platform and examine how institutional platforms facilitate the construction of new institutions at an international level. This will lead us to propose an account of how new political places work in the emerging global infrastructure on OSR.