蹤獲扦夥厙

Industry Self-Regulation

Introduction

The Center for Industry Self-Regulation calls for research proposals

INTEREST CATEGORY: MARKETING AND SOCIETY
POSTING TYPE: Awards

Posted by: Marilyn Stone

Call for Papers on Industry Self-Regulation

The Center for Industry Self-Regulation of BBB National Programs is pleased to announce this call for papers that treat in some way the issue of industry self-regulation, its past, present, and future. We welcome proposals from scholars in law, public policy, business (MBA and undergraduate), marketing (graduate and undergraduate), economics, and related fields or interdisciplinary proposals. Proposals will be accepted and reviewed in any topic relating to industry self-regulation; scholars need not have conducted prior research or writing in the field.

蹤獲扦夥厙t the Center for Industry Self-Regulation

The Center for Industry Self-Regulation (CISR), the 501(c)(3) charitable foundation arm of BBB National Programs, is dedicated to education and research that supports responsible business leaders developing fair, future-proof best practices, and to the education of the public on the conditions necessary for meaningful industry self-regulation. Armed with the expertise and experience needed to incubate new initiatives, CISR is the place for industries to turn to build accountability programs to address emerging issues such as AI in Hiring and Recruiting.

蹤獲扦夥厙t Industry Self-Regulation

Industry self-regulation is a process where businesses agree to adhere to voluntary legal, ethical, or safety standards, sometimes creating and implementing these standards, and often using an independent third party to serve as an accountability agent or compliance watchdog. The process is usually meant not just for one company, but for an entire industry, a cross-section of an industry, or a group of businesses across industries confronting a similar challenge, thereby raising the ethical bar for practices across the board and ameliorating the concern of unfair competitive advantage if rules are not followed. It is a type of soft law and represents a middle ground between a companys own compliance efforts and the hard law of government regulation.

Successful industry self-regulation systems create, deploy, and update dynamic industry standards to reflect a market landscape that evolves faster than law and regulation. The standards deployed reflect consumer, industry, and public policy concerns and provide an informed and tailored response to the values embodied in the underlying legal, regulatory, and constitutional framework. Meaningful, lasting industry self-regulation is sufficiently independent of control by industry members and driven by the adoption of agreed-upon standards with a mechanism to monitor compliance, such as through a third-party accountability agent.

In other words, effective industry self-regulation involves meaningful guidelines with teeth. Often the teeth come from the monitors ability to refer instances of non-compliance to a government agency with jurisdiction. This adjacency to the government, whether through a backstop or through collaboration in standard-setting, is one of the less-recognized yet important aspects of successful independent industry self-regulation. Meaningful industry self-regulation does not occur in a vacuum; instead, independent programs develop policies and procedures that take account of and work together with existing laws and applicable regulatory frameworks.

Process

Funded proposals shall be awarded $10,000 in financial support to the scholar, which shall cover the costs involved with the time necessary to prepare the paper and seek its publication, as well as any other costs related to the paper including data acquisition, research assistance, and any research-related travel. Most submitted draft papers would normally be expected to be 20-40 pages in length and address an interesting research question in the scholars field. Multiple scholars may join together to submit a single research proposal; however, the funding would remain the same and would be split between the scholars submitting together.

The timeline for selected research proposals is as follows:

  • Proposal Submission Deadline: Tuesday, October 15, 2024 by 5:00 P.M. ET
  • Successful Proposals Notified: Tuesday, November 5, 2024 by 5:00 P.M. ET
  • Initial Draft of Paper Due: Monday, May 5, 2025 by 5:00 P.M. ET
  • Revised Draft of Paper Due: Monday, June 9, 2025 by 5:00 P.M. ET

Once the draft has been finalized, the scholar is expected to submit the paper for publication in a journal of record in the scholars field. Scholars shall also be invited to present their work at a conference to be convened by CISR, with a separate travel stipend available to support the scholars presence.

For the initial proposal, the scholar should prepare a short abstract of the concept for the paper, including a proposed title (which may change), the name and academic affiliation of the scholar(s) submitting the proposal, and if applicable, a description of any research or data collection required in order to support the paper.

Completed abstracts should be submitted no later than October 15, 2024, via email to:

The Center for Industry Self-Regulation email: papersubmissions@industryselfregulation.org

Questions about this Call for Papers or other research opportunities may be directed to: Justin Connor, jconnor@industryselfregulation.org or Mary Engle, mengle@bbbnp.org