Cross-sectoral partnerships have increasingly been promoted as a solution to environmental and social problems. This presupposes participation of civil society organizations (CSOs). The article probes whether the partnership idea is prevailing among CSOs. The purpose of the study is to explore what underlies CSOs' approaches to interaction with business.The study finds that, based on their background and tactics for business interaction, CSOs can be divided into Preservers, Protesters, Modifiers and Scrutinizers. Among these, solely the Preservers have a strategy of engaging in partnerships with business. The Protesters, Modifiers and Scrutinizers, on the other hand, take on a strategy of independence. This finding indicates that corporations that seek to successfully partner with CSOs should be wary that such collaboration is not in line with the strategy of all CSOs, and that for the same reasons the prevailing partnership promotion might be problematic.

Although a lack of critical perspective in environmental management has been acknowledged, the frequency of this perspective has not been measured. This was noted in the editorial of Business Strategy and the Environment (BSE) 1998, where Richard Welford called for more critical theory in environmental management. BSE can be seen as a forerunner in the fi eld. Therefore, it could be expected that the most critical and refl ective research contributing to sustainable development in companies could be published in the journal. In order to analyse the extent to which critical perspective is present in environmental management, we reviewed the last six years of BSE. We found that the studies undertaken generally follow the positivist paradigm, which almost exclusively echoes marginal adjustments. Papers with a critical perspective are in the minority. Using Jürgen Habermas' work on communicative action and discourse, we conclude that there is a distortion in this scientifi c discourse.

The general objective of this paper is to further research on the interaction between civil society organizations (CSOs) and corporations. The aim is to analyze how corporations are responding to demands to enlarge the responsibility sphere. A case is presented in which CSOs are putting pressure on the garment retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) to be responsible for safeguarding workers' rights in the outsourced production of H&M garments. The conclusion of the paper, derived from analyzing the empirical context using discourse theory, is that: (1) CSOs represent a challenging discourse (responsible business) attempting to change the dominant corporate discourse (profi table business); (2) If the challenging discourse is threatening the legitimacy of the corporation, a responsible business discourse is created; and (3) Responding to the demands of the CSOs is done to keep the business practice intact, hence practice is decoupled from the responsible business discourse.

Despite extensive research on corporate responsibility, little research exists on how the inter-organisational processes of defining corporate responsibility develop. In this paper, we present a framework based on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) for analysing these processes. The developed framework is illustrated in a study of the redefinition of Swedish garment retailers' responsibilities for workers' rights at suppliers' factories between 1996 and 2004. We show that definition processes can be characterised as battles for the right to interpretation, and that traditionally non-dominant actors can, at least temporarily, win these battles and dictate the development of the processes for defining corporate responsibility. We also show that definition processes can take an exclusionary form prohibiting certain actors from participating.