Sustainability Reporting in Fishing Industry Management - Regulation versus Voluntarism

A growing number of major corporations and industry organizations now overtly advocate thegeneral concept of corporate social and environmental responsibility, commonly emphasising the‘business case’ for such behaviour on the basis that it is ‘good for business’. Many now report totheir stakeholders on a voluntaristic basis a range of information regarding their impacts on thesocial and physical environment in which they operate.Intrinsic to the business case model is the argument that an optimal balance between the needs ofeconomic growth and the sustainable management of natural resources can best be attainedthrough the conventional mechanisms of corporate governance and voluntary corporate activity,rather than by imposition of governmental regulation. This view implies, however, that wherethe exigencies of environmental sustainability conflict with those of economic imperatives, thelatter must take precedence.A view oppositional to that of the business case instead promotes an intensified interventionistapproach towards natural resource management, advocating increased governmental regulationand control, including the mandating, standardization and independent verification of corporatesustainability reporting. This view gives precedence to public good concepts of natural resourcemanagement, prioritising intra- and inter-generational equity and human rights theories as tonatural resource distribution, and challenges traditional economic approaches to the relationalintersects of business, politics and environment science.This paper considers the relative claims for efficacy in achieving desirable corporateenvironmental behaviours of the business case and voluntary self-regulation model, vis-à-visthose for extended mandatory governmental control, utilizing the exemplar of voluntarysustainability reporting in the New Zealand fishing industry.