A club theory approach to voluntary social programs: Multinational companies and the extractive industries transparency initiative

This study uses club theory to describe the incentives of extractive industry MNCs to support the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a multi-stakeholder promoted voluntary social program (VSP) aimed at creating national legislation to make the royalty payments received by governments from mining and oil and gas companies more transparent to the public. We characterize the EITI as a VSP that lacks stringent standards and that has a moderate to high level of enforcement through the national governments that have adopted its principles. According to club theory, VSPs with these characteristics produce only a low to medium level of club benefits, in this case “social branding,” for member firms. Noting that over 60 MNCs have signed on to the EITI as of April 2012, we argue that VSPs offering low to medium club benefits should be most attractive to MNCs from countries with long arm disclosure laws, to MNCs lacking relationships with NGOs seeking inexpensive CSR, to MNCs relying upon financing from institutional and social investors, to MNCs attempting to differentiate themselves from competitors on social criteria, and to MNCs with broad stakeholder-focused top managers. We also describe the implications for MNCs if the EITI were to include a more stringent set of social requirements.