Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
avoiding transparency. On the other hand, the same review also shows
that the current system of financial reporting, which does not account
for knowledge-based assets, adversely affects the functioning of mar-
kets by creating abnormal gains to informed investors at the expense
of everybody else, which erodes investor confidence, leads to high share-
price volatility, and increases the cost of capital. These findings make
an economic and political case for greater transparency with regard to
technological developments within companies like GMO producers. The
difficulty with resolving these competing objectives is the idea that the
financial sector and other hitherto neglected stakeholders must partici-
pate in the social discourse about the science, policy, and economics of
agricultural GMOs.
It is possible that these pressures will result in actions by GMO com-
panies to engage in the process of establishing a sector supplement for
agricultural and food GMO companies. The initiative could be taken by
the companies themselves, by a collaboration of companies and NGOs,
or, indirectly, through pressure from governments or financial institu-
tions, similar to the case of the mining industry. Government agencies
that regulate food safety and security could play a catalytic role by bring-
ing together companies with the GRI secretariat and its networks and
procedures.
There are also signs of mounting social expectations for compa-
nies to engage with the society through meaningful and verifiable sus-
tainability reporting. Over the past decade, this practice has taken on
the characteristics of an institution, in other words, it is beginning to
resemble a self-sustaining and highly resilient system of shared values,
norms, and taken for granted behavioral patterns and assumptions that
actors hold about “how the game is played.”
53
A good institution incul-
cates responsibilities, provide societal actors with validated standards
53
Paul DiMaggio & Walter Powell, Introduction, in
The New Institutionalism in Orga-
nizational Analysis
1-40 (Paul DiMaggio & Walter Powell eds., University of Chicago
Press 1991); See also W. R. Scott,
Unpacking Institutional Arguments in The New
Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis
164-182 (Paul DiMaggio & Walter Powell
