Christopher T. Marsden

Bio: Christopher T. Marsden is an academic researcher from University of Sussex. The author has contributed to research in topics: The Internet & Net neutrality. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 89 publications receiving 1375 citations. Previous affiliations of Christopher T. Marsden include Harvard University & University of Essex.

Towards an understanding of corporate citizenship and how to influence it

Abstract: Companies are in effect citizens of the countries where they operate and increasingly, with globalising markets, of the world. The potential positive environmental and social contribution of companies is every bit as great as their potential for harm. Good corporate citizenship is about understanding and managing an organisation's influences on and relationships with the rest of society in a way that minimises the negative and maximises the positive. The importance of the effective management of a company's citizenship performance is growing both for itself and society as a whole. There are a number of forces based on self‐interest and mutual advantage, in addition to ethical values which underpin any civilised activity, which if better understood and harnessed, can be used by company managers and stakeholders to enhance the positive contribution and lessen the negative. The key to this is the development of an effective ‘reputation market place’ which relies on the creation of countervailing power to bal...

Regulating Code: Good Governance and Better Regulation in the Information Age

Abstract: Internet use has become ubiquitous in the past two decades, but governments, legislators, and their regulatory agencies have struggled to keep up with the rapidly changing Internet technologies and uses. In this groundbreaking collaboration, regulatory lawyer Christopher Marsden and computer scientist Ian Brown analyze the regulatory shaping of "code" -- the technological environment of the Internet -- to achieve more economically efficient and socially just regulation. They examine five "hard cases" that illustrate the regulatory crisis: privacy and data protection; copyright and creativity incentives; censorship; social networks and user-generated content; and net neutrality. The authors describe the increasing "multistakeholderization" of Internet governance, in which user groups argue for representation in the closed business-government dialogue, seeking to bring in both rights-based and technologically expert perspectives. Brown and Marsden draw out lessons for better future regulation from the regulatory and interoperability failures illustrated by the five cases. They conclude that governments, users, and better functioning markets need a smarter "prosumer law" approach. Prosumer law would be designed to enhance the competitive production of public goods, including innovation, public safety, and fundamental democratic rights.

Codifying Cyberspace: Communications Self-Regulation in the Age of Internet Convergence

Abstract: Can the Internet regulate itself? Faced with a range of 'harms' and conflicts associated with the new media – from gambling to pornography – many governments have resisted the temptation to regulate, opting instead to encourage media providers to develop codes of conduct and technical measures to regulate themselves. Codifying Cyberspace looks at media self-regulation in practice, in a variety of countries. It also examines the problems of balancing private censorship against fundamental rights to freedom of expression and privacy for media users. This book is the first full-scale study of self-regulation and codes of conduct in these fast-moving new media sectors and is the result of a three-year Oxford University study funded by the European Commission.

Net Neutrality: Towards a Co-Regulatory Solution

Abstract: Chris Marsden argues for a 'Middle Way' on net neutrality, a problem of consumer and media policy without easy answers that cannot be left to self-regulated market actors. His holistic solution considers ISPs' roles in the round, including their ‘Three Wise Monkeys’ legal liabilities for content filtering. Co-regulation is an awkward compromise between state and private regulation, with constitutionally uncertain protection for end-users and the appearance of a solution with only partial remedy against private censorship.

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Abstract: The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Concepts and definitions of CSR and corporate sustainability: Between agency and communion

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the contemporary debate on the concepts and definitions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Sustainability (CS). The conclusions, based on historical perspectives, philosophical analyses, impact of changing contexts and situations and practical considerations, show that "one solution fits all"-definition for CS(R) should be abandoned, accepting various and more specific definitions matching the development, awareness and ambition levels of organizations.

Corporate Citizenship: Toward an Extended Theoretical Conceptualization

Abstract: We critically examine the content of contemporary understandings of corporate citizenship and locate them within the extant body of research dealing with business-society relations. Our main purpose is to realize a theoretically informed definition of corporate citizenship that is descriptively robust and conceptually distinct from existing concepts in the literature. Specifically, our extended perspective exposes the element of “citizenship” and conceptualizes corporate citizenship as the administration of a bundle of individual citizenship rights—social, civil, and political—conventionally granted and protected by governments.