Abstract

Economists study markets and their operation with the aim of finding rules that are robust to opportunistic and deviant behaviours. For them, institutions, legal rules and contracts should be designed to incite, even force, individuals to behave responsibly. Whether one considers the work of the neoclassical economists or, more recently, of behavioural economists, responsibility at work always requires monitoring. The purpose of this is firstly to measure workers’ performance in order to reward and incentivise them, and secondly to protect the organisation from sabotage and disruptive behaviours generated by negative intrinsic motives. In order to produce responsibly, companies also have to verify the origin and quality of their other inputs. Globalisation, coupled with the worldwide division of labour, presents a growing problem of accountability and trust in the market. In the absence of internationally enforced environmental and social norms, transparency over the entire production process is the only way to know what firms and their employees contribute to. Since they cannot carry out this verification process themselves, they rely on public and private certification institutions.