Voluntary Approaches: an Assessment and Overview

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the debate around voluntary approaches and their role in public policy. For the purposes of this paper, voluntary approaches include industry codes of conduct (individual company codes and policy statements and industry-wide codes) as well as government sponsored or supported programmes, where industry participation is voluntary. The specific forms that such voluntary approaches can take include codes of conduct, certification systems, statements of policy and principle and best practice guidance.