A Seat at the Table: A Polycentric Perspective on MNEs and Grand Challenges

Grand challenges appear to have proliferated in recent years but neither scholars nor policymakers seem any closer to building a consensus on how they should be approached. Indeed, much scholarship around these challenges centers the state as the key actor capable of imposing solutions in arenas as varied as climate change or inequality. Under this conception, business has little role to play except as a follower, listening to the demands of the government. This paper examines the idea of grand challenges from a transnational social space perspective, arguing that such spaces go beyond the nation-state and can create innovative processes for solving challenges. Within these spaces and, as a transnational social space itself, multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate, making them part of the decision-making apparatus of particular spaces but also a potential contributor to a polycentric form of governance. As an additional power pole, distinct from the government and society yet related to both, MNEs often have abilities that other governance entities do not. Thus, MNEs must be present in a polycentric ordering of social spaces, part of the dialogue about grand challenges and not merely as an implementer of decisions taken elsewhere.