1. Ian Maitland, “The Limits of Business Self-Regulation”, California Management Review 27 (1985), 132.
2. Broadly speaking, globalisation may be defined as the shrinkage of distance on a world scale through the emergence and thickening of networks of interconnections — cutting across the political, cultural, social and economic fields; narrowly defined in an economic sense, we may refer by it to the globalisation of markets and the worldwide economic integration, (see, e.g., David Held/ Anthony McGrew/ David Goldblatt/ Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture, 1999; Robert Keohane/Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence, 3rd ed., 2001.
3. Historically, codes of conduct “thave been formulated with a view to guiding the behaviour of individuals, groups, organizations, governments, societies, and, most, recently, corporations.” (Wesley Cragg, “Multinational Corporation, Globalisation, and the Challenge of Self-Regulation”, in: John Kirton/ Michael Trebilcock (eds.), Hard Choices, Soft Law, 2004, 213).
4. For a detailed and extensive discussion on the phenomenon of soft law, see Dinah Shelton (ed.), Commitment and Compliance — The Role of Non-Binding Norms in the International Legal System, 2000; Daniel Thürer, “Soft Law”, in: Rudolf Bernhardt (ed.), Encylopedia of Public International Law, vol. IV (2000), 452–460.
5. Peter Willets, “Transnational Actors and International Organizations in Global Politics”, in: John Baylis/ Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalisation of World Politics. An Introduction to International Relations, 2nd ed., 2001, 357–383; Jan Aart Scholte, “Global Civil Society”, in: Ngaire Woods (ed.), The Political Economy of Globalisation, 2000, 173–201; Thomas Risse, “Transnational Actors and World Politics”, in: Walter Carlsnaes/Thomas Risse/Beth Simmons (eds.), Handbook of International Relations, 2002, 255–274.