ABSTRACT:In a series of reports the United Nations Special Representative on the issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations has emphasized a tripartite framework regarding business and human rights that includes the state “duty to protect,” the TNC “responsibility to respect,” and “appropriate remedies” for human rights violations. This article examines the recent history of UN initiatives regarding business and human rights and places the tripartite framework in historical context. Three approaches to human rights are distinguished: moral, political, and legal. (...) It is argued that the tripartite framework’s grounding of the responsibility of TNCs to respect human rights is properly understood as moral and not merely as a political or legal duty. A moral account of the duty of TNCs to respect basic human rights is defended and contrasted with a merely strategic approach. The main conclusion of the article is that only a moral account of the basic human rights duties of TNCs provides a sufficiently deep justification of “the corporate responsibility to respect human rights” feature of the tripartite framework. (shrink)

What sort of connection is there between business ethics and philosophy? The answer given here: a weak one, but it may be getting stronger. Comparatively few business ethics articles are structurally dependent on mainstream academic philosophy or on such sub-specialities thereof as normative ethics, moral theory, and social and political philosophy. Examining articles recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics that declare some dependence, the author finds that such declarations often constitute only a pro forma gesture which could be (...) omitted without detriment to the paper's content and conclusions. He also finds, however, that some authors do draw on solid philosophical work in ways that are establishing ever more meaningful interconnections between business ethics and academic philosophy. These cross-disciplinary studies, he concludes, are ground-breaking and invite creative imitation. (shrink)

The discourse on economic integration with authoritarian regimes has evolved as a key topic throughout the different disciplines of social sciences. Are sanctions and boycotts effective methods to incentivize human rights improvements? To analyze this question, we focus on the situation in China’s Xinjiang province from 2010 to 2019. In this paper, we discuss the relevance of human rights as an ethical norm within business ethics and international law. We evaluate the ongoing processes in Xinjiang from this perspective and scrutinize (...) the interests of major players in the region, including the Central Government of the People’s Republic of China, Xinjiang’s local government, and enterprises involved in the region. Following this, we discuss which economic measures will improve the human rights situation and how these measures contribute to an improvement of the situation. (shrink)

According to Palazzo and Scherer, the changing role of business corporations in society requires that we take new measures to integrate these organizations into society-wide processes of democratic governance. We argue that their model of integration has a fundamental problem. Instead of treating business corporations as agents that must be held accountable to the democratic reasoning of affected parties, it treats corporations as agents who can hold others accountable. In our terminology, it treats business corporations as “supervising authorities” rather than (...) “functionaries.” The result is that Palazzo and Scherer’s model does not actually address the democratic deficit that it is meant to solve. In order to fix the problem, we advocate removing business corporations from any policymaking role in political CSR and limiting participation to political NGOs and other groups that meet the standards we set out for a politically representative organization (PRO). (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity implies that corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human rights abuses. This (...) is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights. (shrink)

Can SRI be a means to make investors both virtuous and prosperous? This paper argues that there can be significant tensions between these goals, and that SRI (and indeed all investment) should not allow the pursuit of maximizing investment returns to prevail over an ethical agenda of promoting social and economic justice and environmental protection. The discourse on SRI has changed dramatically in recent years to the point where its capacity to promote social emancipation, sustainable development and other ethical goals (...) is in jeopardy. Historically, SRI was a boutique sector of the market dominated by religious-based investors who sought to invest in accordance with the tenets of their faith. From the early 1970s, the aspirations of the SRI movement morphed significantly in the context of the divestment campaign against South Africa's apartheid regime. No longer were social investors satisfied with just avoiding profit from immoral activities; instead, they also sought to change the behavior of others. Business case SRI is a problematic SRI benchmark for several reasons: often there is a countervailing business case for financing irresponsible activities, given the failure of markets to capture all social and environmental externalities; secondly, even if investors care about such concerns, there may be no means of financially quantifying their significance for investment purposes; and, thirdly, even if such factors can be financially quantified, they may be deemed to be such long-term financial costs or benefits that they become discounted and ignored. The ethics case for SRI and ethical business practices more generally takes the view that both investors and the companies they fund have ethical responsibilities that trump the pursuit of profit maximization. Ethical investment should be grounded on this foundation. However, it may not be enough. To keep ethical investment ethical will likely require institutionalizing new norms and governance standards, in such domains as reforming fiduciary duties and the internal governance of financial organizations. SRI's own codes of conduct including the UNPRI have yet to demonstrate the robustness to move the financial community beyond business as usual. (shrink)

It appears that in the 30 years that business ethics has been a discipline in its own right a model of business ethics has not been proffered. No one appears to have tried to explain the phenomenon known as 'business ethics' and the ways that we as a society interact with the concept, therefore, the authors have addressed this gap in the literature by proposing a model of business ethics that the authors hope will stimulate debate. The business ethics model (...) consists of three principal components that are interconnected by five sub-components. The introduced model makes a contribution to the creation of a conceptual framework for business ethics. A few tentative conclusions may be drawn from the introduced model of business ethics. The model aspires to be highly dynamic. The ultimate outcome is dependent upon the evolution of time and contexts. It is also dependent upon and provides reference to the behaviours and perceptions of people. The model proposes business ethics to be a continuous and an iterative process. There is no actual end of the process, but a constant reconnection to the initiation of successive process iterations of the business ethics model. The principals and sub-components of the model construct the dynamics of this continuous process. They provide guidance on what and how to explore our common efforts to understand the phenomenon known as business ethics. The model provides opportunities for further research in the field of business ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We provide a brief history of the business and human rights discourse and scholarship, and an overview of the articles included in the special issue.

It appears that in the 30 years that business ethics has been a discipline in its own right a model of business ethics has not been proffered. No one appears to have tried to explain the phenomenon known as ‚business ethics’ and the ways that we as a society interact with the concept, therefore, the authors have addressed this gap in the literature by proposing a model of business ethics that the authors hope will stimulate debate. The business ethics model (...) consists of three principal components (i.e. expectations, perceptions and evaluations) that are interconnected by five sub-components (i.e. society expects; organizational values, norms and beliefs; outcomes; society evaluates; and reconnection). The introduced model makes a contribution to the creation of a conceptual framework for business ethics. A few tentative conclusions may be drawn from the introduced model of business ethics. The model aspires to be highly dynamic. The ultimate outcome is dependent upon the evolution of time and contexts. It is also dependent upon and provides reference to the behaviours and perceptions of people. The model proposes business ethics to be a continuous and an iterative process. There is no actual end of the process, but a constant reconnection to the initiation of successive process iterations of the business ethics model. The principals and sub-components of the model construct the dynamics of this continuous process. They provide guidance on what and how to explore our common efforts to understand the phenomenon known as business ethics. The model provides opportunities for further research in the field of business ethics. (shrink)

In his invited essay for Business & Society’s 60th anniversary, Archie B. Carroll refers to human rights as “a topic that holds considerable promise for CSR [corporate social responsibility] researchers in the future.” The objective of this article is to unpack this promise. We discuss the momentum of business and human rights in international policy, national regulation, and corporate practice, review how and why BHR scholarship has been thriving, provide a conceptual framework to analyze how BHR and corporate social responsibility (...) relate to each other, and provide a research agenda outlining how BHR can expand business and society scholarship in general and one of its foundational constructs, CSR, in particular, beyond the current confines of the business and society field. (shrink)

Recent structural innovations in global commerce present difficult challenges for legacy understandings of responsibility. The rise of outsourcing, sub-contracting, and mobile app-based platforms have dramatically restructured relationships between and among economic actors. Though not entirely new, the remarkable rise in the prevalence of these “not-quite-arm’s-length” relationships present difficulties for conceptions of responsibility based on interrogating the past for specifiable actions by blameworthy actors. Iris Marion Young invites investigation of a “social connection model of responsibility” (SCMR) that is, in many ways, (...) better suited to this new commercial reality. Scholars working to understand corporate responsibility have invoked Young’s model to some good effect, though often superficially and uncritically. In this paper, we look closely at Young’s social connection model and its potential for helping us understand corporate responsibility in a radically networked world. (shrink)

Some virtue ethicists are reluctant to consider principles and standards in business ethics. However, this is problematic. This paper argues that realistic Personalism can be integrated into virtue-based business ethics, giving it a more complete base. More specifically, two principles are proposed: the Personalist Principle (PP) and the Common Good Principle (CGP). The PP includes the Golden Rule and makes explicit the duty of respect, benevolence, and care for people, emphasizing human dignity and the innate rights of every human being. (...) The CGP entails cooperation to promote conditions which enhance the opportunity for the human flourishing of all people within a community. Both principles have practical implications for business ethics. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to advance research on CSR beyond the stalemate of economic versus ethical models by providing an alternative perspective integrating existing views and allowing for more shared dialog and research in the field. It is suggested that we move beyond making a normative case for ethical models and practices of CSR by moving beyond the question of how to manage organizational self-interest toward the question of how accurate current conceptions of the organizational self seem to (...) be. Specifically, it is proposed that CSR is not a question of how self-interested the corporation should be, but how this self is defined. Economic and ethical models of CSR are not models of opposition but exist on a continuum between egoic and post-egoic, illusory and authentic conceptions of the organizational self. This means that moving from one to the other is not a question of adopting different paradigms but rather of moving from illusion and dysfunction to authenticity and functionality, from pathology to health. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article considers the economic case for so-called sweatshop wages and working conditions. My goal is not to defend or reject the economic case for sweatshops. Instead, proceeding from a broadly pluralist understanding of value, I make and defend a number of claims concerning the ethical relevance of economic analysis for values that different agents utilize to evaluate sweatshops. My arguments give special attention to a series of recent articles by Benjamin Powell and Matt Zwolinski, which represent the latest and (...) best defense of the economic case for sweatshops. In the process, I challenge Zwolinski’s “non-worseness claim” (NWC), and the idea that opposition to sweatshop wages and working conditions fails to respect that the autonomy of would-be sweatshop workers. Ultimately, I conclude that even if the economic case for sweatshops rests on a solid empirical foundation, agents possess good reason to advocate for better wages and working conditions for sweatshop workers, and to prefer less exploitative or coercive relationships. Sweatshop labor undermines a compelling vision of free markets, according to both Kantian and republican conceptions of freedom, and the relationships formed by those who participate in such markets. (shrink)

This article argues that the extension of the international regime of human rights to companies has not changed the essentially state-centric nature of the regime. The analysis focuses on three recent United Nations initiatives: (1) 'Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights', (2) the Global Compact, and (3) the work of the UN special representative on business and human rights. The analysis shows that, despite these initiatives, states are the primary holders (...) of human rights obligations and have a key role in the decision making and enforcement of the regime. Companies have participated to the regime, but they have done so mainly through lobbying governments and thus enforcing the role of states. The analysis also shows that the engagement of new actors to decision-making about the extension of regime norms is essential for norm adoption. Finally, the issue of non-compliant companies needs to be resolved before the regime can be considered established. (shrink)

This article revolves around the debate surrounding the lack of a coherent definition for corporate social responsibility (CSR). I make use of Jacques Derrida’s theorizing on contested meaning to argue that CSR’s ambiguity is actually necessary in light of its functional role as a “supplement” to corporate profit-seeking. As a discourse that refuses to conclusively resolve the tension between profit-seeking and prosociality, CSR expresses an important critical perspective which demands that firms act responsibly, while retaining the overall corporate frame of (...) shareholder supremacy. CSR does this by ambivalently affirming both profit-seeking and prosociality, a necessary contradiction. Attempts to reduce CSR’s ambiguity can thus only succeed by undermining its viability as a normative discourse that captures how certain elements of society understand how firms should act. The analysis suggests that greater scholarly attention is needed with regard to the material discursive environments within which discourses such as CSR are deployed. A discursive approach to research could thus benefit future practitioners, who have to act according to fluid standards of responsibility that cannot be authoritatively defined, but which can be better understood than they are at present. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article considers the economic case for so-called sweatshop wages and working conditions. My goal is not to defend or reject the economic case for sweatshops. Instead, proceeding from a broadly pluralist understanding of value, I make and defend a number of claims concerning the ethical relevance of economic analysis for values that different agents utilize to evaluate sweatshops. My arguments give special attention to a series of recent articles by Benjamin Powell and Matt Zwolinski, which represent the latest and (...) best defense of the economic case for sweatshops. In the process, I challenge Zwolinski’s “non-worseness claim”, and the idea that opposition to sweatshop wages and working conditions fails to respect that the autonomy of would-be sweatshop workers. Ultimately, I conclude that even if the economic case for sweatshops rests on a solid empirical foundation, agents possess good reason to advocate for better wages and working conditions for sweatshop workers, and to prefer less exploitative or coercive relationships. Sweatshop labor undermines a compelling vision of free markets, according to both Kantian and republican conceptions of freedom, and the relationships formed by those who participate in such markets. (shrink)

This article begins with a detailed analysis of how the choice situation of a social contract for international business ethics can be constructed and justified. A choice situation is developed by analyzing conceptions of the multinational firm and the domain of international business. The result is a hypothetical negotiation between two fictional characters, J. Duncan Grey and Elizabeth Redd, who respectively represent the interests of businesses and communities seeking to engage in international trade. The negotiators agree on ethical principles governing (...) wages, the environment, and compliance social and cultural norms. These principles are then shown to rest in wide reflective equilibrium with considered moral judgments on international business ethics, which are drawn from international agreements, such as the UN Declaration on Human Rights, and voluntary business initiatives, such as the Global Sullivan Principles and the UN Global Compact. (shrink)

This paper critically investigates the implementation of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights (UNGPs) into the corporate setting through the concept of ‘translation’. In the decade since the creation of the UNGPs, little academic research has focussed specifically on the corporate implementation of human rights. Drawing on qualitative case studies of two multinational corporations—an oil and gas company and a bank—this paper unpacks how human rights are translated into the corporate context. In doing so, the paper focuses (...) on the “resonance dilemma” translators encounter, the strategies used to make human rights understandable and palatable, and the difficulties that emerge from this process. We contend that the process of making human rights understandable and manageable can change their form and content, which may act as an obstacle to human rights realisation and corporate accountability for human rights. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore job performance, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from an ethical perceptive. A great number of studies have extensively discussed the link between M&A and performance; however, most focused on the financial functions and strategy selections. Although ethical issues emerge in the M&A process, it is a less studied area. This study adopted the structural equation modeling approach to empirically test our hypotheses. Based on 264 samples from financial companies, data analyses indicated that ethical (...) conduct in M&A is significantly correlated with employee job performance. Ensuring employment security and caring practices can significantly explain organizational commitment. Organizational commitment also plays a significant mediating role between a company’s ethical conduct and employee job performance. Managerial implications are also provided. (shrink)

This paper explores the intersection between three processes associated with globalisation. First, the rise of emerging economies like China, Brazil and India, the so-called ‘Rising Powers’, and their potential to define the contours of globalisation, global production arrangements and global governance in the twenty-first century. Second, the importance of corporate social responsibility goals in the shaping of global trade rules and industrial practices. Third, the significance of small firm clusters as critical sites of industrial competitiveness. Some of the most significant (...) examples of successful, innovative and internationally competitive small firm clusters from the developing world are located in the ‘Rising Powers’ and cluster promotion is a core element of national industrial policy in some of these countries. There is also evidence of engagement by clustered actors with corporate social responsibility goals around labour and environmental impacts. While these three processes have been separately studied there has been no attempt to explore their intersections. This paper addresses this gap through a comparative analysis of secondary data, and a detailed reading of the literature, on CSR and clusters in Brazil, China and India. It assesses the evidence on small firm clusters in the Rising Power economies and considers how these Rising Power clusters engage with CSR goals pertaining to labour, social and environmental standards. It argues for a greater focus on the formal and informal institutional context, termed the ‘social contract’, in explaining divergent experiences and practices observed across these countries. This raises important questions for future academic and policy research on clusters, CSR and the Rising Powers. The paper concludes by outlining a research agenda to explore the local and global consequences of the relationship between Rising Power clusters and international labour and environmental standards. (shrink)

The present paper explores, theoretically, and empirically, whether compliance with the International Code of marketing of breast-milk substitutes impacts on financial performance measured by stock markets. The empirical analysis, which considers a 20-year period, shows that stock markets are indifferent to the level of compliance by manufacturers with the International Code. Two important issues emerge from this result. Based on our finding that financial performance as measured by stock markets cannot explain the level of compliance, the first issue refers to (...) what alternative types of mechanisms drive manufacturers who comply the least with voluntary codes such as the International Code. Conversely, from our finding that stock markets do not reward the most compliant, the second issue raised is an inherent weakness of stock markets to fully incorporate social and environmental values. (shrink)

Does national success with an emerging technology require ethical sacrifices? This question is considered through the simultaneous consideration of ethics, investment, and outcomes in the nine jurisdictions that are making the largest investments in nanotechnologies—an important emerging technology. It is found that while ethical environment has no notable effect on pure and applied research, a more positive ethical environment is associated with measures associated with invention and commercialization. In summary, a race-to-the-top supports invention and commercialization of emerging technologies. A critical (...) finding as it suggests that issues such as corruption and regulation could be critical in limiting the extraction of social and economic benefit from emerging technologies (like nanotechnologies). (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We provide a brief history of the business and human rights discourse and scholarship, and an overview of the articles included in the special issue.

Abstract: Stakeholder theorists have typically offered both a business case and an ethics case for business ethics. I evaluate arguments for both approaches and find them wanting. I then shift the focus from ethics to law and ask: “Why should corporations obey the law?” Contrary to what shareholder theories typically imply, neoclassical or profit maximization theories of the firm can offer answers based only on instrumental justifications. Instrumental justifications for obeying the law, however, are pragmatically and normatively incoherent. This is (...) because the modern corporation is a legal artifact. It exists because communities create the legal framework necessary for its existence. Individual corporations can therefore be said to owe their existence to a partnership (what might be called a social contract) between shareholders and governments, a partnership that is itself built on the shared though often implicit understanding that corporations have an unconditional (categorical) obligation both to obey the law and to treat their stakeholders ethically while generating wealth for their shareholders. (shrink)

This article tracks Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as an emergent organizational process that places the employee at its center. Predominantly, research on CSR tends to focus on external pressures and outcomes leading to a neglect of CSR as a dynamic and developing process that relies on the involvement of the employee as a major stakeholder in its co-creation and implementation. Utilizing case study data drawn from a study of a large multinational energy company, we explore how management relies on employees' (...) interaction with CSR as the process of initiation → implementation → maturation develops. Employee involvement grows from a minor element in the CSR initiation stage to a vital contributory factor in CSR's success in the later stages of the process. The article offers new insights into a processual and interactional approach to CSR that accounts for the actions of different actors involved at each stage. Most unusually, it also recognizes the dual impact this has on broader issues concerning the management and involvement of employees through CSR actions, and gaining legitimacy in the eyes of not only external stakeholders but internal too. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Little theoretical attention has been paid to the question of what obligations corporations and other business enterprises have to the four billion people living at the base of the global economic pyramid. This article makes several theoretical contributions to this topic. First, it is argued that corporations are properly understood as agents of global justice. Second, the legitimacy of global governance institutions and the legitimacy of corporations and other business enterprises are distinguished. Third, it is argued that a deliberative democracy (...) model of corporate legitimacy defended by theorists of political CSR is unsatisfactory. Fourth, it is argued that a Rawlsian theoretical framework fails to provide a satisfactory account of the obligations of corporations regarding global justice. Finally, an ethical conception of CSR grounded in an appropriately modest set of duties tied to corporate relationships is then defended. This position is cosmopolitan in scope and grounded in overlapping arguments for human rights. (shrink)