Article

Transnational corporations and international law: Bringing TNCs out of the accountability vacuum

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Purpose This paper aims to highlight the disparity between the huge global influence and reach of transnational corporations, on the one hand, and the lack of international legal infrastructure for regulating TNC activity, on the other. Existing avenues for holding TNCs accountable for breaches of international standards are woefully inadequate. After rejecting the idea of subjecting TNCs to potential criminal liability, the paper then proposes a set of principles for international TNC responsibility modelled on the 2001 Draft Articles on State Responsibility. The potential future role of regional human rights courts and the International Labour Organisation in holding TNCs accountable is also explored. Design/methodology/approach A survey of existing legal texts and secondary scholarship was undertaken to determine the existing coverage of the regulatory infrastructure for holding TNCs to account, and to identify gaps in that coverage. Findings Significant governance gaps in the existing institutional infrastructure were identified, creating a permissive environment within which blameworthy acts by TNCs may occur without adequate sanctioning or reparation. Potential regulatory and institutional avenues for filling these gaps were identified. Research limitations/implications The author lacks hands‐on experience of the political barriers which may exist and may make the proposed reforms unrealistic. Those in the field are encouraged to consider whether the proposed reforms are feasible/desirable. Practical implications The paper contains implications for the future of international law, the regional human rights courts and the International Labour Organisation. Originality/value The paper contains original proposals for the future evolution of international law in its application to TNCs.

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... Governance gaps create a 'permissive environment within which blameworthy acts by corporations may occur without adequate sanctioning or reparation' (Ruggie 2008: para 3), resulting in environmental disasters and human rights abuses (Deva 2012). Governance gaps arise from factors such as globalisation and neoliberalism, elements of corporate law, the absence of extraterritorial legislation and an incapacity or unwillingness on the part of States to impose regulation upon the TNCs (Egels-Zanden 2009; de Jonge 2011;Deva 2012). This article examines the Guiding Principles as a regulatory initiative from the perspective of specific features of the Australian garment industry, wherein human rights abuses are well documented (Delaney 2010). ...
... Despite emerging evidence of human rights reporting among TNCs (Islam & Deegan 2010), firms are particularly reluctant to report on labour rights (Islam & McPhail 2011) and there is little evidence of firms inserting human rights considerations in business processes, such as human rights due diligence or establishing human rights advisory bodies. In general, research suggests that business activity continues to produce serious human rights harms (Ruggie 2008;de Jonge 2011), while existing regulatory initiatives have been inadequate to the task of holding firms accountable, especially at the transnational level (Islam & McPhail 2011;Deva 2012). ...
... Whereas many developed nations have enacted domestic laws imposing human rights obligations on business, for some developing nations, this has proved more challenging as the lure of firm investment in national economies outweighs other considerations. However, at the international level, there are currently no binding human rights obligations applying to corporations operating transnationally (de Jonge 2011;Deva 2012). The Australian evidence supports this picture: there exist various regulations protecting domestic human rights standards, such as the Occupational Health and Safety legislation; however, all Australian attempts to introduce an extraterritorial legislation have failed. ...
Conference Paper
This paper positions the Federation of Homeworkers Worldwide (FHWW) as a new organisational form within the global labour movement. The FHWW collaborates with a range of union and NGO organisations to support new organizing amongst informal, low paid women homebased workers in a broad range of sectors and global regions, although a large extent of its work has been in the textile, garment and footwear industries. The over-representation of women in informal and precarious work suggests that the gendered nature of global production remains an important site of investigation. This is further informed by the challenges to understand how workers may gain legitimacy or assert influence in the global production network (GPN). The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the role and activities of FHWW within the global labour movement, to understand how it supports women’s networks to build new labour organizing for women. Through our examination of the efforts of FHWW in India, we illustrate some recent initiatives to establish and build organisation of Sumangali and camp labour textile workers in Tamil Nadu, India. Trade unions appear to have little presence in these mills and have been further marginalised by the employer strategies to keep unions out. NGOs in the Tirupur region have been actively campaigning on this issue since the early 2000s, but little progress has been made towards collective organisation. The paper explores the question of why there is a need for a federation of informal workers and examines how it functions with minimal resources to work with informal worker groups, which in turn reveals important lessons for unions and labour rights groups around the possibilities of organizing with few resources and employing participatory, grass-roots strategies as opposed to top-down approaches.
... Governance gaps create a 'permissive environment within which blameworthy acts by corporations may occur without adequate sanctioning or reparation' (Ruggie 2008: para 3), resulting in environmental disasters and human rights abuses (Deva 2012). Governance gaps arise from factors such as globalisation and neoliberalism, elements of corporate law, the absence of extraterritorial legislation and an incapacity or unwillingness on the part of States to impose regulation upon the TNCs (Egels-Zanden 2009; de Jonge 2011;Deva 2012). This article examines the Guiding Principles as a regulatory initiative from the perspective of specific features of the Australian garment industry, wherein human rights abuses are well documented (Delaney 2010). ...
... Despite emerging evidence of human rights reporting among TNCs (Islam & Deegan 2010), firms are particularly reluctant to report on labour rights (Islam & McPhail 2011) and there is little evidence of firms inserting human rights considerations in business processes, such as human rights due diligence or establishing human rights advisory bodies. In general, research suggests that business activity continues to produce serious human rights harms (Ruggie 2008;de Jonge 2011), while existing regulatory initiatives have been inadequate to the task of holding firms accountable, especially at the transnational level (Islam & McPhail 2011;Deva 2012). ...
... Whereas many developed nations have enacted domestic laws imposing human rights obligations on business, for some developing nations, this has proved more challenging as the lure of firm investment in national economies outweighs other considerations. However, at the international level, there are currently no binding human rights obligations applying to corporations operating transnationally (de Jonge 2011;Deva 2012). The Australian evidence supports this picture: there exist various regulations protecting domestic human rights standards, such as the Occupational Health and Safety legislation; however, all Australian attempts to introduce an extraterritorial legislation have failed. ...
Article
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As corporations increasingly operate beyond national boundaries, the regulatory frame- works that monitor their conduct have not kept pace with the dynamic global playing field. Governance gaps are endemic to this environment, where corporate human rights abuses potentially transpire without sanction or reparation. This article investigates the human rights and business nexus in Australia, applying a labour rights lens. We examine two cases within the Australian garment industry: the Home Workers Code of Practice and Coles. We analyse the UN Guiding Principles as the baseline corporate responsibility to respect human rights in relation to two of our cases. The Regulation Theory is applied to explore the roles of three distinct actors: states, corporations and non-state actors. We also examine governance gaps as direct consequences of inade- quate regulatory frameworks provided by government. We conclude that in Australia, the human rights and business agenda is functioning at the superficial level with corporate responsibilities failing to be fully met and with little evidence of states complying with their duty to protect human rights abuses resulting from corporate misconduct.
... However, IB is either sustainable in essence, or it contributes to unsustainability. This is because its neutrality, innocence and separation from many global health phenomena is no longer defensible as in the exploitation of mineral resources (extractivism) (Acosta, 2013;Ayres, 2012), the incalculable human suffering caused by human rights abuses (Carasco and Singh, 2010;de Jonge, 2011) and structural violence across the developing world (Banerjee, 2011;Srikantia, 2016). In a soap opera economy, it appears that corporate scandals are a functional equivalent of what makes for a good publicity. ...
... To this end, "global health is IB and IB is international entrepreneurship and geopolitics" (Hymer, 1960(Hymer, /1976Ietto-Gillies, 2002). This is an interdisciplinary way of suggesting that IB has much to do with the existential issues such as climate change, environmental sustainability, the security of global food supply chains, global labor standards that respect human rights (de Jonge, 2011;Farmer, 2005;Mutua, 2001), global terrorism and poverty reduction or gender equality and the future of all the above (Ahen, 2017b). In the case of global food supply chains, for example, misleading and deceptive labelling of products occurs on a large scale and adulterators routinely put harmful chemicals into food for mass consumption (Weber, 2009). ...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The purpose of this study is to revisit the interdisciplinary roots of international business (IB) by challenging the compartmentalized and obscured nature of certain major themes in current IB research. Here, the author broadens IB’s natural scope by introducing the links with global health while preemptively removing the existing limits of critical perspectives. Design/methodology/approach The study synthesizes ignored common insights from IB and global health governance. It supplies a select composite of emerging themes mostly at the interface of IB and global health as foundational proposals for reengaging IB for radical social change. This is in response to the urgent calls for inquiries into the “extra dimensions” of IB in answering wicked questions of global sustainability, injustice and inequality and other emergent grand challenges whilst embracing novel conceptual, theoretical and empirical opportunities. Findings This study demonstrates that IB research in its current form is reductive, quintessentially compartmentalized and evidently weak in responding to the emergent wicked problems of global scale. This is because several layers of complex, burning interconnected questions with roots in IB hardly receive exposure in research although they are the very existential and emerging issues with massive impacts on populations both in home and host countries. Practical implications This study sets new research agendas for critically studying IB and global health topics of vital relevance to reflect the changing frontiers of knowledge production in the fourth industrial revolution. Originality/value This study calls for deeper and broader discussions about the limitless opportunities of cross-fertilization of IB and other disciplines whilst highlighting the heretofore-overlooked connections between IB and environmental and medico-techno-scientific disciplines.
... Giri, 2012). More recently, there has been a greater focus on transnational criminal enterprises and their strategy and structure (Enderwick, 2009) and on the need for legitimate MNEs to be made more accountable (de Jonge, 2011). Nonetheless, studies of such non-mainstream IB activities remain sporadic in nature and they do not provide any comprehensive explanation or tools to understand and analyse these widespread and rapidly growing illegal international business activities. ...
... In this chapter we have introduced a new strand of IB studies at a time when IB research has arguably reached a state of stagnancy, with activities focusing primarily on three major research areas, namely flows of foreign direct investment (FDI), MNE structure and strategy, and firm internationalization (Buckley, 2002). Notwithstanding the range of sources that we have drawn upon in writing this chapter (e.g. Brown and Cloke, 2011;de Jonge, 2011;Otusanya, 2011Otusanya, , 2012, an IB research agenda involving the types of black international business activities that we have outlined and addressed here has by and large been ignored in the mainstream IB research community. We hope that the opportunities for a different focus that are opened up by the black international business concept prompt and contribute to further expansion and elaboration of the critical management approach to IB scholarship. ...
Conference Paper
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We seek a climate where the global economy and open trade are growing, where democratic norms and respect for human rights are increasingly accepted and where terrorism, drug trafficking and international crime do not undermine stability and peaceful relations.
... Moreover, the marginalized live in the communities where extractive operations take place, water bodies are contaminated and forests as a source of livelihood are ploughed down [2,14,25,26]. The proper question is, why are gifts not a major feature of CSR in the West [27], but the handouts that capture headlines are seen as the desirable direction in developing economies [28] where most of the extractivism [25] and other forms of structural violence take place [14,25] The Congo and many resource-rich African countries speak volumes regarding this protracted issue of "planetary vandalism" [2] and looting machines [25,26,29] that hardly see accountability [30]. It is this ignored tragedy and the industrialized world's unquenchable thirst for resources and overconsumption that in part fuel the corrupt governance and poverty that President Dr. Horst Köhler (2014) [31] refers to as "the impossibility of speaking about Africa" and its silenced subjectivities and marginalization, especially in mainstream journals [12,15]. ...
... In weaker institutions, MNCs hardly act justly, given the weaker bargaining positions of these communities. Thus, for example, human rights abuses and the wrong use of corporate political power are common [26,30], but unfortunately, due to legal loopholes, deviant firms hardly face any real consequences in host nations besides government complicity and weakened regulatory institutions [41]. This is because the countries where they commit such insidious acts do not have the military power to ensure self-defense and retaliation. ...
Article
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and conceptions vary across sectors and nations. However, there is a general tendency among academics and practitioners to present CSR in Africa as activities characterized by philanthropy due to the existence of institutional voids. This review of the current literature demonstrates that weak institutions lead to weaker bargaining powers designed through the historical and geopolitical institutional frameworks of international business and global governance systems. Accordingly, multinational corporations (MNCs) take advantage of such weaknesses to define CSR on their own terms by replacing the ideal responsible and sustainable innovations with ad hoc philanthropy that diverts the attention from the negative consequences of neoliberal ‘structures of accumulation’. This is akin to aid that hardly contributes to structural changes, but rather leads to complacency, corruption, dependency, boutique projects, disguised exploitation, and the misuse of corporate political power to achieve corporate bottom lines. The implications of the results are vast, and they are generalizable to all weaker institutional settings. Thus, weaker institutions create the necessary regulatory, political, economic, and governance climate that perpetuates a pattern of abuses and ethical violations that are then masked with philanthropy. It is argued that the fundamental institutional and geopolitical contexts within which MNCs interact with nation states cannot be ignored in any comprehensive analysis that seeks to meaningfully shed light on the comparative differences of CSR practices. The neglect of the web of contextual, historical, and geopolitical issues in which CSR is entrenched and framed diverts attention from the origins of the socio-economic and environmental questions to philanthropy as a final solution, which has hitherto been perpetuated with undesirable outcomes.
... When MNCs influence what happens to our common pool resources (CPRs) more than what governments in the Global South ever wish to achieve-that is, if the government exists beyond the artificial façade (de Jonge 2011;Strange 1996;Shamir 2008), it raises new questions about the future of our CPRs. Here, the institutions of these contexts are mostly not necessarily dysfunctional or void but have been captured (Dal Bó 2006;Laffont and Tirole 1991) by external interests. ...
... The surrounding politics in the attempt to sustain the unsustainable are camouflaged in symbolic politics (Blühdorn 2007), 'symbolic environmental legislation and societal selfdeception' (Newig 2007), as well as symbolic commitments and declaratory politics (Baker 2007). Organisations symbolically agree but do not proactively act on their promises or established industry standards as recurrent corporate scandals on emissions, human right abuses and environmental degradation continue to demonstrate (Crane 2013;de Jonge 2011). Many MNCs rather choose to circumvent demands to adapt to sustainable policies and other institutional expectations through other symbolic strategies. ...
Article
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Global health and environmental wellbeing are mutually reinforcing and interdependent. This mutuality invokes two major analytical orientations: it emphasizes a direct nexus between ecological strategies and global health outcomes. These in turn revitalize the essential quest for comprehensive policies and responsible strategies for enhancing both ecology and health within the discourse of sustainability. With orientation towards political conception of corporate responsibility, I problematize the root questions of the democratic embeddedness of the firm under conditions of weakened institutional structures. I highlight the inherent power relations in global health and ecological governance through literature mapping. I address the question: Why and how might ecological strategies be embedded in corporate day-to-day actions to produce optimal outcomes that have positive effects on global health and human dignity? Besides resource and ethical/political constraints, there are several micro-political, geopolitical, industrial, institutional and structural impediments to ecological and health sustainability. This grim diagnosis is clearly a description of a ‘disturbingly fascinating’ pathology of global capitalism whose industrial effects culminate in the accumulation of more profits for a few at the expense of the ecological sustainability of the majority. That notwithstanding, there are several grounds for optimism with a move from anthropocentrism to humanistic eco-centrism via deliberative democratic procedures. Here, the centrality of human dignity is emphasized. This study provides an interdisciplinary theoretical model that seeks to reorient strategies towards restoration, protection, mitigation, adaptation, harm avoidance and innovative sustainability of the whole economic gamut and biodiversity that supports global health. Thus, I rearticulate ecological sustainability in terms of its most fundamental means and end: sustainable global health and the tutelage of human dignity.
... Corporate governance is defined within an institutional theoretical setting. More research is gradually being published about the influence of institutional and structural conditions on CSR (Campbell, 2007;De Jonge, 2011), suggesting the critical role of the governance system (Matten & Moon 2008;McCarthy & Puffer, 2002;2008;Scherer & Palazzo, 2011) and the governance structure (Luoma & Goodstein, 1999;De Graaf & Herkströter, 2007, Filatotchev & Nakajima 2014. DiMaggio and Powell's (1983) work on the institutional context of a company is extremely pertinent in this respect. ...
... The governance perspective offers opportunities for further research into the role of multinational companies in global public policy networks, an emerging focus in both business and society research (Detomasi, 2007;Scherer & Palazzo, 2011;Jonge, 2011;Sanders 2012). ...
Article
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Purpose Using the global financial crisis as a critical event and based on institutional theory and stakeholder theory, this paper aims to explore the relationship between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The question is how stakeholders can influence corporate responses to societal change by using their position in the governance structure. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on a historical analysis of data collected mainly between 2002 and 2004. The historical perspective enables an understanding of the response of the company to environmental changes. Findings The approach enables researchers to relate the normative component of CSR to specific governance mechanisms. These governance mechanisms are specified in direct and indirect influence pathways. Historical data shed light on how, in the upbeat of the crisis, stakeholders have influenced the principles and policies of the ING Group, a Dutch financial company. Research limitations/implications The paper suggests that stakeholders influence principles – normative assumptions that guide corporate decisions – mainly in dialogue-based meetings (direct influence pathways). Companies are made accountable in indirect influence pathways such as regulations. The author also demonstrates that a historical approach enables an understanding of long-term historical developments and the linking of corporate policies to the normative assumptions of stakeholders. Practical implications If stakeholders wish to assess the social responsibility of a company, then they should assess the governance structure in relation to the principles and policies. The power structure within a company and that within the institutional framework in which the company operates (the governance system) strongly influences how a company executes its social responsibilities. Social implications The paper demonstrates how stakeholders can use the governance structure to influence a bank. If society – or a specific group in society – wants banks to play a different role, this paper points to what could be the levers of change in the governance system and the governance structure. Originality/value Insights into the complex relationship between corporate governance and the processes in which the social responsibilities of a company are developed.
... Giri, 2012). More recently, there has been a greater focus on transnational criminal enterprises and their strategy and structure (Enderwick, 2009) and on the need for legitimate MNEs to be made more accountable (de Jonge, 2011). Nonetheless, studies of such non-mainstream IB activities remain sporadic in nature and they do not provide any comprehensive explanation or tools to understand and analyse these widespread and rapidly growing illegal international business activities. ...
... In this chapter we have introduced a new strand of IB studies at a time when IB research has arguably reached a state of stagnancy, with activities focusing primarily on three major research areas, namely flows of foreign direct investment (FDI), MNE structure and strategy, and firm internationalization (Buckley, 2002). Notwithstanding the range of sources that we have drawn upon in writing this chapter (e.g. Brown and Cloke, 2011;de Jonge, 2011;Otusanya, 2011Otusanya, , 2012, an IB research agenda involving the types of black international business activities that we have outlined and addressed here has by and large been ignored in the mainstream IB research community. We hope that the opportunities for a different focus that are opened up by the black international business concept prompt and contribute to further expansion and elaboration of the critical management approach to IB scholarship. ...
Chapter
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In this paper, we explore the ‘darker’ faces of international business (IB). Over a decade ago, Eden and Lenway (2001) raised the need for examining both the ‘bright’ and the ‘dark’ side of globalization in order to achieve a better understanding of the concept and of its impact on IB activities. In doing this, they posited the multinational enterprise (MNE) as the ‘key agent’ and ‘face’ of globalization and discussed, primarily, the relationship between MNEs and nation-states as the central interface of its impact. Additionally, they posited that, by and large, the communityof IB scholars positioned themselves at the bright end of the globalization spectrum, seeing it as essentially positive, whilst most non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international political economy (IPE) academics set themselves at the dark end. Whilst they acknowledged their own ‘bright side’ tendencies, they called for a more nuanced consideration of MNEs as what they referred to as the ‘Janus face’ of globalization. Here, adopting the ambivalent frame that Eden and Lenway (2001) advocated, we accept that globalization and IB activity have both beneficial and negative impacts. However, in so doing, we wish to prompt the type of critical thinking on the negative features that these authors identify as largely absent from the mainstream IB academic discourse. Taking a ‘dark side’ standpoint, we might assume that the human desire for power and authority, together with what some consider greed for money and resources, have been major drivers of IB activities over time (cf. Banfield, 1975; Boddewyn and Brewer, 1994). Looking beyond the MNE/nation-state relationship, in the contemporary world of IB, we find many activities that fall outside this domain. These range from questionable sourcing of minerals in Central Africa (cf. Ayres, 2012) to criminal trade in heroin and human trafficking. Throughout history, from the slave trade of ancient times to modern-day trafficking, and from legal trade in arms to the illicit disposal of electronic waste (cf. BAN, 2005), IB has encompassed many contentious activities carried out by a wide range of legitimate, illicit and criminal organizations. Building on concepts of the ‘black economy’ and the ‘black market’, developed to describe some of these endeavours, in this chapter we develop the concept and terminology of ‘black international business’ (‘black IB’) and we define and discuss it from an ethical–legal perspective. Having introduced the concept of black IB and outlined the complexities of ethical–legal deliberation, we offer a taxonomy of black IB typologies which is intended to promote and support more detailed consideration of the full range of actors involved, the impacts of activity by and on them, and ethical deliberation on courses of action in response to these activities. Our framework for ethical consideration is grounded in Aristotle’s (350BC/2004) intellectual virtue of phronēsis – or ‘practical wisdom’. Aristotle outlines phronēsis as moral deliberation to inform action for the good of ‘man’ (sic). Here, we draw upon Flyvbjerg’s (2001, 2003) contemporary social science interpretation of phronēsis and his four ‘value-rational’ questions for interrogating courses of action. These require explicit consideration of the interests of all involved and affected stakeholders and, specifically, of issues of power. We hope that this paper will both prompt and contribute to critical research, deliberation and teaching on the full range of IB activities and their impacts across both the global community of stakeholders and the environment in which they live, both now and in the future.
... 9 A rules-based level playing field generally enhances welfare and creates a fair competition, even though there are situations where asymmetric rules are desirable. 10 A level playing field issue can be considered from a different perspective: the perspective of a municipal authority, a national authority, or a supranational body like the European Union. 11 In the international market problems exist due to different state regulations as commonly the market is larger than the jurisdiction of one state. ...
Article
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A level playing field is enabled when business enterprises can freely compete in the market. However, they cannot compete freely if different rules apply to them. Therefore internationally accepted human rights have to be respected by all business enterprises, no matter their size, sector, ownership and the state of operations. The purpose of the paper is to identify three criteria by which it is possible to achieve a level playing field in business and to examine the criteria using respect for human rights as an example. Using a descriptive method and a method of analysis, the author argues that without the universal minimum standards of respect for human rights a level playing field in business cannot be possible. This will be feasible only with the adoption of a binding international instrument and imposing sanctions on the international level. Consequently, establishing of an international judicial mechanism with a power to sanction corporate human rights abuse is of vital importance.
... In sustainability reports there is no space for acknowledging and responding to critical reporting, and the distinctive character of corporate publications is generally one of reduction of complexity (as in Boiral, 2013Boiral, , 2016Hahn & Lulfs, 2014;Talbot & Boiral, 2018). The absence of an independent third-party ensuring fair accountability allows corporations to construct their own version of facts (Laufer, 2003), while the difficulty in building and enforcing international monitoring instruments and mechanisms reinforces the limited liability of TNCs (De Jonge, 2011). ...
Article
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Unlabelled: Controversies around large-scale development projects offer many cases and insights which may be analyzed through the lenses of corporate social (ir)responsibility (CSIR) and business ethics studies. In this paper, we confront the CSR narratives and strategies of WeBuild (formerly known as Salini Impregilo), an Italian transnational construction company. Starting from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas), we collect evidence from NGOs, environmental justice organizations, journalists, scholars, and community leaders on socio-environmental injustices and controversies surrounding 38 large hydropower schemes built by the corporation throughout the last century. As a counter-reporting exercise, we code (un)sustainability discourses from a plurality of sources, looking at their discrepancy under the critical lenses of post-normal science and political ecology, with environmental justice as a normative framework. Our results show how the mismatch of narratives can be interpreted by considering the voluntary, self-reporting, non-binding nature of CSR accounting performed by a corporation wishing to grow in a global competitive market. Contributing to critical perspectives on political CS(I)R, we question the reliability of current CSR mechanisms and instruments, calling for the inclusion of complexity dimensions in and a re-politicization of CS(I)R accounting and ethics. We argue that the fields of post-normal science and political ecology can contribute to these goals. Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10551-021-04946-6.
... To this end, "global health is IB and IB is international entrepreneurship and geopolitics" (Hymer, 1960(Hymer, /1976Ietto-Gillies, 2002). This is an interdisciplinary way of suggesting that IB has much to do with the existential issues such as climate change, environmental sustainability, the security of global food supply chains, global labor standards that respect human rights (de Jonge, 2011;Farmer, 2005;Mutua, 2001), global terrorism and poverty reduction or gender equality and the future of all the above (Ahen, 2017b). In the case of global food supply chains, for example, misleading and deceptive labelling of products occurs on a large scale and adulterators routinely put harmful chemicals into food for mass consumption (Weber, 2009). ...
Article
Purpose This paper aims to address the relationship between critical and mainstream international business (IB) research and discuss the ways forward for the former. Design/methodology/approach The paper empirically maps critical IB scholarship by analysing more than 250 academic articles published in critical perspectives on international business ( cpoib ) from 2005 to 2017. The paper also includes a citation analysis that uncovers how critical IB research is recognized and discussed in mainstream IB studies. Findings The extant critical IB research can be broken into five main topical clusters: positioning critical IB research, postcolonial IB studies, effects of international business activities, financialization and the global financial crisis and “Black IB” and corporate social responsibility. The citation analysis demonstrates that critical IB research is rarely recognized in mainstream IB academic outlets. Originality/value This paper is the first to empirically map critical IB research and to measure its impact on mainstream IB research. Based on these insights, as well as discussions of the more critical voices within mainstream IB studies and the debate over critical performativity in critical management studies, ways of developing critical IB research are examined.
... Stakeholder notions in their current form are not helping the cause of the marginalized, distal and weak stakeholders [39,40] given their weakened social status, economic powerlessness and lack of agency and voice [8,22]. This makes it difficult for perpetrators of environmental degradation to be held responsible [9,41,42]. By perpetrators we do not only mean the firms that produce externalities or public bad but also firms that do not honor their legal and social obligations which they could have done with the power and resources gained from society and its environment [43][44][45]. ...
Article
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This paper has a three-fold purpose: to challenge the current conceptualization of firm-stakeholder engagement, to popularize ‘allemansrätten’, the Scandinavian social innovation tradition for environmental value creation and environmental governance for ensuring ecological balance, and to introduce the concept of usufructual rights and the tutelage of natural resources for promoting human dignity. We underscore the deficiencies in the current stakeholder paradigm by pinpointing the specific essential catalysts that move the stakeholder theory to a new paradigm of a universal stakeownership. This is a quest to ensure the preservation and sustainability of natural resources and life support systems within specific institutional orders. We employ an adaptive research approach based on the Finnish/Nordic ecological case with a focus on the concept of ‘everyman’s right’: Everyone has the freedom to enjoy Finland’s/Scandinavia’s forests and lakes but with that also comes everyman’s responsibility to preserve the country’s nature for future generations. We argue that uncritically valorizing the universalized position of the current understanding of stakeholdership, with its flourish of contradictory and inaccurate characterization of global sustainability, retroactively aborts our ecological ideals from the uterus of preferred futures at the expense of humanity as a whole for the benefit of a few speculators and profiteers. Thus, we are woven into an ecological and economic tapestry whose present and future the current generation is accountable for in the era of universal stakeownership for a crucial evolutionary adaptation. This, however, cannot come about without fundamentally ‘democratizing’ resource democracy from the grassroots and questioning the global power structure that decides on the distributive effects of resources.
... Evidence indicates that strong national (and sub-national) regulation is required to mediate the health impacts of TNCs [144] on health and equity. Australian activists monitoring Rio Tinto's coal mining operations spoke of their 'battle' against the power of both Rio Tinto and government: ...
Article
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Background Operations of transnational corporations (TNCs) affect population health through production methods, shaping social determinants of health, or by influencing regulation of their activities. Research on community exposures to TNC practices and policies has been limited. Our research on extractive industries examined Rio Tinto in Australia and Southern Africa to test methods for assessing the health impacts of corporates in high and middle income jurisdictions with different regulatory frameworks. Methods We adapted existing Health Impact Assessment methods. Data identifying potential impacts were sourced through media analysis, document analysis, company literature and semi-structured interviews. The data were mapped against a corporate health impact assessment framework (CHIA) which included Rio Tinto’s political and business practices; productions; and workforce, social, environmental and economic conditions. Results Both positive and detrimental aspects of Rio Tinto’s operations were identified. Requirements imposed by Rio Tinto on its global supply chain are likely to have positive health impacts for workers. However, political lobbying and membership of representative organisations can influence government policy in ways that are unfavourable to health and equity. Positive impacts include provision of direct employment under decent working conditions, but countered by an increase in precariousness of employment. Commitments to upholding sustainable development principles are undermined by limited site remediation and other environmental impacts. Positive contributions are made to national and local economies but then undermined by business strategies that include tax minimisation. Conclusion Our study confirmed that it is possible to undertake a CHIA on an extractive industry TNC. The different methods provided sufficient information to understand the need to strengthen regulations that are conducive to health; the opportunity for Rio Tinto to extend corporate responsibility initiatives and support their social licence to operate; and for civil society actors to inform their advocacy towards improving health and equity outcomes from TNC operations.
... -seems to obligate businesses to play dirty to maximize profits. By this view, MNEs cannot be trusted to behave ethically (Arora and Dharwadkar 2011;de Jonge 2011). Responding to endoisomorphic pressure, they exploit the lowest standards, taking advantage of countries where environmental regulations are weak (Ghemawat 2007). ...
Article
Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are often accused of taking advantage of lax environmental regulations in developing countries. However, no quantitative analysis of the impact of doing business in nations of different income levels on environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) has been done prior to this study. Incorporating institutional factors in our approach, we argue that endoisomorphic and exoisomorphic pressures relating to ECSR impact MNEs differently according to the MNEs’ level of activity in low-, lower-middle-, upper-middle-, and high-income nations. We predict and, using data from 113 companies, find that selling in poorer nations is positively associated with increased levels of ECSR. Our research suggests that MNEs may not be participating in a “race to the bottom” but may instead be responding to global institutional pressure by exceeding local norms for environmental stewardship. Alternative interpretations of our findings are discussed.
... The units make up the independent variable that resulted to the movement in the costs. The creation of a regression analysis illustrates the point (Jonge, 2011). The development of the cost structure is essential in this case.The straight line reflects the connection that exists in the four observations. ...
Article
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Concentrated ownership has been speculated to play a direct role in leading firms to focus more on long-term sustainability. Concentrated ownership, however, can take many different forms, with some forms more common in certain countries, and we posit that the specific form of ownership mediates the impact on sustainability. Additionally, we posit that firms operating at different scales have fundamentally different characteristics which can further impact this relationship. Analyzing a sample of firms from the USA, UK, and Germany using Arellano- Bond GMM, we investigate the relationship between ownership concentration, firm growth and sustainability measures comparatively. Our results show that these relationships are not linear, but are rather dependent on the prevalent form of ownership concentration (determined by country) and the scale (small, medium or large) of the firm. Approaches to sustainability appear to be influenced by not just the owners / investors but also by the type of control and broader contexts, explaining differing national trends.
... The units make up the independent variable that resulted to the movement in the costs. The creation of a regression analysis illustrates the point (Jonge, 2011). The development of the cost structure is essential in this case. ...
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This study was done to investigate the role of external auditing in activating the governance for controlling banking risk. The study was mainly focused on Jordanian banking sector. Data for this study was collected using structured and non-structured questionnaires. The questionnaires were distributed randomly to internal auditors in different banks in Jordan. To ensure that accurate result was achieved, hypotheses testing was done using sample-t-test where alternative hypotheses were accepted and null hypotheses rejected. The most valid result that was obtained in this study was that external auditing was the main tool that is able to activate the governance of banking risk. The result showed that with the existence of external auditors, the management of a bank has to be very vigilant to ensure that there are no financial risks affecting banking sector of Jordan. Most vital recommendation determined by the researcher was to ensure that the banking sector of Jordan keeps proper financial records in order to mitigate the extent of financial risk. It is also recommended for all financial institutions in Jordan to adopt the use of accounting information technology to improve accounting functions of the banks. In this research study, 11 different banks were investigated to provide actual evidence of the roles external auditing play in activating governance to mitigate financial risk. 70% of the banks showed that external audit activate the management governance while only 30% of the Jordan banks denied that fact. The aim of this research was to determine the roles played by external audit to manage risk. The main focus was on banking sector of Jordan. In this analysis, were able to determine different risks which affects banking sector of Jordan. Finally, the banking sector of Jordan must adopt international accounting standards such as transparency, accountability, integrity and objectivity when preparing financial statements.
... Not only could this enliven thinking on social and class relations in the field, but it could also improve our understanding of institutional dynamics. For example, IB studies on TNCs and the state or on TNCs and law (such as De Jonge, 2011) could take into account works looking at the emergent transnationality of many state apparatuses and the technocratic state elites operating through them ( Jayasuriya, 1999, Robinson, 2001, 2004 Sprague, 2010 Sprague, , 2012). While taking up a different approach, Faulconbridge (2010) has similarly suggested more cross-pollination between the fields. ...
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss economic and social issues of contemporary capitalism through the views and works of Grazia Ietto-Gillies who has a long experience of research in these fields. The issues relate to strategies of TNCs, to globalization and transnationalization, to internationalization indices, to linkages between innovation and internationalization, to uneven development, and, finally, to issues related to the economics profession and the dissemination of research in the twenty-first century. Design/methodology/approach – In-depth interview; use of relevant literature to support statements by interviewer and interviewee; qualitative analysis of issues discussed. Findings – The article links together under the same theoretical umbrella the following issues: a theory of TNCs based on strategic approach towards labour, governments and suppliers; the development of an internationalization index based on the geography of TNCs' networks; and the possible impact of internationalization on innovation. Uneven development is linked to current problems in Europe. The need and opportunity to reconsider the economics profession and the peer review system in the digitalization era is presented. Research limitations/implications – The article is based on the views of the interviewer and the interviewee. Their views are backed by their own previous research as well as by research by other scholars cited in the article. Practical implications – The interview draws policy implication in relation to TNCs and other actors who interact with them such as labour and governments. There are also policy implications in the economic and social spheres regarding the implications of TNCs' strategies and the aftermath of the 2007/2008 crisis. Originality/value – At the methodological level the article highlights the advantages of in-depth interviews. Specifically, it allows the interviewee to give an overall perspective on her research and to show how the various strands are connected and how they developed through the decades of her research. It allows both interviewer and interviewee to link the issues to a variety of literatures in the economics, sociology and politics fields.
... A key question in the governance of CSR is whether a corporation can be made legally accountable for its social responsibilities (de Jonge, 2011). A variety of legal mechanisms could be used to encourage, even enforce the discretionary and voluntary aspects of CSR. ...
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that there are structural and functional limits to corporate social responsibility (CSR) that determine the boundary conditions of corporate social initiatives. The current preoccupation with win-win situations in CSR may not serve societal interests. For CSR to produce social outcomes that are not necessarily constrained by corporate rationality there needs to be a change in the normative framework of public decision making at the institutional level. The author develops a global governance framework for CSR that provides more democratic forms of decision making in the political economy that will enable corporate social responsibility to overcome the constraints imposed by corporate rationality. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper and critique. Findings – The author develops a global governance framework for CSR that provides more democratic forms of decision making in the political economy that will enable corporate social responsibility to overcome the constraints imposed by corporate rationality. Originality/value – The paper contributes to theoretical development of CSR.
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Corporate Social Responsibility Across the Globe demonstrates many ways that CSR can be applied by law to overcome regulation and governance challenges around the world. Using interdisciplinary and comparative models and perspectives, the book challenges dominant understandings of CSR, such as neoliberal voluntarism, and demonstrates the regulatory and governance implications of an interdependent relationship between CSR and the law. The book identifies substantive and procedural barriers for CSR in national, public, and private international law. By analyzing, deconstructing, and reframing CSR in these contexts, the book underlines opportunities for more effective application of CSR as a governance mechanism. Chapters investigate relevant regulation concepts, paradigms and approaches for CSR; methods for infusing CSR in corporate governance; and ways to facilitate private regulation of CSR in more developed, emerging, and developing jurisdictions.
Article
The regulation of labour in the workplace is never an easy task but it is even more complex and challenging if it has to take place across national borders in a globalised world. Globalisation and a transnational labour environment impact on the ability of the employer to regulate or manage a labour force that is based in different countries. The migration of workers across national borders, the existence of multinational companies and the demands of transnational labour relations present management with many challenges. This article is premised on the conviction that corporate social responsibility codes and other codes of conduct, due to their voluntary nature, are not enough to effectively manage and regulate labour in a transnational environment. The authors suggest that international framework agreements are a far more effective management tool for transnational labour regulation.
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This article investigates the Bangladeshi garment industry that supplies ready-made garments for global brands and the corporate social responsibilities (CSRs) of the brands/multinational corporations (MNCs) towards their supply chains. Although outsourcing and global trade have boosted the living standards of many people in the Bangladeshi garment industry, there are some significant concerns regarding the working conditions and treatment of workers in these supply chains. This, in turn, cannot, and should not, be detached from the legal relationship between the Bangladeshi supply chains and the MNCs contracting with them. This article examines the impact of COVID-19, which has exposed the fragility and the pre-existing flaws in the relationship between the MNCs and their suppliers more clearly than at any other time in history. There is a huge governance gap between MNCs and supply chains that needs to be addressed urgently. This article assesses the legality of the cancellation of orders by the brands that invoked the force majeure clause. In doing so, this paper briefly deals with the responses of three American retail companies, namely Sears, Kohl’s, and the Arcadia Group, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It illustrates that the power asymmetry between the MNCs and their suppliers has put the supply chains in an unreasonably disadvantageous position, creating unfair and even unconscionable conduct by several MNCs. This article also looks at solutions for the existing problems, focusing, inter alia , on non-financial reporting requirements in the US and the EU to implement CSR in supply chains. However, disappointingly, the authors had to conclude that MNCs typically have the propensity to disregard CSR, whenever it is convenient for them and use CSR for mere “greenwashing” purposes for their strategic benefit only. It is a problem that requires constant attention and continuing research to find long-term solutions. The article employs doctrinal methodology and, by conducting a meta-analysis of literature and case-studies, it provides a comprehensive understanding of how the industry works.
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This open access book documents and analyses the various interventions – legal, political, and even artistic – that followed the Ali Enterprises factory fire in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2012. It illuminates the different substantive and procedural aspects of the legal proceedings and negotiations between the various local and transnational actors implicated in the Ali Enterprises fire, as well as the legal and policy reforms sparked by the incident. This endeavour serves to embed these legal cases and reform efforts in the larger context of human and labour rights protection and global value chain governance. It also offers a concrete case study relevant for ongoing debates around the role of transnational approaches in making human rights litigation, advocacy, and law reform more effective. In this regard, the book interrogates and critically reflects on such legal campaigns and local and transnational reform work with a view to future transformative legal and social activism.
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Corporations, in their quest for the highest profit margin, have violated human rights, labour rights and environmental standards for decades, with little to no accountability. In recent years, the fight for corporate accountability under the banner of “Business and Human Rights” has come to dominate civil society’s engagement with the “question of the corporation.” This chapter aims to critically examine the political objectives underpinning the broad-church project of Business and Human Rights in its world-making aspirations, taking the Legally Binding Instrument currently under discussion at the UN Human Rights Council as a case study. Using a historical narrative approach, this article first situates the evolution of Business and Human Rights within neoliberal globalisation and, against this backdrop, attempts to think through the “dark side” of this particular strand of human rights activism. By bringing critical legal scholarship on the corporation and human rights into closer conversation with Business and Human Rights, the article aims to excavate the latter’s structural flaws, namely that it leaves the asymmetries in the global economy and the imperial corporate form unchallenged. By problematising Business and Human Rights’ presupposition of business as fact and its uncritical embrace of rights as positive change-makers, the article presents an invitation to rethink strategic political objectives vis-à-vis corporate rights abuses.
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The present article is a review of the prospective adoption of a legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations (TNCs) and other business enterprises presently being developed under U.N. auspices, aiming for legal control of TNCs’ business functioning. The necessity for international legal control of their business’ functioning with respect to human rights cannot be underestimated as their influence has grown since striving for dominance in world commodity markets and in leading sectors of the global economy. However, quite a number of scholars question the fact that TNCs are not presently recognized as legal personalities rendering the immediate application of international law principles to their business activities all but practically impossible. At the same time, the majority of so called “soft law” principles developed in the U.N. framework in the past fifty years are nothing more than recommendations to TNCs, thus, emphasizing the urgency of developing a legally binding instrument which primarily governs transnational corporations with respect to human rights. Nevertheless, the prospective adoption of a future treaty, currently being developed by the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights, does not look highly promising due to a number of fundamental flaws and inconsistencies analyzed below.
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En argumentant qu’une approche interdisciplinaire doit être choisie lorsqu’un phénomène international chevauche différentes disciplines, cet article illustre une telle nécessité en utilisant le cas de l’analyse de l’évolution de la codification des responsabilités des investisseurs étrangers. Une revue de la littérature démontre que l’analyse de ce phénomène nécessite autant une prise en compte du contenu et de l’application des instruments internationaux que des relations de pouvoir entre les acteurs impliqués. Parce que de tels facteurs explicatifs sont respectivement les objets d’analyse du Droit international et des Relations internationales, cette analyse requiert une approche interdisciplinaire et contribue ultimement à consolider la pertinence des Études internationales.
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This book explores the emergence and development of the legal concept of fair and equitable benefit-sharing, and its application in agriculture. Developed in the 1990s, the concept of fair and equitable benefit-sharing has been deployed in an ever-wider variety of international instruments, including those on biodiversity, climate change and human rights. A lack of clarity persists, however, on what fair and equitable benefit-sharing requires and entails, and whether its implementation supports or eventually undermines equity and justice. This book examines these questions in the area of land, food and agriculture, addressing for the first time several instances of the agricultural production chain, including research and development, land governance and land use and access to markets. It identifies challenges regarding implementation of the concept as enshrined in environmental treaties and soft-law instruments, with a focus on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, the Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants. It investigates its role, enabling conditions and limitations, in a contradictory policy context involving environmental, food security and human rights objectives but also a growing web of multilateral and bilateral trade and investment agreements. Linking international law research with a socio-legal analysis, the book addresses four grassroots examples, which offer ideas for institutional and legal innovation from the local to the global level.
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The chapter draws insights from the institutional theoretic model to investigate the role of courts and other formal adjudicative institutions in promoting sustainable development. Its tripartite institutions framework emphasises the knowledge and communicative elements of sustainable development flowing from key social actors such as adjudicative institutions to other segments of society. Using environmental protection as a case study and making references to national laws and judicial decisions, the chapter demonstrates that adjudicative institutions can manifest a commitment to sustainable development, affirm applicable global standards influence other actors in, and segments of, society. It is argued that the regulatory role of adjudicative institutions includes constitutionalisation of sustainable development, empowerment of individuals and stakeholder groups and addressing vulnerability of victims while the normative role ensures the internalisation and transmission of sustainable development values. The cognitive role includes reshaping local practices by promoting effective glocalisation and appropriate corporate governance and social responsibility for sustainable development. While it shows adjudicative institutions as a key champion for sustainable development in the public and private spheres, the chapter proposes solutions to overcoming impediments to such as lack of explicit provisions, narrowly focusing on compensatory remedies, locus standi, forum non conveniens and choice of law.
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The chapter draws on the legal, institutional and stakeholder perspectives to develop a septet framework that provides clarity to the concept of sustainable consumption and production and aligns consumer protection to sustainable development in developing countries. This contextualises the roles of consumers and corporations as institutional actors and consumption as an institution. The chapter uniquely unbundles the concept as consisting of six foundational components: sustainable consumption by proximate consumers for future generations; sustainable production for future generations; sustainable consumption by/for proximate consumers; sustainable production for proximate consumers; participation by proximate consumers; and CSR. The septet framework challenges conventional approaches to consumer vulnerability, disclosure regulation, contract law, consumer responsibilisation, stakeholder, corporate governance, institutional voids and international cooperation. The chapter’s interventionist consumer protection law approach includes public interest-oriented disclosure regulation, distributive justice-oriented contract law, resolution of business-to-consumer information asymmetry, credible corporate social reporting and certification standards, distributed/shared consumer responsibilisation, stakeholder enforcement rights, obligations and protection, independent stakeholder determination of standards, resolution of related agency problems through a stakeholder approach to corporate governance and international cooperation in regulatory standards and enforcement. It is also argued that a consumer protection approach to sustainable development can promote stakeholder engagement and meaningful corporate social responsibility.
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Purpose This paper aims to explore the links between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and human rights abuses and review the development of international business (IB) and human rights initiatives. Arguing that the focus of the business and human rights debate has shifted from responsibility to rights, and subsequently to governance, it proposes a framework for analysing IB and human rights governance issues in the context of social value creation. Design/methodology/approach The paper develops a framework for analysing business and human rights governance with respect to the business and human rights field and four business and human rights subfields (labour, consumption, community and environment). Findings The analytical framework is organised around the relationships between human rights duty-bearers (companies) and human rights-holders (e.g., employees, consumers). It emphasises the role of actors and their interests, the relationships between actors, the objectives of these relationships and the role of governance mechanisms and structures, which, for a particular human rights subfield, define the IB and human rights governance system. Originality/value The analytical framework can be used by IB researchers, practitioners and public policymakers to describe, analyse, discuss and address business and human rights issues and challenges. It can be used for comparing and evaluating characteristics and properties of alternative institutional arrangements in the field of business and human rights. Furthermore, it can be used to support the design corporate non-market strategies as well as public policies.
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This article analyses contractual governance practices within the value chains of large companies based in the USA and Europe between 2012 and 2017 with focus on human and labour rights. In line with the existing scholarship, we find that the use of contractual governance for safeguarding human and labour rights is best practice among large American and European businesses. The results show that value chain contractual governance should be studied in an interdisciplinary environment taking both legal and non-legal aspects into consideration. Moreover, we detect a general positive impact of the business and human rights regulatory wave of 2010–2011 on sustainable contractual governance practices.
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There is an increasing emphasis on codes in both international private law and specifically in efforts to encourage businesses to take on a greater share of the social costs of their activity. This chapter argues in the first instance the view that codes by themselves are inadequate to the task. While from an institutional perspective, they may be of some use driving changes to the norms of the institutional environment, from a legal point of view, they are but one piece of a regulatory system. Codes set out the norms and as such provide a foundation upon which a regulatory system stands. And, as all regulatory systems are aimed at guiding behaviour to achieve certain desired ends they are norm based. Codes that are not integrated into a coherent regulatory system suffer from their status as a stand-alone solution, are orphaned and destined for obscurity. Thus for codes to be effective, they must be embedded within a regulatory system that includes the necessary administrative and institutional infrastructure. The chapter develops a second line of argument that CSR can be best understood as form of international private business regulation. As such, CSR requires a coherent set of norms and appropriate complementary regulatory system components including some form of code. The chapter proceeds by first examining codes and taking an example of a code-only approach through an analysis of ISO 26000. It then turns to examine the design of regulatory systems and the place of codes within such systems. Next it lays out the landscape of CSR (problems of politics) and provides a well-justified definition. Finally it concludes with a summary of issues to be addressed in moving ahead with effective TNC conduct regulation.
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Despite a number of failed attempts at creating a binding instrument governing the responsibilities of transnational corporations, the United Nations has established an open-ended intergovernmental working group (OEIWG) mandated to “elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.” The OEIWG will face many questions, including those related to (1) the scope of the rights the instrument will protect; (2) the range of businesses it will govern; (3) the obligations that it will impose on states vis-à-vis transnational corporations and their related entities; (4) whether it will apply directly to transnational corporations; (5) the array of remedies that the instrument might provide to those who have been harmed by breach; and (6) the fora and form of dispute resolution recommended for enforcement. Although all 6 of the questions above are intertwined, this chapter will focus upon matters arising under questions (5) and (6). This chapter will consider and evaluate three potential enforcement options: (1) alignment between the international instrument developed by the OEIWG and domestic enforcement methods; (2) international mediation and arbitration; and (3) the creation of an international court. The chapter will also consider whether the variety of powers that the relevant enforcement body has should include powers to punish misconduct as well as compensate those harmed by misconduct.
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The joint challenges of food security and conservation of agrobiodiversity are making us rethink the issue of agricultural production. Food production has to increase so as to answer the growing needs of the world’s population. So far, agricultural and food policies have remained narrowly focused on increasing productivity by relying on an industrial model of agriculture inherited from the ‘Green Revolution’. What might be called the ‘efficiency-oriented’ model is overly turned to agricultural supply, productivity and technology, the scaling-up of the formal seed sector and the adoption of improved crop varieties deemed to produce higher yields. This system is now supported by strong intellectual property laws and regulations related to registration, performance testing and certification, which has largely resulted in a series of adverse effects. This introduction recalls the aim and scope of this book: finding a way out of the current political and legal impasse. The first avenue of reflection explored in this book is the concept of property as it has been established by classic liberal and neo-liberal thinkers. It questions private ownership and what can be seen as its main distinguishing feature in the Western world, namely the right to exclude. The series of chapters investigates standard licence clearinghouses and open licences for seeds against the backdrop of the ‘right to access’ or the ‘right not to be excluded’. In addition, two chapters assess the right not to be excluded within the framework laid down by the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing. In the following parts, the book works toward a full-fledged assessment of the meaning, as well as the value and drawbacks of the ‘Commons’ for the future of plant breeding and agriculture research. To this end, it examines the relevance of Ostrom’s work on collective governance of natural and intellectual resources (knowledge commons) to grasp the way landraces, traditional varieties and associated knowledge are ‘held’ and managed by local and indigenous communities. It also explores the potentialities of the key design principles for successful commons to understand and sustain the new bio-commons recently developed in industrialised countries. Finally, it focuses on the framework set up by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) and specifically addresses the challenges facing the advent of a global seed commons.
Article
The concept of fair and equitable benefit-sharing emerged in the early 90s as a corollary to the principle of national sovereignty over natural and genetic resources. In the context of agricultural biodiversity use, it can be conceptualized in three ways: as a defensive tool to balance the injustices enshrined in the intellectual property rights system; as a development tool to reap part of the benefits of the emerging biodiversity market; and as an incentive, to reward and enable farmers' continued contribution to conservation. This article seeks to assess the potential of the concept in operationalizing fairness and equity in agricultural biodiversity governance, in an increasingly complex legal and policy landscape of conflicting rights and policies. It briefly explains its emergence in the context of the evolving principles of governance of agricultural biodiversity; and analyses the structure and application of the Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-sharing established by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in the framework of intellectual property- and human rights-related processes. Identifying linkages, challenges and key lessons, which are useful for a wide range of processes within and beyond the international environmental law realm, it concludes that the concept falls short of its promises. It thus calls for imagining new dialogues and concepts to redefine the boundaries between what must remain in the public domain, what may be managed as a commons and what may be privatized.
Article
This paper explores the boundary of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. We present a conceptual analysis of boundary definitions and an empirical analysis of boundary construction in practice. Boundary is an important, yet under-analysed concept, as it specifies the limits of accountability: what activities stakeholders may expect an organization to report on. The adoption of a narrow boundary will omit many impacts from disclosure, reducing the usefulness of CSR reports. Historically, boundary has been unchallenged, based on financial reporting concepts of control and significant influence. Recent thought suggests boundaries should vary on an issue-by-issue basis rather than being applied universally on an organizational level. A thematic analysis of 15 CSR reporting guidelines was undertaken to identify what constitutes boundary within CSR reporting. The emergent 40 determinants were ordered and classified into three boundary constructs: reputation management; ownership and control; accountability. Reporting content of 35 airline companies was coded according to these constructs, on an issue-by-issue basis (using relevant global reporting initiatives [GRI] indicators). Correlation analysis indicates: the adoption of selective, narrow definitions of boundary; an inverse relationship between boundary determination and stakeholder consultation, and; companies that claim compliance to GRI, on average, select narrower boundaries than non-signatories. Implications for research and for practice are highlighted.
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The regulation of labour in the workplace is never an easy task but it is even more complex and challenging if it has to take place across national borders in a globalised world. Globalisation and a transnational labour environment impact on the ability of the employer to regulate or manage a labour force that is based in different countries. The migration of workers across national borders, the existence of multinational companies and the demands of transnational labour relations present management with many challenges. This article is premised on the conviction that corporate social responsibility codes and other codes of conduct, due to their voluntary nature, are not enough to effectively manage and regulate labour in a transnational environment. The authors suggest that international framework agreements are a far more effective management tool for transnational labour regulation.
Article
Purpose Corporations are increasingly expected to act responsibly. The purpose of this paper is to examine two types of corporate responses to these expectations: overt and covert responses. Specifically, it examines oil companies’ involvement in multi-stakeholder initiatives and sponsorships (overt responses) and their monitoring of critics, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activist organisations (covert responses). Design/methodology/approach Theoretically, the paper draws on theories of visibility and post-political regulation. Empirically, it focuses on case studies of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), Shell and BP, drawing on qualitative methods. Findings The paper demonstrates that overt responses create an impression of consensus between antagonistic interests and that covert responses support this impression by containing deep-seated conflicts. Research limitations/implications Corporate responses have implications for the role of the corporation as a (post-)political actor. By containing antagonism and creating an impression of consensus, the interplay between overt and covert responses open up further possibilities for the proliferation of soft governance and self-regulation through participation in voluntary transparency and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Data on covert practices of corporations are difficult to access. This impedes possibilities for fully assessing their extent. The findings of this paper support trends emerging from recent research on covert corporate intelligence practices, but more research is needed to provide a systematic overview. Originality/value The paper contributes to the understudied area of covert corporate activity in research on the political role of multinational corporations.
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contend that the dominant voluntarism approach to the accountability of transnational corporations (TNCs) is inadequate and not fit-for-purpose. The authors argue for the establishment of an international legal mechanism for securing the accountability of TNCs, particularly in the context of developing countries with notoriously weak governance mechanisms to protect all relevant stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts insights from the fields of management and international law to draw out synergies from particular understandings of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and international human rights. The challenges to governance in developing countries with regard to securing the accountability of TNCs are illustrated with the Nigerian experience of oil-industry legislation reform. Findings The specific context of the experiences of developing countries in Africa on the operations of TNCs particularly commends the need and expedience to create an international legal regime for ensuring the accountability of TNCs. Originality/value Mainstream research in this area has focused mainly on self and voluntary models of regulation and accountability that have privileged the legal fiction of the corporate status of TNCs. This paper departs from that model to argue for an enforceable model of TNC’s accountability – based on an international mechanism.
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The activities of oil multinational corporations (MNCs) in Nigeria, especially in the oil and gas sector, have come under focus in recent years. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in the USA highlighted the negative or unintended consequences of the activities of MNCs. Also, oil MNCs in Nigeria have been at the centre of scandals about poor labour standards, environmental degradation and human rights violations amongst others. Furthermore, the extant state-oriented or command and control regulatory regime has been ineffective. Thus, self-regulation by oil MNCs has risen to help counter these negative consequences. This article contends that the self-regulatory regime is ineffective and advocates for reforms to remedy it.
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Purpose – This purpose of this paper is to integrate corporate responsibility (CR) doctrine into corporate strategy by problematizing existing notions of traditional corporate social responsibility. We provide a theoretical and empirical basis for the proposition that the bridge between CR and corporate irresponsibility is the embeddedness of strategic decisions in ethically oriented corporate practices toward sustainable value co-creation. Design/methodology/approach – Analysis was performed by meta-theoretical and economic philosophical approaches. The contemporary trends which have led to the institutionalization of sustainability questions, are explained. Special attention is paid to the historical, cultural and the international institutional context within which organizational culture becomes saturated with deviance. Findings – The main thrust is that competitive advantage, legitimacy for survival and success of the international firm in the 21st century hinges on innovative value co-creation that meets sustainability pressures and institutional expectations. Research limitations/implications – The research approach opens itself to debate. No generalizability claims are made but the propositions and conceptual framework seek to direct the CR discourse to engage seriously with cooperative investments for sustainable value creation. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the debate on CR, global sustainability and the role of international firms in society. It offers clarity in the confusion and fills a theoretical gap through a novel conceptualization of strategic corporate responsibility. Here, consumer, environmental and institutional orientation rather than producer orientation form the basis of analysis on value co-creation.
Article
The objective of this paper is to illustrate the trajectories of innovation biographies in the service economy utilising the geographic heuristics of physical and relational distances. Drawing on the theoretical literature on the significance of proximity and distance to economic activities, the paper examines three case studies in the law sector. The analysis focuses on the role of the term “innovation” within law businesses and on the interplay of proximities and distances in the case studies.
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The state-based system of global governance has struggled for more than a generation to adjust to the expanding reach and growing influence of transnational corporations. The United Nations first attempted to establish binding international rules to govern the activities of transnationals in the 1970s. That endeavor was initiated by developing countries as part of a broader regulatory program with redistributive aims known as the New International Economic Order. Human rights did not feature in this initiative. The Soviet bloc supported it while most industrialized countries were opposed. Negotiations ground to a halt after more than a decade, though they were not formally abandoned until 1992.
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The external world is creating a series of shocks for organisations, governments and individuals. These include the impact of climate change and the increasing costs for energy. The challenge for organisations is to develop new governance mechanisms to accommodate these external shocks. This article investigates the potential for corporate social responsibility to act as a catalyst in generating these new governance mechanisms. It sketches out two regulatory frameworks of corporate law and corporate governance that may create the conditions for the emergence of effective systems of corporate social responsibility. These frameworks of regulation are formed around an economic analysis of corporations and around a constitutional view of the corporation as a site for a decision-making process centred on the principles of deliberation, accountability and contestability. Each of these frameworks contributes to our understanding of corporate social responsibility, and each offers some glimmers of hope. But there are also good reasons to be sceptical about whether either will create the conditions for the emergence of effective systems of corporate social responsibility. This scepticism about corporate social responsibility should, though, be tempered by recognition of the complexity of the problem of generating the new forms of governance that we, as a community, need to accommodate the challenges that we face.
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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a fixture on the agendas of corporate boards in much the same way as environmental issues did a decade or so ago. To what extent social responsibilities should be made legally enforceable remains a matter of some fierce debate. There are already many laws in Australia that bind corporations in respect of such social issues as occupational health and safety, labour standards, privacy, non-discrimination and environmental protection. But should there be more specific human rights coverage, especially in respect of off-shore corporate activities in developing countries where there are well-documented examples of corporate abuse - or corporate complicity in host-state abuses - of rights to life, protection from physical harm, trade union membership, labour standards and workplace conditions, and others? The United Nation's Draft Human Rights Norms for Corporations seeks to impose obligations on states to ensure that corporations within their jurisdiction (including extra-territorial) abide by certain minimum human rights standards. Many (but not all) corporations are opposed to the idea and modus operandi of the Norms, as are many (but not all) governments, including Australia's. In response to these concerns, the United Nations Secretary-General has appointed a Special Representative to review the Norms, which review is currently underway. This article analyses the debate over the Norms, focusing on the various reasons advanced by both sides, their legal implications, and the likely future of the Norms within the context of the developing notion of CSR, internationally and in Australia.
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The state-based system of global governance has struggled for more than a generation to adjust to the expanding reach and growing influence of transnational corporations, the most visible embodiment of globalization. This paper reviews two recent chapters in this endeavor, focused specifically on human rights: the “Draft Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights,” adopted by the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights but not by its parent body, the UN Human Rights Commission (since replaced by the Human Rights Council); and the author’s subsequent UN mandate as Special Representative of the Secretary-General “on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises.” The paper analyzes key conceptual flaws of the draft Norms, noting the pitfalls of imposing on corporations, directly under international law, the same range of human rights duties that states have; it presents an empirical mapping of current international standards and practices regarding business and human rights, ranging from the most deeply rooted international legal obligations to voluntary initiatives; and it proposes a strategy for building on existing momentum in order to reduce human rights protection gaps in relation to corporate activities.
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Cambridge Core - International Trade Law - Global Business Regulation - by John Braithwaite
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Recent years have brought significant interest by governments, international institutions, and nongovernmental organizations in the impact of the activities of transnational corporations on human rights. Corporations have haltingly responded to this phenomenon, but a comprehensive normative framework for resolving these competing claims is still lacking. This Article posits that international law offers a way to develop and circumscribe duties on corporations that avoids the risks inherent in wholly domestic legal approaches. It demonstrates the need for corporate accountability as an alternative to holding only states or individuals responsible for human rights abuses and shows that global decisionmakers have already taken significant steps in recognizing duties on business enterprises. Building on conceptual foundations in the law of nations, moral philosophy, and corporate law, the Article develops a theory in which the corporation's duties turn on four factors - its ties to the government, its nexus to affected populations, the particular human right at issue, and the internal structure of the business enterprise. It further seeks to apply the theory to several claims leveled against corporations and proposes a variety of means by which states and other actors can operationalize such an approach in global decisionmaking arenas.
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This paper serves as an introduction to this special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal; an issue which embraces themes associated with social and environmental reporting (SAR) and its role in maintaining or creating organisational legitimacy. In an effort to place this research in context the paper begins by making reference to contemporary trends occurring in social and environmental accounting research generally, and this is then followed by an overview of some of the many research questions which are currently being addressed in the area. Understanding motivations for disclosure is shown to be one of the issues attracting considerable research attention, and the desire to legitimise an organisation’s operations is in turn shown to be one of the many possible motivations. The role of legitimacy theory in explaining managers’ decisions is then discussed and it is emphasised that legitimacy theory, as it is currently used, must still be considered to be a relatively under-developed theory of managerial behaviour. Nevertheless, it is argued that the theory provides useful insights. Finally, the paper indicates how the other papers in this issue of AAAJ contribute to the ongoing development of legitimacy theory in SAR research.
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The responsibilities of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) in the area of human rights have been on the international agenda for sometime now and have gain more momentum in the last two decades. In the past, several attempts were made under the auspices of the United Nations to devise a framework for controlling Transnational corporations without much success. In the face of increasing allegation of human rights abuses by TNCs, the United Nations Sub-commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights approved the 'Norms on Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights' (Norms).
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The economic power of transnational corporations (TNCs) is undoubted. They are the driving agents of the global economy, exercising dominant control over global trade, investment, and technology transfers. Flowing directly from such positions of economic influence, TNCs also manage to exercise considerable political leverage in both domestic and international spheres. The social power of TNCs is, however, a different matter. For although their social power too is enormous and global, it has been, until recently, far less obvious, little acknowledged, and minimally regulated. TNCs have the ability significantly to affect the nature, form, and extent of social relations. By virtue, specifically, of their economic and political muscle, TNCs are uniquely positioned to affect, positively and negatively, the level of enjoyment of human rights. On these bases there are abundant reasons why the legal regulation of TNCs' activities at all levels of impact is sought, ought to be sought, and is sometimes achieved. This article is concerned with developing the arguments for, and designing the architecture of, such regulation with respect to the human rights obligations of corporations at the level of international law.
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Do people in relatively free and affluent countries such as the United States, Canada or Germany have responsibilities to try and to improve working conditions and wages of workers in far-off parts of the world who produce items those in the more affluent countries purchase? In recent years the “antisweatshop” movement has gained momentum with arguments that at least some agents in these relatively free and affluent countries do have such responsibilities. They have had rallies and press conferences, staged sit-ins and hunger strikes, all with the aim of convincing consumers, corporate executives, union members, municipal governments, students, and university administrators in the United States or Europe to acknowledge a responsibility with respect to the working conditions of distant workers in other countries, and to take actions to meet such responsibilities.
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Across an amazing sweep of the critical areas of business regulation - from contract, intellectual property and corporations law, to trade, telecommunications, labour standards, drugs, food, transport and environment - this book confronts the question of how the regulation of business has shifted from national to global institutions. Based on interviews with 500 international leaders in business and government, this book examines the role played by global institutions such as the WTO, the OECD, IMF, Moody’s and the World Bank, as well as various NGOs and significant individuals. The authors argue that effective and decent global regulation depends on the determination of individuals to engage with powerful agendas and decision-making bodies that would otherwise be dominated by concentrated economic interests. This book will become a standard reference for readers in business, law, politics and international relations.
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Our review of corporate responsibility (CR) research in International Management journals during the past decade identified 321 articles of interest. We categorized and bibliographically referenced these articles to provide a foundation for future research in this arena. Our categorization scheme consisted of categorizing articles into one of the four major CR themes: corporate social responsibility, environmental responsibility, ethics, and governance. We also categorized according to orientation (theoretical and empirical), and empirical studies were further categorized according to methodology and internationalization (countries included in the study). We provide a detailed analysis of the prevalence of CR research in International Management journals, the prominence of the major CR themes, the degree of emphasis placed on empirical versus theoretical research, and the breath of international coverage in these articles.
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Conventional estimates of the relationship between corporate environmental performance (CEP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) are typically based on simple OLS regression. In this paper, I test whether this relationship holds using median regression analysis that is more robust to the presence of outliers and unobserved firm heterogeneity. Based on panel data for British companies, I find that the relationship between CEP and CFP is stronger when median regression are used.
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In marked contrast to other regimes that have, virtually overnight, abandoned state control of enterprises and espoused Western models of corporate governance, China has pursued a gradual transition suited to its own unique traditions, culture, and customs. Although this new corporate system is still evolving, it is clear that China is now ready for a nation-wide movement of corporatisation and reform. "Comparative Corporate Governance" draws on the entire corpus of corporate governance theory, both East and West, and also on the experience of many countries since the 1930s, to develop a coherent model appropriate for China. In the process the author shows how various corporate mechanisms have been tentatively introduced into China's state-owned enterprises and how such experimentation has, piece by piece, provided a firm basis for a modern enterprise system. How to build an efficient and culturally appropriate governance system, both in law and in practice, on this foundation is the focus of this book. The analysis is notable for its insistence that, for a corporate governance system to work, the principles and practicalities of that system must be derived from customary cultural norms. Experience shows that imported models, although they may be enshrined in law, lead to economic stagnation unless actual practice is monitored and reformed and the laws change to reflect these necessary adjustments. Thus the model proposed here begins with the Company Law of 1994, and proceeds to show how practical experience is already providing valuable data for the task of improving the law. This process, by which law and business practice continue to "regulate" each other, is, in the author's view, the essential ingredient of a successful corporate system. The author's approach is fundamentally comparative. He discusses and analyses models that have either created globally powerful corporate economies or carried out reforms that have brought new insights to corporate development. In this connection he examines the law and experience of the UK, the USA, Germany, and Japan, as well as Chinese communities overseas and some former British Commonwealth countries. Yes Yes
South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law, The State Duty to Protect, Corporate Obligations and Extra-territorial Application in the African Regional Human Rights System
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Extraterritorial jurisdiction as a tool for improving the human rights accountability of transnational corporations”, December, available at: www.reports-and-materials.org/Olivier-de-Schutter-report-for-SRSG-re-extraterritorial-jurisdiction
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