Archive for the ‘Human Rights’ Category
The Future of Corporate Human Rights Accountability
Many corporate counsel and human rights advocates will view last month’s $15.5 million settlement of Wiwa v. Shell, correctly, as further evidence that the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) is a viable tool for corporate human rights accountability. The future of corporate human rights accountability, however, is more likely to focus on human rights due diligence and reporting than human rights litigation. Companies and human rights organizations that hope to influence the business and human rights debate should devote resources to improving corporate human rights due diligence and to shaping human rights reporting requirements under national law.
Potential legal liability for corporate complicity in the worst forms of human rights abuse is now a permanent feature of doing business for most transnational companies. Some form of legal jurisdiction over the extra-territorial activities of home companies is increasingly common in OECD countries. For transnational companies doing business in the United States, the ATS provides foreign victims of the worst forms of human rights abuse a tool for holding corporations accountable for their actions abroad. (more…)
Yahoo!’s Human Rights Turnaround
Just like any other global company, Yahoo! must ensure that its local country sites . . . operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based.
– Yahoo! Spokesperson, September 2005
Human rights trump doing business. . . . Internet companies must learn when not to hide behind the notion that we are corporations so it is our number one obligation just to do business. It isn’t our number one obligation. Our number one obligation is to be good world citizens.
– Carol Bartz, Yahoo! CEO, Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Summit, May 2009
What a difference media attention, a lawsuit, Congressional hearings, and ousting the CEO makes. Like earlier corporate responsibility poster children under intense pressure from stakeholders (see Nike), Yahoo is transforming itself from a laggard to a leader.
Does Your Corporate Responsibility Program Have a Conscience?
A few years ago, I came across a twenty-five year old article from the Harvard Business Review, “Can a Corporation Have a Conscience?” The 1982 piece, written by HBS Professors Kenneth E. Goodpaster and John B. Mathews, Jr., applies principles of moral philosophy to what was then the relatively new field of corporate responsibility.
I was struck by the relevance of their analysis for business leaders struggling with corporate responsibility today. Since 1982, corporate responsibility programs have proliferated. Professionals seeking to design, implement and evaluate these efforts spend a good deal of time defining corporate responsibility for their organization. Is it compliance? Is it philanthropy? Or is it something more? I subscribe to the “something more” view and encourage my clients and students to go beyond compliance and philanthropy and define corporate responsibility as meeting the expectations of stakeholders.
Goodpaster and Mathews provide another definition, one that could help today’s executives trying to decide which corporate responsibility initiatives merit investment. Their definition suggests executives could measure a corporate responsibility program against two benchmarks: rationality and respect.
Maturing Multi-Stakeholder Programs
Voluntary “multi-stakeholder” programs have been a prominent feature of the corporate responsibility landscape for more than a decade. Launched by companies, industry groups, NGOs, governments and international organizations, programs like the UN Global Compact, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, and the Fair Labor Association, bring together diverse actors to tackle common problems on the corporate responsibility agenda: human rights, labor standards, environmental standards, and transparency. Many of these pioneering efforts established best practices for subsequent multi-stakeholder collaborations.
But as the corporate responsibility field matures, many of these multi-stakeholder programs are struggling to remain relevant. Initial successes have been followed by substantial challenges. Stakeholders are questioning programs over the scope of their mandates, participation levels, and accountability and governance mechanisms. Some multi-stakeholder efforts face credibility and sustainability concerns with the potential to scuttle the programs altogether.
The Ruggie Report on Business and Human Rights: Lessons for Leading Companies
Harvard professor John G. Ruggie has submitted his third and final report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in his role as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations.
The Ruggie Report is an important benchmark that captures current mainstream thinking on key business and human rights challenges. Ruggie’s recommendations are likely to influence businesses, governments, and non-governmental organizations working to improve corporate human rights performance. Companies seeking to meet stakeholder expectations for corporate responsibility should become familiar with Ruggie’s work.
Corporate Responsibility in Global Supply Chains
Many leading corporate responsibility efforts are the result of stakeholder pressure on companies to improve labor conditions in their global supply chains. Since the 1990s, industries ranging from apparel, sporting goods and toys, to food, manufacturing and technology, have sought to demonstrate responsibility through supply chain compliance programs. Supply chain best practices – codes of conduct, independent monitoring, public reporting, and collaboration with nongovernmental organizations – have shaped stakeholder expectations of corporate responsibility initiatives generally, often setting the bar for other companies and industries.
Supply chain best practices continue to emerge. Key challenges for today’s leading companies include:
• Moving beyond monitoring to focus on supplier training and education;
• Addressing “code and monitoring fatigue” by consolidating brand, industry and multistakeholder compliance efforts; and
• Finding ways to demonstrate (and reward) improved social and environmental performance al all levels of global supply chains.
The opening panel provided a valuable survey of current trends by three experts on the challenges of responsible sourcing.
Marcela Manubens, Senior Vice President, Global Human Rights & Social Responsibility at Phillips-Van Heusen, noted that: (more…)
Mainstreaming Corporate Responsibility
Three years ago, when The Economist first published a special report on corporate responsibility, the magazine took a highly skeptical view, asking whether, to justify its activities, a company must do anything more than simply earn a profit?[i]
Not surprising, perhaps, that The Economist would echo the orthodox arguments of Milton Friedman, the economist who famously wrote in 1970 that the only “social responsibility of business is to increase its profits,” and that corporate social responsibility is a “fundamentally subversive doctrine in a free society.” [ii]
I was intrigued when the British magazine took up corporate responsibility again last month. It seems The Economist has had a change of heart.
The Economist’s 2008 Special Report acknowledges that corporate responsibility is now seen as mainstream by leading companies and concludes that it is worthwhile to single out corporate social responsibility “if it helps businesses look outwards . . . and think imaginatively about risks and opportunities.” [iii]
Why such a conversion in the space of three years? One reason may be the backlash generated by its 2005 Report, which was widely criticized by corporate responsibility practitioners and, reportedly, by members of The Economist’s own editorial staff.
It is more likely that The Economist is simply acknowledging business realities it can no longer ignore. (more…)