Defining the corporate social responsibility of business from international law

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to argue that corporate social responsibilities of international business can be defined in terms of human rights responsibilities. Design/methodology/approach -The approach taken is to draw from international law to examine whether these responsibilities can be defined in a precise way. Findings -The paper finds that human rights responsibilities of business needs further refining.Research limitations/implications -Research needs to be conducted from a law perspective on defining concepts such as ''complicity'', ''spheres of influence'' or ''respecting'' human rights. Practical implications -This paper calls upon international business and their stakeholders to use and pro-actively manage their human rights responsibilities and further refine the existing managerial human rights tools. Originality/value -In exploring the human rights responsibilities of business, this paper contributes to an important crossroads of international law and management.

Irresponsibility through Corporate Eyes: Reporting of Human Rights Compliance by Spanish Listed Companies

“…Therefore, companies should develop policies and procedures to ensure respect for human rights, in cooperation with other stakeholders (namely, NGOs, trade unions and international governmental organisations) (Schouten, 2007). Few researchers have proposed such managerial frameworks (Jackson, 2008;Shouten, 2007).…”

“…In total, 99 indicators were used to evaluate compliance with HR. It could be argued that other corporate practices create the right environment for human rights protection (paying taxes or creating employment) (Schouten, 2007). Yet, since we focus specifically on human rights compliance, it goes beyond the scope of this paper to analyse the influence of these facilitating variables.…”

“…Two studies conducted by United Nations (Ruggie, 2006a and2006b) shed some light on the practices of corporation vis-à-vis human rights. Yet, as Schouten (2007) remarks "there is no comprehensive overview of the extent of human rights violations by business", except those conducted by NGOs and watchdog organisations websites; these are not aimed to be scientific but to make public corporate violations of human rights in their spheres of influence. At At the national level, both US and the EU have regulation enabling to bring companies to the national courts where they are domiciled for violations of human rights elsewhere (Aliens Tort Act and Brussels I Regulation) (for specific analysis of these instruments, see Chanin, 2005;Wouters and Chanet, 2008).…”

“…Also, respect for human rights is the most used criterion by responsible consumers and investors to guide their economic decisions (Ruggie, 2008a). Therefore companies, and especially transnational corporations, are de iure and de facto obliged to, at least, respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Schouten, 2007).…”

“…Some mention all human rights (e.g. Global Compact; OECD Guidelines) whilst others refer to a subset of them (see table 1 and a review of existing codes in Carasco andSenghi, 2008 andSchouten, 2007).…”