Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility: Competing or Complementary Approaches to Poverty Reduction and Socioeconomic Rights?

Abstract

Following the situation of poverty in the rights paradigm, this paper explores the links between the rightsbased and corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches to the realization of socioeconomic rights in the broader context of an emerging recognition of CSR as private regulation of business behaviour. It examines complex theoretical and practical dimensions of responsibility and potential contributions of businesses to poverty alleviation and clarifies the apparent paradox of legal compulsion of essentially voluntary CSR activities. Rather than treat rights and CSR as parallel approaches to protecting socioeconomic rights, it is argued that CSR can be part of a coherent framework of laws and policies for legally translating broad human rights commitments to poverty reduction into concrete programmes. The paper demonstrates how legally propped CSR arrangements can support poverty reduction and appropriate task-specific contextualised definitions and boundaries of CSR that complement the rights-based approach. It is argued that human rights principles have normative dimensions to guide and help formulate policies, programmes and practices, which in turn allow for a creative use of and legal prop to CSR. The conceptualization of human rights is not restricted to one implementation method, and CSR can partly satisfy states' human rights obligations and transcend the narrow conventional human rights discourse on obligations of nonstate actors.

Corporate social responsibility for poverty alleviation: An integrated research framework

“…Lastly, since sustainable development goals such as poverty alleviation are often incompatible with the narrower corporate goal of shareholder value, a regulatory system has also been suggested as a driver of pro-poor CSR (Bakan, 2004;Banerjee, 2014;Blowfield, 2005). By arguing that poverty represents a violation of human rights and that CSR is linked to human rights, Osuji and Obibuaku (2016) concluded that CSR, including pro-poor CSR initiatives, can be regulated by law with the purpose of enforcing rights and, thus, restricting the use of CSR initiatives for attaining corporate self-interest.…”

“…The regulatory system affecting CSR Bakan (2004), Banerjee (2014), Blowfield (2005) and Osuji and Obibuaku (2016) condition to gain social acceptance or "social licence" to operate in the community (i.e., the legitimisation approach); (c) a possible demand on the part of stakeholders, for example, communities, including the poor (i.e., the stakeholder approach). As regards the latter, empirical studies pointed out several factors that were grouped into the following category (see Table 4): stakeholders' interest, pressure and perception.…”

Corporate Social Responsibility as Obligated Internalisation of Social Costs

“…Even when regulation requires the irm to consult diferent stakeholders, the bilateral and disconnected form of the consultations makes them less likely to have a transformative positive impact on society than a collective process involving all the stakeholders that represent the diferent segments of society. Nonetheless, there are legal provisions on issues such as the deinition, justiications, reporting and even enforcement of CSR (Osuji and Obibuaku 2016). We therefore consider that legal provisions intended to drive relexive governance should impose a binding obligation on corporations to identify and internalise social costs.…”

Responsible business under adverse conditions: Dilemmas regarding company contributions to local development

“…Business may contribute to socio-economic development in various ways, including the provision of jobs or the payment of taxes, through spillovers and skills and/or technology transfers or improving employees' conditions (Andriof & McIntosh, 2001;Boyle & Boguslaw, 2007;Meyer, 2004;Oetzel & Doh, 2009;Osuji & Obibuaku, 2016;Sullivan, 2003). In addition to macro-economic (longitudinal) data on which such assessments can be based, there is a growing body of corporate information provided via CSR/sustainability/corporate citizenship reporting, either in separate documents or on company websites.…”