Corporate social responsibility: a duplicitous distraction?

Abstract

Human ingenuity created technological innovation that has facilitated globalisation which potentially undermines traditional and historical moral frameworks and the political and legal jurisdictions constructed pre-globalisation. Human rights are the only universally applicable framework humanity has constructed to guide and regulate the governments of nation states. Business activity – through the provision of investment, tax and jobs – is, almost universally, central to any state's ability to provide and protect human rights. Simultaneously, business activity is a direct source of human rights violations and undermines numerous states' ability to provide and protect human rights. A key social challenge of the globalised era is how humanity, through existing political and legal structures, can ensure business works for rather than against it. This challenge has been reduced to a dichotomous debate between a regulatory or voluntary approach within which a voluntary approach (i.e. corporate social responsibility) is dominant. A historical analysis of corporate behaviour suggests this voluntary approach is not working whilst sociological analysis of corporate decision-making suggests it conceptually flawed. This same sociological analysis may hint at the approach government policy should take if humanity is determined to protect itself from the corporation.

Keywords:

• human rights
• CSR
• stakeholder theory
• sociology
• decision-making
• Economics

Notes

In this context globalisation means the recent bloom in global trade and the dispersal of production from the pioneer industrial states (e.g. the United Kingdom) to less developed economies driven by corporations and facilitated by, amongst other things, containerisation and the internet. Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization?, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity, 1997); Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005).

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, ed. Stephen Kalberg (Los Angeles, CA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 18–19.

Human Rights as outlined by multilateral treaties (for example: the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (1966), the International Convention on Economic and Social Rights (ICESCR) (1966), and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1989)) and interpreted by international, regional and national courts, and treaty bodies, are universal and indivisible; Michael Freeman, Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Cambridge: Polity, 2002). They are intended to protect every human being from the excessive use of state power and, where business practice is concerned, to ensure the state protects human beings within their jurisdiction, as far as is reasonably possible, from that which is out of an individual's control, e.g. environmentally destructive business practice (ICESCR Art 122(b)) and forced labour (ICCPR Art 8). They also confer ‘positive’ rights on people, for example the rights to education (ICESCR Art 13), health (ICESCR Art 12), social security (ICESCR Art 90, freedom of association (ICCPR Art 22 and ICESCR Art 8) and more broadly the right to an adequate standard of living (ICESCR Art 11), and work (ICESCR Art 6) in a fair and safe manner (ICESCR Art 7). No multilateral human rights treaty has been ratified by every state but almost every state has ratified at least one treaty which recognises that human rights exist. Michael Ignatieff (Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), Freeman, Human Rights.

The above obligations require, for example, effective governmental bureaucracy, the provision of national infrastructure (e.g. for transport and communication), schools, hospitals, housing police, and a justice system (see note 2).

To compare the size of corporate ‘economies’ with national economies in 2000 see Aunp Shah, ‘Corporate Power Facts and Stats’, http://www.globalissues.org/article/59/corporate-power-facts-and-stats (accessed August 22, 2010).

This article will not distinguish between transnational corporations, multinational corporations, privately owned businesses or cooperatives and partnerships because they all compete directly with each other and are required therefore to operate similarly competitive business models. John Ruggie's remit as the Secretary General's Special Representative on the issue of human rights and transnational companies and other businesses enterprises was similarly broad (A/HRC/8/5 (2010) Document can be found at: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G08/128/61/PDF/G0812861.pdf?OpenElement). The Special Representative's mandate concluded in June 2011.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (London: Penguin, 2002); Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalisation Work (London: Penguin, 2006); Robert Reich, Supercapitalism: The Battle for Democracy in an Age of Big Business (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2007); John Kenneth Galbraith, The Economics of Innocent Fraud (London: Penguin, 2004); Ann Zammit, Development at Risk: Rethinking UN-Business Partnerships (Geneva: South Centre & UNRISD, 2003).

Stiglitz, Making Globalisation Work; Reich, Supercapitalism.

Naomi Klein, No Logo (London: Flamingo, 2001); Joel Bakan, The Corporation (London: Constable, 2004); Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Globalized World in the 21 ^st Century (London: Allen Lane, 2005); Galbraith, The Economics of Innocent Fraud.

Although it is often asserted that Adam Smith and his disciples (e.g. Milton Friedman) argued that free markets and limited regulation will ultimately lead to ‘opulence for all’ (Friedman, The World is Flat; Muller 2002), a broader analysis of their work recognises the tendency to monopoly and the commoditisation of humanity which were and are both seen to represent challenges for society. Jerry Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: capitalism in Western thought (New York: Anchor Books, 2002); Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (London: Penguin, 1998, 1953; John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (London: Penguin, 1958 (1999 ed.)); Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Radford: Wilder Publications Limited, 2008); Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1962).

E/CN.4/2006/97, 7. See document at: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G06/110/27/PDF/G0611027.pdf?OpenElement.

See Human Rights Watch, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’, http://www.hrw.org/news/2000/07/27/corporate-social-responsibility (accessed March 10, 2012).

Although discrimination, industrial accidents, environmental destruction, for example, still occur, regulatory frameworks are enforced, and collective bargaining is accepted. Indeed, Reich makes the argument that corporations have purposefully avoided costs associated with a high standard of regulatory regime and a more empowered population by moving production away from those countries; Reich, Supercapitalism. It is no coincidence that the People's Republic of China, a state led by an authoritarian government with a questionable contemporary record in workplace health and safety – see Human Rights and Business Dilemma Forum, ‘Health and Safety’, http://human-rights.unglobalcompact.org/dilemmas/health-and-safety/#_ftn42 (accessed August 23, 2012) – and labour rights – see Human Rights Watch, ‘World Report 2011: China’, http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2011/china (accessed August 23, 2012) – is the workshop of the globalised world.

CSR incorporates corporate agreement to and implementation of voluntary codes of conduct, corporate philanthropy and staff engagement strategies.

See Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom; Leo E. Strine Jr, ‘Human Freedom and Two Friedmen: musings on the implications of globalization for the effective regulation of corporate behaviour’, University of Toronto Law Journal 58, no. 3 (Summer 2008): 241–74; and Steven R. Ratner, ‘Corporations and Human Rights: a legal theory of responsibility’, Yale Law Review 19, no. 111 (November 2001) for a more detailed explanation of corporate obligations to generate profit.

See: New Statesman, ‘Full Transcript, David Cameron, Speech on “Moral Capitalism”’, http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2012/01/economy-capitalism-market, for an introduction to the Conservative Party conception of ‘moral capitalism’ and Social Market Foundation, ‘Ed Miliband Speech to Social Market Foundation’, http://www.smf.co.uk/assets/files/resources/Ed%20Miliband%20speech%20to%20Social%20Market%20Foundation.pdf, for a speech by the Labour Party leader covering similar ground (both accessed March 10, 2012).

See CIPR, ‘What is PR?’, http://www.cipr.co.uk/content/careers-cpd/careers-pr/what-pr (accessed April 14, 2012) for a definition and explanation of PR.

See also, Human Rights Watch, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ for their criticism of the Global Compact; Zammit, Development at Risk.

See Philip Mulligan, ‘Globalization and the Environmental Change in Madagascar: The Opportunities and Challenges faced by Rio Tinto’, in Development and the Challenge of Globalisation, ed. Peter Newell, Shirin M. Rai, and Andrew Scott (London: ITDG Publishing, 2002) for Rio Tinto case-study and the challenges around measuring both risk and impact.

Reich, Supercapitalism; Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.

Human Rights Watch, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ also identifies lack of clarity within the standards and effective enforcement mechanisms.

Friedman, The World is Flat; Verdana Shiva, Resources in The Development Dictionary, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (London: Zed Books, 2010); Alastair McIntosh, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power (London: Aurum Press Ltd, 2001); Klein, No Logo.

Reich, Supercapitalism; William Easterly, The White Man's Burden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

See Easterly, The White Man's Burden and Stiglitz, Making Globalisation Work for a detailed case study of Botswana, a country that successfully ignored international pressure to secure a genuinely beneficial deal for the exploitation of the country's diamond reserves.

Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Companies with regard to Human Rights, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/12/Rev.2

Ibid., para. 3.

Ibid., paras 10–12.

Ibid., para. 13.

Ibid., para. 14.

Human Rights Watch website http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2004/09/29/un-norms-towards-greater-corporate-accountability (accessed September 29, 2012).

E/CN.4/RES/2005/69; Henry J. Steiner, Philip Alston, and Ryan Goodman, International Human Rights in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1404–5.

E/CN.4/2006/97, para. 57

Ibid., para. 56.

Ibid., para. 59.

See Steven R. Ratner, ‘Corporations and Human Rights: a legal theory of responsibility’, Yale Law Review 19, no. 111 (November 2001) for an alternative view.

E/CN.4/2006/97, para. 47 See the Kimberley Process, http://www.kimberleyprocess.com (accessed August 14, 2010). See also recent reports that the Kimberley Process has been tarnished by inaction regarding Zimbabwean diamonds accessing the global market from Global Witness, ‘Kimberley Process Lets Zimbabwe Off the Hook (Again)’, http://www.globalwitness.org/library/kimberley-process-lets-zimbabwe-hook-again (accessed March 4, 2012) and Human Rights Watch, ‘Zimbabwe: Kimberley Process on the Brink’, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/06/28/zimbabwe-kimberley-process-brink (accessed March 4, 2012).

E/CN.4/2006/97, para. 48. Note there is a multiplicity of voluntary codes which companies can sign-up to and which confuse the average consumer. See Human Rights Watch, ‘The U.N. Norms: Towards Greater Corporate Accountability’, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2004/09/29/un-norms-towards-greater-corporate-accountability (accessed August 14, 2010). The UNGC specifically references human rights, which makes it unique amongst the multiplicity (excepting the Sullivan Principles which focused on Apartheid in South Africa and is defunct). See Malcolm McIntosh et al., Living Corporate Citizenship: Strategic Routes to Socially Responsible Business (London: FT Prentice Hall, 2003); and Susan Ariel Aaronson, ‘Oh Behave! Voluntary Codes Can Make Corporations Model Citizens’, The International Economy 15, no. 2 (2001): 40–7 for summaries of codes and their content.

E/CN.4/2006/97. para. 35.

A/HRC/8/5 (2010). Document can be found at: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G08/128/61/PDF/G0812861.pdf?OpenElement

See Nowak for discussion of a world court to adjudicate over business activities; Manfred Nowak, ‘The Need for a World Court’, Human Rights Law Review 7, no. 1 (2007): 251–9.

For example, the UK appointed a Minister for Corporate Responsibility in 2004 and delivered a ‘Corporate Social Responsibility – Draft International Strategic Framework’ soon thereafter, see http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/tna/+/http://www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/corp_soc_resp.pdf (accessed August 13, 2010). Note that the Conservative–Liberal coalition has not yet created a commensurate ministerial role.

See http://www.shell.com/home/content/environment_society/reporting/external_voluntary_initiatives/ (accessed September 29, 2012).

Stammers discusses the dominance of a legalistic approach to the implementation of human rights within the ‘human rights industry’ arguing that this approach dislocates human rights in practise from the social movements that worked to establish them theoretically, historically, and contemporaneously at the grass roots of society. In the context of this discussion, a focus on legal control and primacy of the state as duty bearer has distracted the ‘human right industry’ from recognising the vast and positive impact corporations could have given the appropriate operating environment. Neil Stammers, ‘Social Movements and Social Construction of Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly 21, no. 4 (1999): 980–1008.

Jeffrey Davis, Justice Across Borders: The Struggle for Human Rights in US Courts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Nowak, ‘The Need for a World Court’; Patrick Macklam, ‘Corporate Accountability Under International Law: The Misguided Quest for Universal Jurisdiction’, International Law Forum 7, no. 4, (2005). NB: Giddens sees the European Union as a movement towards more effective global governance but recent economic challenges have highlighted the tensions between constituent nation states which essentially share political systems and a liberal nominally Christian moral code. A world court that maintains meaningful oversight of democracies, one-party states, religious autocracies, military juntas, kingdoms and the myriad cultural norms and assumptions therein is some-way off. Anthony Giddens, Sociology, 6th ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2009).

Robert C. Hinkley, ‘Developing Corporate Conscience’, in Human Rights, Corporate Responsibility: A Dialogue, eds. Stuart Rees and Shelley Wright (Annandale: Pluto Press, 2000), 291.

See section 5 for a more in-depth analysis of the ‘business decision’.

Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton, Fair Trade for All (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Oxfam, Rigged Rules and Double Standards: Trade, Globalisation and the Fight Against Poverty (Oxford: Oxfam International, 2002); Easterly, The White Man's Burden.

Stiglitz and Charlton, Fair Trade for All.

See Mary Robinson, ‘The business case for human rights’, in Financial Times Management, Visions of ethical business (Financial Times Professional, I998), p. I4. 3 I.

McIntosh et al., Living Corporate Citizenship p128. See also Rhys Jenkins, ‘Corporate Codes of Conduct: Self Regulation in a Global Economy’, in Voluntary Approaches to Corporate Responsibility (UN NGLS, 2002); Simon Zadek, The Civil Corporation (London: Earthscan, 2007); and Aaronson, ‘Oh Behave!’, 128.

R. Edward Freeman, Andrew C. Wicks, and Bidham Parmar, ‘Stakeholder Theory as a Basis for Capitalism’, in The Contribution of Economic Theory and Related Disciplines, ed. Lorenzo Sacconi, et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2011).

Ibid., 52.

Ibid., 52.

Paraphrased: 1. For whom is value created or destroyed? 2. Who is harmed or benefitted? 3. Whose rights and value are enabled (and vice versa)? Freeman, Wicks, and Parmar, ‘Stakeholder Theory’, 53.

Ibid., 52.

Ibid., 52.

Festiga argues that people resolve atypical behaviours by subconsciously moulding their memories so their remembered behaviours more closely match their typical behavioural patterns. Milgram demonstrates that people can be encouraged to perpetrate heinous acts without physical threat or significant personal benefit and participants will frequently rationalise their actions post hoc. Zimbardo illustrates once people have adopted an imposed behavioural pattern from an authority figure they frequently adopt it as their own and embellish it with their own behavioural flourishes which can often be worse than the initial instructions. Zimbardo also identified a feedback process where a subordinate's behavioural flourishes become accepted by the authority figure. Leon Festiga, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (London: Tavistock Publications, 1959); Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (London: Pinter and Martin Ltd., 2005); Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil (London: Ride Books, 2007).

These observed psychological mechanisms are supported by historical analysis (Christopher Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Will Coster, ‘Massacre and Codes of Conduct in the English Civil War’, in The Massacre in History, ed. Mark Leverne and Penny Roberts (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1999)) and psychological analysis of scenarios which have led to extreme human rights violations (Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)). The important point to note is that these behaviours are not typical of a particular type of person or peoples – in Milgram's case similar experiments have been conducted all around the world with similar results – they are human group behaviours which occur subconsciously and therefore can be considered relevant in a variety of circumstances.

Reich, Supercapitalism.

Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents.

There are undoubtedly examples of industries where it is demonstrably counter-productive to undertake questionable business practices but this does not appear to reflect the macro decisions made by corporate business leaders.

See BBC News, ‘Web Firms Criticised Over China’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4787917.stm (accessed August 13, 2010) for a summary of the internet censorship debate and the role of search engines. See BBC News, ‘China Condemns Decisions by Google to Lift Censorship’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8582233.stm (accessed August 13, 2010) for an up-to-date summary of the tumultuous relationship between Google and the Chinese government. See: ‘Google Softens Tone on China’, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577155003097277514.html for a Wall Street Journal article outlining Google's decision to expand its operation in China.

See Joseph Kahn, ‘Yahoo Helped Chinese to Prosecute Journalist’, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/business/worldbusiness/07iht-yahoo.html (accessed August 13, 2010) to read about Yahoo supporting Chinese prosecutions of dissidents.

ICCPR Art 19(2): ‘this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds … through any choice of media’.

Since agreeing to collude with the China government, Google has attempted to circumvent China's restrictions in a response to hacking of Gmail accounts but the search engine's results are still censored in mainland China hence Google is still tacitly colluding with censorship; see BBC News, ‘China Condemns Decision by Google’.

J. Allen, ‘Human Rights in the Corporate World in Asia: Practicalities and Ethics’, in Human Rights, Corporate Responsibility: A Dialogue, eds. Stuart Rees and Shelley Wright (Annandale: Pluto Press, 2000).

Truth and Reconciliation Committee, Vol. 4, chapter 2 (1998).

Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (London: Penguin, 1953 (1998 ed.)); William H. Meyer, Human Rights and International Political Economy in Third World Nations (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998). NB: Sen argues that although poor states need investment, corporate short-termism specifically undermines a state's ability to provide education, health care, etc. Scholte, Globalization, demonstrates that although life expectancy has improved, literacy has decreased and general poverty is static. Amartyn Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

Rebecca Spencer, Corporate Law and Structures: Exposing the Root of the Problem (Oxford: Corporate Watch, 2004), 8.

See CalPERS, http://www.calpers-governance.org (accessed March 3, 2012).

See CalPERS, ‘Global Principles of Accountable Corporate Governance’, http://www.calpers-governance.org/docs-sof/principles/2011-11-14-global-principles-of-accountable-corp-gov.pdf (accessed March 11, 2012).

See CalPERS, ‘CalPERS Moves to Restructure Hedge Fund Relationships – Seeks Better Model for Alignment, Control, Fees and Transparency’, http://www.calpers.ca.gov/index.jsp?bc=about/press/pr-archive/pr-2009/mar/restructure-hedge-fund.xml (accessed March 4, 2012).

CalPERS put pressure on companies to stop aiding human rights violators by operating in Sudan prior to the US government's Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act (2007); Marc Lifsher, ‘CalPERS Pressures 3 European Companies’, LA Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/13/business/fi-calpers13 (August 14, 2010). See US Government Accountability Office, ‘U.S. Investors Sold Assets but Could Benefit from Increased Disclosure Regarding Companies’ Ties to Sudan', http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-742 (accessed March 4, 2012).

See section 5 for a more in-depth analysis of the ‘business decision’.

See Jill Treanor, ‘Calpers demands review at Shell’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2004/jun/10/oilandpetrol.news (accessed April 14, 2012).

Jenkins, ‘Corporate Codes of Conduct’; Aaronson, ‘Oh Behave!’, 40–7; Zadek, The Civil Corporation. NB: sweatshop manufacture can be considered a human rights violation when one refers to ‘[t]he core ILO Conventions such as … the 1948 Convention Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour, the 1949 Convention concerning the Application of the Principle of the Right to Organise and to Collectively Bargain, and the 1981 Convention Concerning Occupational Safety and Health and the Working Environment [which] provide basic rights for workers’ (Surya Sebedi, ‘Multinational Corporations and Human Right’, in Responding to the Human Rights Deficit: Essays in Honour of Bas de Gaay Fortman, eds. Karin Arts and Paschal Mihyo (The Hague; London: Kluwer Law International, 2003) 182) and ICCPR Art 22(1). See César A Rodriguez-Garavito, ‘Nike's Law: The Anti-sweatshop Movement, Transnational Corporations, and the Struggle of International Labour Rights in the Americas’, in Law & Globalization From Below: Towards a Cosmopolitan Legality, ed. Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Cesar A. Rodriguez-Garavito (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) for a recent description of working practices within Nike's global supply chain.

See Reich, Supercapitalism, ch.8, which compares the distinction between the fair deal citizens often espouse with the cheapest price a consumer wants and the highest return an investor wants. He explains that if you take retirement funds into account most people occupy all three personas but that the latter two affect individuals directly and consequently are dominant.

Jenkins, ‘Corporate Codes of Conduct’, 29; Fairtrade Foundation, ‘The Business Case for Fairtrade’,http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/business_services/why_offer_fairtrade.aspx (accessed August 14, 2010).

See The Co-operative, ‘Fairtrade – We are Committed to Making a World of Difference’, http://www.co-operative.coop/food/ethics/Ethical-trading/Fairtrade (accessed August 18, 2010).

Bob Hepple, ‘A Race to the Top? International Investment Guidelines and Corporate Codes of Conduct’, Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 20, no. 2 (1999): 347–63.

See David Leigh and Afua Hirsch, ‘Papers Prove Trafigura Ship Dumped Toxic Waste in Ivory Coast’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/13/trafigura-ivory-coast-documents-toxic-waste (accessed April 14, 2012).

Reich, Supercapitalism.

Easterly, The White Man's Burden; Stiglitz, Making Globalisation Work.

Tito Boeri, Brooke Helppie, and Mario Macis, Labor Regulations in Developing Countries: A Review of the Evidence and Directions for Future Research (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008), http://siteresources.worldbank.org/SOCIALPROTECTION/Resources/SP-Discussion-papers/Labor-Market-DP/0833.pdf.

See note 12.

Jerbi describes companies signing up to the UN Global Compact as ‘blue rinsing’ which implies companies gain public absolution for previous malfeasance by supporting a voluntary scheme with no monitoring or powers of enforcement. Scott Jerbi, ‘Business & Human Rights at the UN: what might happen next’, Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2009). See also Human Rights Watch's criticism of the Global Compact: Human Rights Watch, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’.

Hence although Nike have made the public aware of their CSR policy and support positive projects, it required public pressure for them to provide redundancy support to workers in Honduras who were victims of aggressive cost-cutting measures. Steven Greenhouse, ‘Factory Defies Sweatshop Label, but Can It Thrive?’, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/business/global/18shirt.html?scp=3&sq=nike%20factory&st=cse (accessed August 13 2010); Steven Greenhouse, ‘Pressured, Nike to Help Workers in Honduras, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/business/global/27nike.html?ref=nike_inc (accessed August 13, 2010); The New York Times, ‘Nike's Profit Improves After Cutting Costs’ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/business/18nike.html?ref=nike_inc (accessed August 13, 2010). See also Rodriguez-Garavito, ‘Nike's Law’. NB: even if Nike had created a model global supply chain other major garment manufacturers have not. See Gethin Chamberlain, ‘Gap, Next and M&S in New Sweatshop Scandal’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/08/gap-next-marks-spencer-sweatshops (accessed August 15, 2010).

See Milton Friedman, ‘The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits’, http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html (accessed October 13, 2010).

See the Ford Foundation, which has a commitment to supporting untried solutions to existing problems. See http://www.fordfoundation.org (accessed August 26, 2010).

Business in the Community – http://www.bitc.org.uk (accessed August 14, 2010) – to see the variety of practical ways businesses support NGOs

See BBC News, ‘BP Goes Green’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/849475.stm (accessed August 14, 2010).

Ibid.

NB: the emphasis on personal responsibility echoes Stakeholder Theory outlined above.

See BP, ‘Code on Conduct’, http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9003494&contentId=7006600 (accessed August 14, 2010).

See Jim Morris, ‘Renegade Refiner: OSHA says BP has “Systemic Safety Problem”’, The Center for Public Inquiry, http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2085 Abrahm Lustgarten, ‘Congressmen Raised Concerns about BP Safety Before Gulf Oil Spill’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/05/congressman-bp-safety-oil-spill; and Sarah Lyall, ‘In BP's Record, a History of Boldness and Costly Blunders’, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/business/energy-environment/13bprisk.html?_r=1 (all accessed August 14, 2010).

See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bp-on-trial-over-broken-promises-that-led-to-second-oil-spill-in-alaska-6270190.html?origin=internalSearch (accessed September 29, 2012).

See http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-2126509.html (accessed September 29, 2012).

See Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘BP Stops Oil Leak in Gulf of Mexico for First Time since April’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/16/bp-oil-spill-leak-stopped (accessed August 14, 2010).

See Wikinvest, ‘BP’, http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/BP_%28BP%29 (accessed August 14, 2010). See also Peter Muchlinsky, ‘Human Rights and Multinationals’, International Affairs 77, no. 1 (2001).

See http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Inflation_Adj_Oil_Prices_Chart.htm (accessed August 14, 2010).

NB: US oil firms generally have not joined the UN Global Compact.

John Ghazvinian, Untapped: The Struggle for Africa's Oil (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2007).

Rodriguez-Garavito, ‘Nike's Law’. See also Chamberlain, ‘Gap, Next and M&S in New Sweatshop Scandal’.

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation (London: Penguin, 2001); Malcolm Moore, ‘“Mass Suicide” Protest at Apple Manufacturer Foxconn Factory’, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988/Mass-suicide-protest-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html (accessed April 14, 2012); Martin Hickman, ‘Apple Staff in China Work in “Deplorable” Conditions’, The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/apple-staff-in-china-work-in-deplorable-conditions-7897227.html.

See Stammers, ‘Social Movements and Social Construction’ for a discussion of whether institutionalising human rights is an intrinsically positive objective.

Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers; Jerry Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: capitalism in Western thought (New York: Anchor Books, 2002).

Galbraith, The Economics of Innocent Fraud.

John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion (New York: Classic House Books, 2009), 197.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Radford: Wilder Publications Limited, 2008). NB: this is not to say all economists agree on the inevitable ramifications of economic development. Indeed Malthus thought population growth would undercut economic development while Ricardo foresaw an increasing divide between the rich and poor (Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers) and certainly both visions resonate with a twenty-first-century audience. The point is that economists study the economy to help society understand and predict its actions for the general good. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.

Galbraith, The Affluent Society.

This is not to argue that business owners, leaders or employees make rational decision at all times, rather, that they make decisions they believe to be rational in the context of their environment and the working assumptions therein. See Kahneman 2011 for an insightful introduction into behavioural economics and the psychology of decision-making. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (London: Penguin, 2011).

See note 4.

Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method, ed. Steven Lukes, Trans. W.D. Halls (New York: Free Press, 1982).

Ian Craib, Classical Social Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 33.

Fisher describes this perception of human behaviour within the prevailing economic system as Capitalist Realism and Galbraith applies a similar description to the study of economics in his pamphlet The Economics of Innocent Fraud. Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there No Alternative (Winchester UK: Zero Books, 2009). Interestingly, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky argue a very similar point in relation to media reporting of the Vietnam War in Manufacturing Consent: A Political Economy of the Mass Media (London: Vintage Books, 2004).

Max Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2002, Los Angeles: Blackwell Publishing 1904), 18–19.

Giddens, Sociology.

Ibid., 14.

Reich, Supercapitalism.

Ian Craib, Modern Social Theory from Parsons to Habermas (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), 62 and 25.

Ibid., 62.

Talcott Parsons, The Social System (London: Routledge, 1991, 1951).

Giddens, Sociology; Craib, Modern Social Theory.

Craib, Modern Social Theory, 63.

Ibid., 62.

Giddens, Sociology; Craib, Modern Social Theory.

Giddens, Sociology.

Hinkley, ‘Developing Corporate Conscience’, 291.

Mulligan, ‘Globalization and the Environmental Change in Madagascar’.

See also ‘Mining and Environmental Human Rights in Papua New Guinea’ by Stuart Kirsch in Transnational Corporations and Human Rights, ed. Jedrzej George Frynas and Scott Pegg (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) for an additional analysis of the incompatibility of mining and human rights.

Ibid.

See David Bannister, ‘A Promise Fulfilled’, http://www.riotinto.com/documents/Library/Review89_March09_A_promise_fulfilled.pdf (accessed August 14, 2010).

See Rio Tinto's code of conduct, ‘The Way We Work’, http://www.riotinto.com/documents/ReportsPublications/The_way_we_work_2009.pdf (accessed August 18, 2010) at page 14.

See Friends of the Earth media briefing, ‘Mining Madagascar – Forests, Communities and Rio Tinto's White Wash’, http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/media_briefing/mining_madagascar.pdf (accessed August 14, 2010).

Kirsch, ‘Mining and Environmental Human Rights in Papua New Guinea’.

Bakan, The Corporation.

Stiglitz, Making Globalisation Work.

Stammers, ‘Social Movements and Social Construction’.

Freeman, Human Rights.

Jeremy Bentham, Selected Writings on Utilitarianism (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2000), 405.