Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-23T02:23:47.540Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Principles and Practices for Corporate Responsibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Patricia H. Werhane
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The first issue of Business Ethics Quarterly was launched in 1991. At that time there were few general principles that could serve as guidelines for global business. However, since 1991 a plethora of such principles have been developed to serve as guidelines and evaluative mechanisms for global corporate responsibilities. But operationalizing these principles in practice has been a challenge for most transnational corporations and even for smaller, more local enterprises. This is because, in some cases, the principles ask too much of companies. In other cases, the principles are ambiguous. And in still other cases, the principles, written by and large from a Western, rights-based perspective, cannot be operationalized in some cultural or religious settings. In this paper I will outline a series of dilemmas multinational enterprises face in the global market place, even when they sincerely sign on to one or another set of principles. These problems are not insurmountable, but in the imperfect world of commerce, require that our expectations of corporate responsibilities be satisficing rather than absolutist.

Type
BEQ’s Twentieth Anniversary: Editorial Reflections and Comments
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , October 2010 , pp. 695 - 701
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Donaldson, Thomas, and Thomas, Dunfee. 1999. Ties that Bind: A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, Michael. 2008. Just Another Emperor? The Myth and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism. London: Demos Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Kathryn. 2001. “The OECD Guidelines and Other Corporate Responsibility Instruments: A Comparison.” OECD working paper # 2001/5. www.oecd.org/dataoecd/pdf accessed 3/1/2010.Google Scholar
Hartman, Laura P., Denis, Arnold, and Richard, Wokutch. 2003. “Nike Inc.: Corporate Social Responsibility and Workplace Standard Initiatives in Vietnam,” in Rising above Sweatshops. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 145–90.Google Scholar
Hoffman, W. Michael, and McNulty, Robert E. 2009. “International Business, Human Rights, and Moral Complicity: A Call for a Declaration on the Universal Rights and Duties of Business,” Business and Society Review 114: 541–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langewiesche, William. 2000. “The Shipbreakers,” Atlantic Monthly 286 (August): 31–49.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert. 1896. The Principles of Sociology, vol. 3. New York: D. Appleton and Company.Google Scholar
Werhane, Patricia H. 2004. “The Principle of Double Effect and Moral Risk,” in Responsibility in World Business, ed. Lene, Bomann-Larsen and Oddny, Wiggen. New York: United Nations University Press, 105–20.Google Scholar