Abstract:Multinational corporations are at risk of being connected to modern slavery because of their strategic choices related to outsourcing. The slave labor supply is affected by myriad, localized structural injustices in which weak, ineffective, or corrupt but also well-functioning governments fail to provide for either protection of their constituents against exploitation or for a decent standard of living that would alleviate the human desperation associated with modern slavery. In this article, we highlight thre… Show more
“…Adopting a sensemaking perspective on BHR can shed light on the internal organizational processes that have led to this mentality. This, then, can help in advancing alternatives to create an ‘ethical commitment’ to human rights and due diligence (Van Buren III, Schrempf‐Stirling and Westermann‐Behaylo, 2020).…”
Business and human rights (BHR) scholarship examines the role of business in human rights violations as well as business responsibilities to respect human rights and to provide remedy where needed. BHR scholarship has been thriving over the last several decades, but it is at a turning point that begs for increased cross‐disciplinary exchange. We argue that dealing systematically and explicitly with a human rights perspective in management and organization studies provides BHR scholarship with a new impetus as well as with alternative perspectives on how to understand and further advance human rights obligations on businesses. We advance two BHR conceptualizations that will provide guidance for integrating human rights in management with organization studies research and thereby enlarge the cross‐disciplinary conversation on BHR: BHR as Global Governance and BHR as Sensemaking. This paper expands existing management and organization studies constructs, invites management and organization studies scholars to provide their insights into this important research domain, and discusses the implications of human rights for the firm.
“…Adopting a sensemaking perspective on BHR can shed light on the internal organizational processes that have led to this mentality. This, then, can help in advancing alternatives to create an ‘ethical commitment’ to human rights and due diligence (Van Buren III, Schrempf‐Stirling and Westermann‐Behaylo, 2020).…”
Business and human rights (BHR) scholarship examines the role of business in human rights violations as well as business responsibilities to respect human rights and to provide remedy where needed. BHR scholarship has been thriving over the last several decades, but it is at a turning point that begs for increased cross‐disciplinary exchange. We argue that dealing systematically and explicitly with a human rights perspective in management and organization studies provides BHR scholarship with a new impetus as well as with alternative perspectives on how to understand and further advance human rights obligations on businesses. We advance two BHR conceptualizations that will provide guidance for integrating human rights in management with organization studies research and thereby enlarge the cross‐disciplinary conversation on BHR: BHR as Global Governance and BHR as Sensemaking. This paper expands existing management and organization studies constructs, invites management and organization studies scholars to provide their insights into this important research domain, and discusses the implications of human rights for the firm.
“…Here we note again that any particular structural injustice is not the product of one or more participants' intent, but rather an unintended effect of social interactions within GVCs. Of course, lack of intent does not correspond to a lack of ethical responsibility (Van Buren et al, 2020). The current GVC system is the result of lead firms that have sought greater flexibility, cost control, and access to efficient production methods in pursuit of their strategies.…”
Section: Structural Injustices In Global Value Chainsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Ethical commitment is broader than an individual firm's legal compliance or meeting a set of “best practices.” Rather, ethical commitment is more demanding. As argued by Van Buren et al (Van Buren et al, 2020, p. 2, emphasis added):Ethical commitment … represents a stance taken by leading businesses in which they take responsibility for not only complying with the technical requirements of standards such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, but also do so with acknowledgement of their contribution to conditions that make worker exploitation likely throughout their supply chains .…”
Section: Structural Injustices In Global Value Chainsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Finally, returning to our analysis of structural injustice, we propose that lead firms in GVCs redirect their focus and attention to stakeholder outcomes rather than business processes. Young (2004, p. 387) states that in acting to address structural injustices, “[t]he goal is to change structural processes by reforming institutions or creating new ones that will better regulate the process to prevent harmful outcomes.” However, traditional approaches to responding to concerns about labor practices in GVCs have focused on “check‐the‐box” processes that give firms plausible deniability for harmful outcomes (Van Buren et al, 2020).…”
Section: Principles For Just Outcomes In Global Value Chainsmentioning
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
“…In contrast, the more recent literature on means-ends decoupling (Bromley & Powell, 2012; Dick & Coule, 2020; Wijen, 2014) challenges this assumption and instead argues that policies and practices may well be insufficient for achieving their intended goal, in this instance, greater respect for human rights. This theoretical perspective is particularly salient in a context where firms’ are increasingly interested in preventing human rights abuses, but progress toward achieving this goal has been slow or nonexistent (Obara & Peattie, 2018; Van Buren et al, 2020).…”
Section: The Decoupling Literature: the Roles Of Policy And Preparednessmentioning
Multinational enterprises are aware of their responsibility to protect human rights now more than ever, but severe human rights violations, including physical integrity abuses (e.g., death, torture, disappearances), continue unabated. To explore this puzzle, we engage theoretically with the means-ends decoupling literature to examine if and when oil and gas firms’ policies and practices prevent severe human rights abuse. Using an original dataset, we identify two pathways to mitigate means-ends decoupling: (a) while human rights policies alone do not reduce human rights abuses, firms with a high-quality human rights policy over the long-term reduce severe human rights abuses; (b) firms that combine preparedness—which we define as a firm’s capabilities, practices, and engagement—with a long-term human rights policy also reduce the likelihood of human rights abuses. Preparedness, we argue, can lead to reinforcement dynamics between long-term policy efforts and additional capabilities that provide a more holistic understanding of firm behavior.
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