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NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Morton Winston
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Abstract

This article describes and evaluates the different strategies that have been employed by international human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in attempting to influence the behavior of multinational corporations (MNCs). Within the NGO world, there is a basic divide on tactics for dealing with corporations: Engagers try to draw corporations into dialogue in order to persuade them by means of ethical and prudential arguments to adopt voluntary codes of conduct, while confronters believe that corporations will act only when their financial interests are threatened, and therefore take a more adversarial stance toward them. Confrontational NGOs tend to employ moral stigmatization, or “naming and shaming,” as their primary tactic, while NGOs that favor engagement offer dialogue and limited forms of cooperation with willing MNCs.

The article explains the evolving relationship between NGOs and MNCs in relation to human rights issues and defines eight strategies along the engagement/confrontation spectrum used by NGOs in their dealings with MNCs. The potential benefits and risks of various forms of engagement between NGOs and MNCs are analyzed and it is argued that the dynamic created by NGOs pursuing these different strategies can be productive in moving some companies to embrace their social responsibilities. Yet, in order for these changes to be sustainable, national governments will need to enact enforceable international legal standards for corporate social accountability.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 2002 , pp. 71 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2002

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References

1 International law standards governing labor and human rights, such as the ILO Conventions and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, have sovereign states as their subjects. There are only a handful of instances in which corporations have been assigned the status of legal personalities in international law. See Multinational Corporations and Human Rights (Utrecht: Amnesty International/Dutch Section and Pax Christi, 1998Google Scholar), chap. II. For a more recent study of the potential for enforceable international legal standards governing MNCs, see “Beyond Voluntarism: Human Rights and the Developing International Legal Obligations of Companies,” International Council on Human Rights Policy (January 2002); ordering information is available online at http://www.ichrp.org.

2 There has been a lot written about the so-called race to the bottom. See especially Terry Collingsworth, “An Enforceable Social Clause,” Foreign Policy in Focus 3, no. 28 (October 1998); Debora Spar and David Yoffe, “Multinational Enterprises and the Prospects for Justice,” Journal of International Affairs 52 (Spring 1999). See also the more extended treatment by William H. Meyer on the question of whether foreign investment helps or hurts human rights in developing countries in his Human Rights and International Political Economy in Third World Nations: Multinational Corporations, Foreign Aid, and Repression (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998: Praeger, 1998, 1998)Google Scholar.

3 This critique was persuasively voiced at a conference organized by Henry J. Steiner of Harvard Law School in 1990 that was attended by representatives of Northern international NGOs and several Southern NGOs. See Henry J. Steiner, “Diverse Partners: Non-Governmental Organizations in the Human Rights Movement. The Report of a Retreat of Human Rights Activists,” Harvard Law School Human Rights Program and Human Rights Internet (1991), p. 25Google Scholar.

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15 BASI can be accessed at http://oracle02.ilo.org/dyn/basi/vpisearch.first.

16 Available online at http://www.sa-intl.org.

17 Available online at http://www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/nosweat/partnership/report.htm.

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27 See Morton Winston, “John Doe vs. Unocal: the Boardroom/Courtroom Battles for Ethical Turf “Whole Earth Magazine (Summer 1999), pp. 17–19; Eyal Press, “Texaco on Trial,” The Nation (May 31, 1999), online at http://www.thenation.com. Also see Peter Waldman, “Nigerian's Suit Alleges Chevron Backed Attacks that Violated Human Rights,” Wall Street Journal, May 28, 1999, p. B2Google Scholar.

28 See Order granting in part and denying in part defendant Unocal's motion to dismiss in case of Doe v. Unocal Corp., U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, March 25, 1997, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/aval-on/diana/unocal/31198–1.htmGoogle Scholar.

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