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Making Corporations Responsible: The Parallel Tracks of the B Corp Movement and the Business and Human Rights Movement
Author(s) -
Bauer Joanne,
Umlas Elizabeth
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
business and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 1467-8594
pISSN - 0045-3609
DOI - 10.1111/basr.12118
Subject(s) - multinational corporation , human rights , contradiction , movement (music) , accountability , certification , corporation , human rights movement , business , value (mathematics) , law and economics , public relations , economics , law , management , fundamental rights , political science , finance , right to property , computer science , philosophy , epistemology , machine learning , aesthetics
The business and human rights (BHR) movement shares several goals with the Benefit Corporation (B Corp) movement: corporations respecting human rights; maintaining a “wide aperture” so that all impacts of a company on people and communities are addressed; and creating rigorous standards of conduct and means of accountability. This paper argues that nonetheless the movements are traveling along parallel tracks and thus missing an opportunity for mutual learning that can improve their effectiveness. The BHR movement can look to B Corps for concrete examples of viable companies that value human rights intrinsically and not just where there is a “business case” to do so. The B Impact Assessment, the B Corp certification tool, can better ensure that B Corps are in fact respecting human rights by adopting BHR standards. And both movements must give greater consideration to the potential contradiction between unlimited scaling—a key goal of B Corps—and the ability of large multinational corporations to respect human rights.