IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buhurj/v6y2021i2p212-226_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of the UN Guiding Principles on Business Attitudes to Observing Human Rights

Author

Listed:
  • MUCHLINSKI, Peter

Abstract

This contribution discusses business attitudes to human rights obligations and how the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) have affected them. These are best understood historically through a number of periods. The first, between the mid-1970s and the end of the 1980s, coincides with intergovernmental organization-based codifications relevant to corporate social responsibility. Business representatives were highly defensive towards extensive international legal obligations not only in relation to human rights but to corporate social responsibility (CSR) more generally. This was followed by a period of ‘voluntarism’. By the 1990s, businesses had accepted that there could be a link between their operations and human rights violations but continued to reject binding legal duties. Instead, businesses opted for voluntary codes of conduct based on individual corporate, or sectoral, initiatives. It was out of this period that the UN Global Compact emerged. ‘Voluntarism’ continues into the third period, the era of the UNGPs. The UNGPs can be characterized by ‘institutionalized voluntarism’ achieved through the framework for business and human rights represented by the UNGPs. Each period will be examined followed by a concluding section that considers business attitudes to an emerging fourth period that introduces legal obligations through mandatory due diligence laws.

Suggested Citation

  • MUCHLINSKI, Peter, 2021. "The Impact of the UN Guiding Principles on Business Attitudes to Observing Human Rights," Business and Human Rights Journal, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 212-226, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:buhurj:v:6:y:2021:i:2:p:212-226_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2057019821000146/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:buhurj:v:6:y:2021:i:2:p:212-226_3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bhj .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.