Private business firms, human rights, and global governance issues: An organizational implementation perspective

Abstract

We analyse the increasing engagement of business in the creation and application of self-regulatory standards in the area of human rights in the light of an emerging framework of transnational human rights initiatives. The voluntariness of most of these approaches leads to problems that are characteristic of organizational self-regulation initiatives. Our analysis will show that these issues cannot be resolved simply by designing organizational structures. Rather, we argue that organizations need to acquire additional moral, communicative and collaborative capabilities to successfully contribute to the protection of human rights.