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Journal of Business Ethics

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05.11.2015

Public Regulators and CSR: The ‘Social Licence to Operate’ in Recent United Nations Instruments on Business and Human Rights and the Juridification of CSR

verfasst von: Karin Buhmann

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics | Ausgabe 4/2016

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Abstract

The social licence to operate (SLO) concept is little developed in the academic literature so far. Deployment of the term was made by the United National (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the UN ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework, which apply SLO as an argument for responsible business conduct, connecting to social expectations and bridging to public regulation. This UN guidance has had a significant bearing on how public regulators seek to influence business conduct beyond Human Rights to broader Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) concerns. Drawing on examples of such public regulatory governance, this article explores and explains developments towards a juridification of CSR entailing efforts by public regulators to reach beyond jurisdictional and territorial limitations of conventional public law to address adverse effects of transnational economic activity. Through analysis of an expansion of law into the normative framing of what constitutes responsible business conduct, we demonstrate a process of juridification entailing a legal framing of social expectations of companies, a proliferation of law into the field of business ethics, and an increased regulation by law of social actors or processes.

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This paper employs ‘soft law’ and ‘hard law’ in accordance with international law terminology. ‘Soft law’ refers to non-binding measures, ‘hard law’ to binding measures. Thus, private binding regulation—like a contract—is hard. Non-binding public measures—like the Guiding Principles—are soft.

The Guiding Principles had been made available in November 2010 in a draft for comments. This draft, which was not substantively altered in the final published in March 2011, had informed the OECD’s revision of the Guidelines, which was published in May 2011.

Besides OECD countries, some non-OECD countries, including Argentina, Brazil and Egypt adhere to the Guidelines.

This author has recently engaged in more detail with transnational law in the public–private interface elsewhere (Buhmann 2015).

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Titel: Public Regulators and CSR: The ‘Social Licence to Operate’ in Recent United Nations Instruments on Business and Human Rights and the Juridification of CSR
verfasst von: Karin Buhmann
Publikationsdatum: 05.11.2015
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics / Ausgabe 4/2016
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2869-9

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