Aurora Voiculescu

Challenges and innovation in the legal discourse: Achieving corporate responsibility for human rights

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to map out the voluntary-regulatory dynamics of the discourse of human rights in a business context within the European Union (EU) regulatory environment. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the human rights and corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourses at the EU institutional level, in order to identify the interplay between soft and hard regulatory instruments that may contribute to the “human rights for business” normative landscape. Findings – A renewed focus at the international level on business and human rights has recently produced a United Nations (UN) framework document mapping corporate and state responsibilities in the area of human rights (the UN SRSG Ruggie Framework). Emphasising voluntariness as main tool, but also recognizing the importance of domestic uses of corporate law, of the investment and trade agreements, as well as of the international development cooperation tools, this framework report is in need of “operationalisation”. Starting from the interface between domestic and international developments in CSR and human rights for business, the paper explores the extent to which the European CSR context can offer tools and instruments towards such an operationalisation of the corporate responsibility for human rights and for social values generally. The article charts the dynamic relationship between EU soft regulatory attempts and the community mandatory legislation. Together, these define the EUs policy on CSR and human rights. Originality/value – The paper reveals an innovative normative mosaic, made up of complex soft and hard regulatory instruments that should enable the EU to integrate economic, trade and human rights policies and, ultimately, to contribute to the new CSR framework proposed at the international level.

“Etiquette and magic”: Between embedding and embedded corporate social responsibility

This article looks at corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a discursive social practice that attempts to interrogate the global market economy and its neoliberal underpinnings and that reflects as well as frames and shapes domestic and global politics and institutions. Drawing upon Karl Polanyi’s notions of reciprocity and redistribution while also emphasizing the normative content of the concept, the article inquires into the position that the CSR discourse occupies in addressing the corporate transnational risks derived from social tensions and conflicts and more generally, in answering social expectations for justice. The Polanyian perspective highlights the CSR discursive quest for a missing conceptual consistency and implicitly, for a constructive “critical” core. From this perspective, the article shows CSR to reside within controversial conceptual boundaries; a discursive social practice that engages with the social aspiration of embedding market economy in society while it is also in need of reclaiming its critical core and its potential for social change.

Business Responsibility for Human Rights Violations from a Theoretical Perspective: Towards a Moral Division of Labour

In the past decades, principles of corporate conduct, reflecting human rights responsibilities and obligations have been put forward through a multitude of business ethics and compliance programmes as well as through key international guiding instruments and, lately, domestic legislation. Civil society agencies, domestic and international organisations, scholars, business actors, have all contributed to shaping the discourse of corporate social responsibility (CSR), aiming to inform the ‘business and human rights’ (BHR) platform. The resulting BHR normative discourse appears, however, to be built on loose premises and foggy concepts. An account of the theoretical underpinnings of the encounter between the human rights normative discourse and the business full of conceptual pitfalls. This paper advances a number of essential reflections related to the weak or under-acknowledged theoretical and sociological foundations upon which the BHR discourse can be said to ultimately rely. It looks, from a variety of conceptual perspectives, into the rationale of organizational responsibility and into the way in which this may connect to the human rights normative discourse. Building upon the deconstruction and analysis of the foundation of social agenthood, this analysis focuses on the way different theories – methodological individualism, the structural restraint and structural pragmatism perspectives, structural functionalism – have acknowledged collective social agency, and assesses the impact each of these theories could have on the proposed nexus between business and human rights. The aim of the analysis is to identify key theoretical underpinnings stemming from which the connection between organisational agency and organisational responsibility can provide the BHR discourse with coherence and consistency.

UNORTHODOX HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUMENTS: THE ACP‐EU DEVELOPMENT CO‐OPERATION FROM THE LOMÉ CONVENTIONS TO THE COTONOU AGREEMENT

The Cotonou Agreement between the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the European Union (EU) has received much attention in the past years. Most of the time, this attention focuses on the economic dimensions of the Agreement, while forgetting that the co‐operation partnerships that the Agreement generates are meant to be centred on human rights and human development rather than on economic development per se. This article evaluates the human rights potential of the Cotonou Agreement and of the development co‐operation policies initiated between the ACP countries and the EU under this agreement. First, the article looks at the EU regulatory framework and the place of the Lome Conventions in the human rights and trade debate, as well as in the generation of the Cotonou Agreement. Next, the article presents those elements of the Cotonou Agreement that reveal a potential for enhanced human rights realisation in the ACP countries. Through the Cotonou Agreement the participation and integration of the ACP countries in the global market economy is not only ‘footnoted’ with human rights rhetoric, but also infused with human rights principles and human development standards. Last, the shortcomings inherent in the Agreement are identified and assessed, and the implications of these shortcomings for the realisation of human rights and development are highlighted in the conclusions.

Reflections on the EPSRC Principles of Robotics from the new far-side of the law

ABSTRACT The thought-provoking EPSRC Principles of Robotics stem largely from the reflection on the extent to which robots can affect our lives. These comments highlight the fact that, while the principles may address to a good extent the present technological challenges, they appear to be less immediately suited for future technological and conceptual dares. The first part of the paper is dedicated to the search of the definition of what a robot is. Such a definition should offer the basic conceptual platform on which a normative endeavour, aiming to regulate robots in society, should be based. Concluding that the Principles offer no clear yet flexible insight into such a (meta-) definition, which would allow one to take into account the parameters of informed technological imagination and of envisaged social transformation, the second half of the paper highlights a number of regulatory points of tension. Such tensions, it is argued, stem largely from the absence of an appropriate conceptual platform, influencing negatively the extent to which the principles can be effective in guiding social, ethical, legal and scientific conduct.