IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buhurj/v3y2018i02p157-185_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Commitment Curve: Global Regulation of Business and Human Rights

Author

Listed:
  • KIRKEBØ, Tori Loven
  • LANGFORD, Malcolm

Abstract

The divide between hard law and soft law approaches to global regulation of corporations in relation to human rights is partly based on empirical assumptions. Taking a step back, we assess the claims concerning the current state of global regulation and political feasibility of hard law approaches. Moving beyond the usual suspects, we map 98 existing standards that regulate corporations and find a great variation in how different sectors treat human rights and accountability issues. Turning to the explanation of the current jungle of global business and human rights regulation, we contrast and test dominant and competing expressive theories with a consequentialist commitment curve, in which corporations and states seek to minimize human rights commitments. We find support for all approaches to regulatory reform, but argue that greater attention should be given to the consequentialist insights, and how political economy can be leveraged to strengthen regulatory outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • KIRKEBØ, Tori Loven & LANGFORD, Malcolm, 2018. "The Commitment Curve: Global Regulation of Business and Human Rights," Business and Human Rights Journal, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 157-185, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buhurj:v:3:y:2018:i:02:p:157-185_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2057019818000111/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alysha Kate Shivji, 2024. "Rightsholder-Driven Remedy for Business-Related Human Rights Abuse: Case of the Fair Food Program," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 193(2), pages 363-382, August.
    2. Matthew Amengual & Rita Mota & Alexander Rustler, 2023. "The ‘Court of Public Opinion:’ Public Perceptions of Business Involvement in Human Rights Violations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 185(1), pages 49-74, June.

    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:3:y:2018:i:02:p:157-185_00. 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.