The New Corporate Accountability
Corporate Social Responsibility and the Law

This book explores the external social and market forces affecting Corporate Social Responsibility.

Doreen McBarnet (Edited by), Aurora Voiculescu (Edited by), Tom Campbell (Edited by)

9780521142090, BK Norton

Paperback, published 6 August 2009

602 pages, 3 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.4 cm, 0.95 kg

'… a heavyweight book, both literally and metaphorically …' The RoSPA Occupational Safety and Health Journal

The adoption by companies of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies is routinely characterised as voluntary. But if CSR is self-governance by business, it is self-governance that has received a firm push from external social and market forces, from forces of social accountability. Law is also playing a more significant role than the image of CSR suggests, and this legal accountability - the focus of the book - is set to increase. Legal intervention should not, however, be seen as making social accountability redundant. Wider ethical standards and social and market forces are also necessary to make legal regulation effective. Law is being brought into play in innovative and indirect ways. The initiative lies as much with private organizations as with the state. At the same time governments are using social and market forces to foster CSR. In the context of corporate social responsibility, a new, multi-faceted, corporate accountability is emerging.

Introduction Doreen McBarnet
Part I. Corporate Social Responsibility and the Law: 1. Corporate social responsibility beyond law, through law, for law - the new corporate accountability Doreen McBarnet
Part II. Bringing Law into Corporate Social Responsibility: 2. Corporate social responsibility through contractual control? Global supply chains and 'other-regulation' Doreen McBarnet and Marina Kurkchiyan
3. Corporate social responsibility and public procurement Christopher McCrudden
4. Corporate codes of conduct - moral or legal obligation? Carola Glinski
5. Corporate accountability through creative enforcement - human rights, the Alien Tort Claims Act and the limits of legal impunity Doreen McBarnet and Patrick Schmidt
6. Bringing corporate social responsibility to the World Trade Organization Nicola Jägers
7. Meta-regulation - legal accountability for corporate social responsibility Christine Parker
Part III. Expanding Legal Accountabilities - Company Law and Beyond: 8. Disclosure law and the market for corporate social responsibility Kevin Campbell and Douglas Vick
9. The board as a path toward corporate social responsibility Lawrence E. Mitchell
10. The new corporate law - corporate social responsibility and employees' interests Stephen Bottomley and Anthony Forsyth
11. Shareholder activism for corporate social responsibility - law and practice in the US, Japan, France and Spain Bruno Amann, Jerome Caby, Jacques Jaussaud and Juan Piñiero
12. The other European framework for corporate social responsibility - from the green paper to new uses of human rights instruments Aurora Voiculescu
Part IV. Expanding Legal Accountabilities - Corporate Responsibility, Human Rights and the Environment: 13. Changing paradigms of corporate criminal responsibility - lessons for CSR Aurora Voiculescu
14. Corporate social responsibility and international law - the case of human rights and multinational enterprises Peter Muchlinski
15. 'The norms are dead! Long live the norms!' The politics behind the UN human rights norms for corporations David Kinley, Justine Nolan and Natalie Zerial
16. Corporate environmental responsibility - law and the limits of voluntarism Neil Gunningham
17. Power and responsibility - why human rights should address corporate environmental wrongs Amy Sinden
Part V. Moral and Analytical Issues in CSR and the Law: 18. The normative grounding of corporate social responsibility - a human rights approach Tom Campbell.

Subject Areas: Company law [LNCD], Corporate governance [KJR], Business ethics & social responsibility [KJG]