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Using Alien Tort Claims Act suits against multinational corporations as an immediate context for discussion, this paper explores the emerging field of corporate social responsibility. The paper argues for an understanding of concrete legal struggles as part of broader competing strategies for regulating corporate obligations to a multitude of stakeholders. By identifying and analyzing the positions of concrete actors who operate in the field, the main thesis of this paper is that the field strongly tilts in the direction of voluntary and self-reliant models of corporate responsibility. The paper identifies this process as consistent with the privatization of regulative structures in general and with extant modeling of corporate governance in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate Politics & Identity: Berlin's Holocaust Memorial & Degussa AG Debates surrounding corporate identity and politics are often centered around a contestation of the essential nature of a company. As an entity (a 'person,' even) corporations are categorized and branded in ways that are surprisingly monolithic in expression and that fail to explore many nuances of possible identity politics. Much ink has been spillt on how best to articulate what corporations are insofar as they are accorded legal personality and the point of this scholarship has been to address how corporations might be conceived as persons. Taking the terminological as a given and using it to explore the plural identity of legal persons is a path toward a different approach to corporate identity: a way of beginning to ask the 'who' question of these companies.In this paper, I plan to explore the ways in which corporate identity politics are more multi-faceted in nature and construction. I am particularly interested in how narrative approaches to pluralized identity might be brought to bear on the legal person to address both spatial and temporal (both synchronic and diachronic) aspects of identity. The specific nature of corporations as entities which exist in and through time (immemorial?) suggests that greater attention to be paid to this temporal effect on corporate identity, whilst considerations of the hyper-spatial possibilities of corporations bring to the fore questions of belonging and attachment.As a way into the paper's argument, I propose to discuss the controversy surrounding the construction of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. In the autumn of 2003, construction was halted when it was revealed that a German company providing chemicals for the creation and protection of the concrete stelae for the memorial was affiliated with a company that had delivered the Zyklon-B cyanide tablets to the Nazis for use in the death camps' gas chambers. The project's oversight panel decided, in the end, to continue its contractual relationship with Degussa AG and recognized that the fact of being based in Germany forced them to deal with such "burdened companies." It is toward a better articulation of this "burden" that this paper strives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"It has been argued that all business systems will eventually converge along the lines of the western capitalist model. The adoption of such a model is increasingly viewed as the optimal means of maximising resources and encouraging creativity and scientific innovation. It is however, questionable whether the transplantation of western models and values are compatible with Islamic requirements as to how business ought to be managed. Islam prescribes that all Islamic organisations must serve God and develop a corporate culture which promotes morality and spirituality and which advances the achievement of Islamic objectives. Islam prohibits interest based transactions and economic activity which involves speculation and hoarding. It obliges businesses to take care of their stakeholders and urges managers to be kind, trustworthy and exercise holy stewardship of their assets. These principles appear to conflict with the profit driven values inherent in capitalist systems.This paper will argue that contrary to popular belief, the Islamic business model does not prohibit the making of profit, or competition or the accumulation of wealth. But it goes further to provide a moral filter through which business ought to be conducted. Thus Islamic business requirements ought not to be perceived as those which prohibit the creation or accumulation of wealth. Rather, we should seek to achieve a deeper appreciation of the rationale behind the Islamic business model - i.e. to promote honesty, accountability and the creation of a fair society whilst denouncing exploitation, abuse of position and an alienation of the poor and underprivileged." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Western-based TNCs have used Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a strategic tool to secure their financial position and to lower reputation risk in their home and host-countries. The recent emergence of TNCs controlled by developing countries (DCTNCs) has modified this setting, however.It has accentued competition and the degree of "Patriotism"of industrialized countries towards their corporations, claiming lack of social responsibility of DCTNCs. If the experience and international knowledge of those new TNCs is still recent, their industrial and technological capabilities are equal or close to that of their Western-based competitors, from which they have massively acquired the relevant know-how during the last twenty years. In contrast, they have lower CSR standards than their Western competitors and devote less attention and resources to social management.These contradictory strategies confirm that as a trend, but CSR is neither unequivocal nor irreversible. Two facts seem particulary able to counterbalance the CSR's evolution in TNCs: recent acquisitions by Western firms in China but moreover takeover bids by DCTNCs.This highlights a new trend which might become mainstream.Is CSR contagion a global phenomenon? Will the emergence of new Asian-based TNCs based in developing countries (DCTNCs) hamper or amplify the phenomenon? Is a global CSR really possible, and if yes, will its norms differ form today's norms?The purpose of this paper is to re-assess the phenomenon of CSR contagion, based on an analysis of the possible implications of respective CSR strategies of Western-based TNCs and DCTNCs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of legal personality have been impoverished by a need to distinguish humanity from its effects (by distinguishing entities, by maintaining reality for the human and fiction for the non-human, or by reducing the congeries of narratives of legal personality to a collection of artifacts of 19th century individualist philosophies). In response, the present paper eschews these self aggrandizing theories to tell a different story: that of the narrative subject. Adjusting our lens to focus upon the narrativity of legal persons produces an awareness of the constellation of normativities in which these subjects participate and which they concomitantly create and construct. Through an analysis of two particular examples of incorporated company (the new European company of the Societas Europaea and aboriginal corporations in Quebec), I shall distinguish various positions of these narrative subjects which transgress the boundaries of the hermetically legal as well as the moments in which and through which they transcend the singular. In a sense, these subjectivities claim their normativity outside the state, but express the plurality of legality within the state-created corporate person. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the specific challenges to designing human rights responsibilities for corporate actors involved in collaborative ventures with states that impact indigenous land rights. The article posits that the land rights of indigenous peoples that have been articulated in the context of state responsibility under international law could nevertheless serve as a source for designing the substance of corporate actors' responsibilities. However, the article identifies and analyzes two primary challenges to designing corporate responsibility with respect to indigenous land rights. The first challenge involves articulating the substantive nature of the corporate responsibility vis-à-vis the responsibility of the joint state actor. The second challenge entails articulating the nature of the corporate responsibility in accordance with the corporate form. The first challenge requires an analysis of theories of collaborative responsibility that would accurately reflect the relationship of liability between the joint state and corporate actors. The second challenge requires an analysis of the uniqueness of the business form vis-à-vis the imposition of human rights responsibilities. More broadly, this article examines the appropriate role of international law in responding to the land and resource claims of indigenous peoples vis-à-vis corporate actors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]