Notes
1Andrew Kassoy, Bart Houlahan, and Jay Coen Gilbert, “Impact Governance and Management: Fulfilling the Promise of Capitalism to Achieve a Shared and Durable Prosperity,” Brookings Institution Center for Effective Public Management, July 2016, p. 10.
2 Samuel J. Palmisano, “The Globally Integrated Enterprise,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006.
3 The International Bill of Human Rights consists of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two international covenants of 1966 that build on it, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
4 These are conventions on forced labor (C29) and abolition of forced labor (C105), on the right to freedom of association (C87) and the right to organize and collective bargaining (C98), on equal pay (C100) and prohibiting discrimination in employment (C111), and on minimum age to work (C138) and abolition of the worst forms of child labor (C182).
5 John Ruggie, Statement to the 63rd Session of the UN General Assembly, Third Committee, October 27, 2008.
6 Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the UN ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework,” UN Doc. A/HRC/17/31, March 21, 2011.
7 Andrew Kassoy and Nathan Gilbert, “B Corporations: Redefining Success in Business,” in Lara Blecher, Nancy Kaymar Stafford, and Gretchen C. Bellamy, eds., Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights Impacts, American Bar Association, 2014, p. 451. B Lab requires that certified B Corps located in states with benefit corporation legislation adopt benefit corporation legal status within four years of the effective date of the legislation or two years of initial certification.
8 This is based on a review of randomly selected certified B Corp and benefit corporation websites, accessed October-December 2014.
9 Kassoy and Gilbert, p. 447.
10 Kassoy and Gilbert, pp. 448–49.
11 Hiroko Tabuchi, “Etsy’s Success Gives Rise to Problems of Credibility and Scale,” The New York Times, March 15, 2015.
Joanne Bauer teaches business and human
rights at the School of International and Public
Affairs, Columbia University, and at the Master
of Laws Program, University of Melbourne. She
is also senior researcher at Columbia University’s
Institute for the Study of Human Rights and
cofounder of the Teaching Business and Human
Rights Forum, based at Columbia.
Elizabeth Umlas is a lecturer at the University
of Fribourg and the University of Geneva, a
faculty member of the master’s program in international
human rights law at Oxford University,
and a senior fellow at the Croatan Institute. She is
an independent researcher and consultant in the
field of business and human rights.
