Teaching Resources

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Mandatory Human Rights Reporting

The following resources have been identified by teachers as particularly useful as classroom material, assigned readings, and research sources for Mandatory Human Rights Reporting:

Readings
Primary Sources
  • California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, Cal. Civ. Code § 1714.43 (2012).
  • The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Pub. L. No. 111-203, 124 Stat. 1376 (United States, 2010).
  • EU Directive 2014/95/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 October 2014 amending Directive 2013/34/EU as regards disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by certain large undertakings and groups, OJ 2014 No. L 330, entered into force 6 December 2014.
  • Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Business and Human Rights, UN doc. A/HRC/8/5 (7 April 2008), 189-212.

Report of John Ruggie, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Business and Human Rights. Discusses corporate reporting in terms of the state duty to protect human rights and the corporate responsibility to protect human rights.

  • United Kingdom, Companies Act 2006 (Strategic Report and Directors’ Report) Regulations 2013, r. 414C(7).
Reports – Inter-Governmental
Commentary – Business
  • Stephen Chen and Petra Bouvain, Is Corporate Responsibility Converging? A Comparison of Corporate Responsibility Reporting in the USA, UK, Australia, and Germany, Journal of Business Ethics (Vol. 87, 2009), 299.

A comparative analysis of the attributes of CSR reporting from four different countries; finding that membership in the Global Compact has effect on CSR reporting as does the country that the business is from.

  • Maria del Mar Miras Rodriguez, Corporate Social Responsibility And Financial Performance: A Controversial Relationship, in Corporate Social Responsibility: Challenges, Benefits and Impact on Business Performance (2014), 227-237 .

Overview of the controversy regarding the effect of CSR on business performance and the various methodologies used to study the relationship between CSR and financial performance.

  • Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou, and George Serafeim, The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Processes and Performance, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 17950 (2012).

Comprehensive study looking at the organization and management of “high sustainability” companies and their long-term performance compared to “low sustainability” companies.

  • Rüdiger Hahn and Regina Lülfs, Legitimizing Negative Aspects in GRI-Oriented Sustainability Reporting: A Qualitative Analysis of Corporate Disclosure Strategies, Journal of Business Ethics (Vol. 123, 2014), 401.

Investigation into how companies using GRI reporting standards “legitimize” negative CSR performance and the effect on stakeholder perceptions.

  • Jegoo Lee and Sylvia Maxfield, Doing Well by Doing Good? Reporting Corporate Responsibility and Corporate Performance, Business & Society Review (Vol. 120, 2005), 577.

“Building on the stakeholder–agency approach to [corporate responsibility activities (CRA)], we find evidence to support the contention that [reporting on CRA] positively impacts [corporate financial performance (CFP)] through the lowered agency costs and goodwill/risk insurance that information provision induces. Specifically, GRI reporting has a significant and direct effect on CFP, but this is not the case for CSR reporting.” (p. 601)

  • Jean B. McGuire, Alison Sundgren and Thomas Schneeweis, Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Financial Performance, Academy of Management Journal (Vol. 31, 1988), 854–872.

One of the earlier studies on the effect of corporate social responsibility generally on financial performance (based on a survey of Fortune magazine data). Looked at the correlation between CSR and performance (both accounting-based & stock price-based). Found that high performance tended to predict CSR & that instead of CSR increasing profitability, it tended to have a more significant impact on reducing risk.

  • Abagail McWilliams and Donald Siegel, Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance: Correlation or Misspecification, Strategic Management Journal (Vol. 21, 2000), 603.

A study on the correlation between R&D and CSR finding that, when controlling for R&D, CSR has a neutral impact on profitability. This addresses what the authors believe to be flaws in the study design of other papas that have shown positive impacts of CSR.

  • Najah and A. Jarboui, The Social Disclosure Impact on Corporate Financial Performance: Case of Big French Companies, International Journal of Management and Business Research (Vol. 3, 2013), 337.
  • Florian Wettstein and Sandra Waddock, Voluntary or Mandatory: That is (Not) the Question: Linking Corporate Citizenship to Human Rights Obligations for Business, zfwu (Journal for Business, Economics and Ethics), (Vol. 6, 2005), 304.

“Human rights obligations are not always clear-cut and evident; especially so-called positive rights often create contingent and often highly ambiguous duties for many different actors. . . . CSR/C[corporate] C[itizenship] can make a valuable contribution especially regarding the clarification of such imperfect obligations. Accordingly, the relation between voluntary and mandatory approaches must not be seen as a mutually exclusive one, but rather as inherently complementary.”

  • Haslinda Yusoffa, Siti Salwa Mohamad, and Faizah Darus, The Influence of CSR Disclosure Structure on Corporate Financial Performance: Evidence from Stakeholders’ Perspectives, Procedia Economics and Finance (Vol. 7, 2013), 213–220.

“The results indicated that efficient financial performers were those who increased the breadth of their CSRD in which they enhanced the coverage of disclosure to multiple stakeholders as well as those who provided higher concentration to the definitive stakeholders. Greater concentration on the definitive stakeholder groups could expedite the revitalizing of a company’s legitimacy and consequently increasing its financial performance.” 

Commentary – Legal
  • Koen H.M. de Roo, The Role of the EU Directive on Nonfinancial Disclosure in Human Rights Reporting, European Company Law (Vol. 12, 2015), 278.

Discussing the desirability of mandatory reporting as a regulatory tool for achieving compliance with human rights standards in context of the European Union Directive 2014/95/EU.

  • Anthony P. Ewing, Mandatory Human Rights Reporting, in Dorothée Baumann-Pauly and Justine Nolan, eds., Business and Human Rights: From Principles to Practice (Routledge, 2016), 284.

Surveys current forms of mandatory reporting – financial, non-financial and human rights – that require companies to address their human rights policies, due diligence and impacts.

  • Erika R. George, Influencing the Impact of Business on Human Rights, in L. Blecher, N. Kaymar Stafford and G.C. Bellamy (eds.) Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights Impacts: New Expectations and Paradigms (Chicago: American Bar Association, 2014), 271.
  • Amol Mehra and Sara Blackwell, The Rise of Non-financial Disclosure: Reporting on Respect for Human rights, in Dorothée Baumann-Pauly and Justine Nolan, eds., Business and Human Rights: From Principles to Practice (Routledge, 2016), 276.
  • Marcia L. Narine, Living in a Material World: From Naming and Shaming to Knowing and Showing: Will New Disclosure Regimes Finally Drive Corporate Accountability for Human Rights, in The Business and Human Rights Landscape: Moving Forward, Looking Back, J. Martin & K Bravo (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 219.
  • Cynthia A. Williams, The Securities and Exchange Commission and Corporate Social Transparency, Harvard Law Review (Vol. 112, 1999), 1197, 1208-09.
Commentary – Policy

[*] This bibliography may be cited as:

Erika George, “Teaching Resources for Mandatory Human Rights Reporting,” in Teaching Business and Human Rights Handbook (Teaching Business and Human Rights Forum, 2016), https://teachbhr.org/resources/teaching-bhr-handbook/teaching-notes/mandatory-human-rights-reporting/teaching-resources/.