Business is an essential part of human society, and the right to livelihood is a fundamental human right. Business can impact human rights, for better or worse. Recognition of this has led to a legal regime focused on preventing business-related human rights violations. The impact of these violations depends partly on a person’s place in society. Several cases may be used to illustrate how business can have differentiated impacts based on gender. For example, while maternity protection has been recognised in international labour law since 1919, a century later both pregnancy and breastfeeding discrimination, and maternity and paternity inequalities continue. The many gender-differentiated impacts of business on human rights require a gender-responsive business and human rights (BHR) framework. This chapter begins by defining key terms and the theoretical underpinnings of a gender-responsive approach to BHR. Next, it outlines international human rights law (IHRL) and policy relevant to gender, business, and human rights. It concludes that the current BHR regime does not provide adequate protection to those suffering gender-based rights violations. Nevertheless, there are ample legal and related texts presently available with which to begin to remedy this problem.

A robust global legal regime holds business firms accountable for engaging in corruption. This chapter explicates that regime. This chapter also puts forth a business case for not engaging in corruption. Corruption imposes real costs on businesses, and degrades the quantity and quality of relationships into which they might enter. The chapter concludes with a discussion of measures that all businesses should take to mitigate the likelihood that persons associated with them will engage in corruption. Before discussing any of these topics, however, this chapter first discusses the definition of corruption and describes the harms corruption inflicts.

The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre since 1945 provides an overview and analysis of developments in the organization and practices of American theatre. It examines key demographic and geographical shifts post-1945 American theatre experienced in spectatorship and addresses the economic, social, and political challenges theatre artists have faced across cultural climates and geographical locations. Specifically, it explores artistic communities, collaborative practices, and theatre methodologies across mainstream, regional, and experimental theatre practices, forms, and expressions. As American theatre has embraced diversity in practice and representation, the volume examines the various creative voices, communities, and perspectives that prior to the 1940s had been mostly excluded from the theatrical landscape. This diversity has led to changing dramaturgical and theatrical languages that take us in to the twenty-first century; these shifting perspectives and evolving forms of theatrical expressions paved the ground for contemporary American theatrical innovation.

This chapter examines corporate responsibilities and accountability to anticipate and redress human rights violations relating to the environment in their spheres of operations. After this introduction, section 2 examines the drivers and contours of the growing recognition of corporate accountability relating to environmental damage. Section 3 unpacks the key scope and content of emerging human rights obligations of corporations to protect the environment. These obligations are as follows: participation, accountability, non-discrimination and equality, empowerment and legality (the PANEL principles). By implementing the PANEL principles in the design, approval, finance and implementation of their operations and projects, business enterprises can proactively anticipate and tackle environmental risks across their entire business value chain. Section 4 highlights practical challenges that must be addressed by national authorities and business enterprises in order to fully translate these norms to reality. Section 5 is the concluding section.

The chapter critically examines and classifies the main approaches to the relationship between WTO law and international human rights law (IHLR). In so doing, it shows why none of these can be considered able to adequately manage this relationship. Thereby, the chapter goes on to examine the rise and consequences of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the affirmation of the MS principle in the international legal arena. And this is in order to develop in its last part a new alternative approach to the WTO-human rights relationship grounded on a combined use of the MS principle, the SDGs and their related targets.

This chapter explores the extent to which businesses have assimilated in their practice the internationally recognized standards of responsible business conduct and the SDGs framework in an integrated and mutually reinforcing way in an effort to contribute as partners to the realization of sustainable development. To this end, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) will be under focus for two reasons: first, they are cited in Agenda 2030; second, they constitute the most authoritative source among global standards of expected conduct by businesses to address and prevent the negative implications of their activities on the dignity and welfare of affected individuals and communities. Human rights pertain to all three aspects of development as put forward by the SDGs, whereas the latter are suffused with language that reflects clearly the substance and underlying norms of human rights law. Hence, the interplay between the two regimes, i.e. human rights and development, cannot be refuted. As such, the UNGPs are the predominant, until such time as the proposed Business and Human Rights Treaty is adopted, ‘normative’ roadmap for businesses to achieve the SDGs.

This chapter starts from the premise that business and human rights is much more complex than the impact of corporate practices on the fulfillment of human rights and environmental law. Rather, it is crucial that one identifies the underlying causes of this tension, namely: a) the broader corporate perspective in its transnational context; b) the inter-state investment relations and; c) the international financial architecture. Within all three of these, home and host states interact with each other, as well as with corporations. Powerful home states are lobbied by multinational corporations (MNCs) to create an international framework that better guarantees investment and trade. This is taken up as a policy imperative and reflected in international treaty making. States, both home and host, are clearly central to this process and their achievements, good or bad, will ultimately shape, or open up the space for subsequent corporate conduct. Hence, the starting point for our understanding of business and human rights should not be based on corporations themselves, but rather extend to all the contextual and underlying grounds that shape their existence, regulation and performance.

This chapter discusses the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises as voluntary standards for business and human rights. Both standards have received significant scholarly attention. Although both initiatives differ with regard to some dimensions (e.g., in terms of their scope), they also share a number of similarities (e.g., their voluntary and principle-based nature and their lack of monitoring). It is therefore appropriate to discuss both initiatives and to also compare them with each other (whenever possible and feasible). The discussion in this chapter proceeds as follows. The next section discusses the theoretical background by emphasizing the rise of voluntary standards related to corporate sustainability and responsibility. The following two sections provide a more practical discussion. Section three and four take an in-depth look at the UNGC and the OECD Guidelines and discuss (a) the basic idea underlying both initiatives, (b) their link to the business and human rights agenda, and (c) their enforcement mechanisms. The discussion of both standards shows one important similarity: the lack of a robust system to implement and enforce the promoted principles.

This chapter examines the main issues and achievements in the process of making MNEs human rights compliant. This involves, first, some understanding of the complexities of MNE organisation to highlight the problematic nature of attributing responsibility within what is a transnational network of interlocking entities linked either by ownership or contract or a mix of both. A distinction is made between integrated corporate group structures and looser transnational production and distribution networks between legally independent firms, often referred to as Global Value Chains (GVCs). Both have the capacity to violate human rights, but each has different control and accountability profiles.Secondly, the chapter will cover the main regulatory problems. These begin with the modalities of regulation. The UNGPs have stressed self-regulation through the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and the use of human rights due diligence (HRDD). MNEs operate as integrated enterprises, and GVCs as production and distribution networks, across national borders, while regulation remains bounded by the limits of sovereign state territory creating tension between the limits of national laws and the transnational nature of human rights claims against MNEs and GVC firms. The remainder of the chapter will cover substantive liability issues.

In this chapter, we first discuss the growing expectations for companies to address human rights and the need to develop business models that enable profits and human rights principles to co-exist. We then describe and discuss two empirical cases of companies that are experimenting with new business models to align the expectations for profits with the protection of human rights. The first case from the sportswear industry shows how Decathlon, a French sports retailer, has revised its purchasing practices to create partnerships with its suppliers with a view to improving both productivity and working conditions. The second case, from the extractives sector, discusses how Trafigura, a Swiss-based commodity trading company with headquarters in Singapore, has set up a collaborative project with a mining company to formalize the artisanal mining activities of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to mitigate human rights risks. Both cases illustrate actions taken by companies to embed human rights into their core activities while also developing their businesses. These cases provide anecdotal evidence for the hypothesis that systematically integrating respect for human rights can indeed go hand in hand with financial success and be considered ‘good business’.

Concluding that even if economists cannot agree why shareholders should have priority, they are nevertheless agreed that this is the case, the chapter goes on to examine the legal position of different stakeholders in the context of the company by referring to the thorough reform process observed in the UK some two decades ago. Noting then that, despite such a comprehensive debate, the enlightened shareholder value solution (ESV) arrived at remains controversial, and recognising that, in any case, such formal statutory provisions by no means exhaust the arrangements in place for corporate governance, the chapter goes on to look at the hugely influential development of essentially self-regulatory, best-practice based arrangements that are now a feature of stock markets throughout the world. Insofar as the experience of the jurisdiction from which this approach emerged has not been uniformly positive, the chapter proceeds to examine the alternative approach of a strict rule-based approach to corporate governance, taking the US as an example. Despite the problems associated with any alternative, these apparent limits perhaps explain the ongoing and indeed intensified interest in the notion of corporate social responsibility. The chapter goes on to seek clarity in a definition of CSR which draws a distinction between what society requires corporations to do and what it is willing to regard as optional. Noting, however, that encouraging legislators to take firm action in the face of the fear of capital flight can be difficult in the absence of some clear evidence of a problem (and even then, in some recent cases), the question is then whether the recent enthusiasm for environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting is a reasonable way forward.

By examining musical theatre icons and their major collaborations starting from Oklahoma! (1943) and ending with Waitress (2016), this chapter chronicles the evolution of the American musical, as practitioners assembled creative teams in response to shifting economics and the rise of mediated popular culture on television and the internet. Film studios and corporations such as Disney now develop and produce their own musicals, bringing new resources and structures that both support and expand the collaborative creation of musical theatre. At the same time, regional theatres and not-for-profit venues developed new models of their own for participating in musical theatre collaboration. Whether conceived in consultation with a corporate producer or tested through a low-budget laboratory process, what's inside twenty-first-century American musicals remains the product of creative, collaborative relationships.

Recent developments in investment arbitration have reaffirmed that corporations are not only recipients of rights under bilateral investment treaties, but also subjects of international law and can thus bear at least some human rights obligations under international law. Moreover, in a growing number of cases such as Philipp Morris, civil society intervened as third party by relying heavily on human rights arguments, thus enabling affected communities to voice their interests. The present contribution thus investigates the multiple roles of human rights in investment law and arbitration. It argues that human rights play an important role for state parties, foreign investors, and affected communities alike. They are not only conflicting and complementary to investment treaties, but can both expand and restrict the scope of jurisdiction of investment tribunals. For states, investors, and third parties alike human rights can be used as a sword or a shield in international investment law and arbitration. The different roles human rights play in investment law and arbitration very much depend on the underlying concept of human rights.

This chapter provides a critical overview of the UNGPs and its three predecessors: the 1990 Draft Code, the Global Compact, and the Draft UN Norms. The current BHR treaty process, which is dealt with elsewhere in this book, is touched upon briefly because of space constraints. In providing an overview of various attempts at the UN level to regulate corporations, two arguments are made in this chapter. First, we should see the UNGPs as part of a continuing process to develop standards at the UN level, rather than as a complete new start. Second, it is argued that the UN has made too little and too slow progress in putting in place an effective regulatory regime. In making such an assessment about the progress made so far in ‘humanizing business’, the author attempts to step in the shoes of rights holders, because progress could be interpreted differently from the perspective of different stakeholders.