Repinted from Ethics & International Affairs 1 6 ,n o. 2.

2002 by Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.

NGO Strategies for Promoting

Corporate Social Responsibility
Morton Winston*
he current era of corporate globalization has not altered the fundamental
nature of the struggle for human
rights, but it has shifted its context and created new opportunities and challenges for
the global human rights movement. Since
the early 1990s this movement, which used
to focus exclusively on the policies and practices of nation-states, has begun examining
the role of multinational corporations and
international financial institutions in the
protection and promotion of human rights.
This article describes and evaluates the
different strategies that have been employed
by human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in attempting to influence
the behavior of multinational corporations
(MNCs). Within the NGO world, there is a
basic divide on tactics for dealing with corporations: Engagers try to draw corporations into dialogue in order to persuade
them by means of ethical and prudential
arguments to adopt voluntary codes of conduct, while confronters believe that corporations will act only when their financial
interests are threatened,and therefore take a
more adversarial stance toward them. The
latter approach is more in line with traditional labor union strategies and tactics,and
in fact is often motivated by a desire to
maintain solidarity with union partners.
Confrontational NGOs tend to employ
moral stigmatization, or naming and
shaming, as their primary tactic, while
NGOs that favor engagement offer dialogue

and limited forms of cooperation with willing MNCs.

THE NEW FOCUS ON MNCs

At least five factors have contributed to
human rights NGOs interest in the business
sector:
a perceived shift of power from nati on -

states to MNCs and international financial

institutions such as the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund;
the lack of social and environmental
accountability of MNCs under existing
national and international laws;
the growing anti-corpora te - gl ob a l i z a ti on
movement;
a conclusion on the part of large, international human rights organizations that they
have been too focused on traditional categories of civil and political rights while
neglecting economic, social, and cultu ra l
rights; and
a desire on the part of some people in the
NGO world to enlist MNCs and business

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the

meetings of the Comparative International Studies Section of the International Studies Association in Washington, D.C., on August 29, 2000. The author gratefully
acknowledges comments and suggestions provided by
Christian Barry, Simon Billenness, Geoffrey Chandler,
Gemma Crijns, George Frynas, Arvind Ganesan,
Rebecca Johnson, Joshua Karliner, and Scott Pegg. The
views presented in this article are solely those of the
author acting in his private capacity as an independent
scholar.

71

executives as allies and as potential levers for

promoting human rights globally.

Undoubtedly the most important factor

is the perception that political and economic power has shifted away from governments
and toward corporations, in particular
MNCs. In the developed industrial nations
of the North, mainly the United States,
Canada, Europe, and Japan, state and
national governments are often seen as
doing the bidding of their major corporations. Increasingly, they resemble plutocracies in which corpora ti ons control the
political agenda while also dominating the
marketplace. In the South, large Northernbased MNCs often have more economic
power than governments, and nominally
democratic crony-capitalist oligarchies continue to control access to most of the valuable
natural resources while maintaining power
over impoverished populations by force.
Within NGOs,there is a widely held view
that multinational corporations,already the
dominant institutions in contemporary
society, are increasing their influence over
the economic, political, and cultural life of
humanity while remaining almost completely unaccountable to global civil society.
The boards and chief executives who control
MNCs are not democratically elected, and
their delibera ti ons are not transparent. If
they feel accountable to anyone,it is to market analysts and investors who, for the most
part, wish simply to make a quick profit.
MNCs play an influential role in major
international financial and trade organizations. One of the most significant events of
the past decade was the formation of the
World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.
The most remarkable feature of the WTO is
its dispute-resolution and enforcement
powers, and the extent to which its rules
could potentially deprive states of their ability to enforce, protect, and fulfill human
72

rights. Some view the aggressive effort to

privilege the rights of investors, banks, and
corporations over the wishes of consumers,
workers, and national or subnational governments and communities as a threat not
only to human rights implementation, but
also to economic self-determination, development, transparency, and democracy itself.
Under the terms of the WTO, governments
can invoke economic sanctions against
other states that fail to protect the trade and
intellectual property rights of corporations,
but corporations are not in turn subject to
any binding regulations, let alone formal
sanctions, for failure to respect the human
and labor rights of the people who live in
those states.
Indeed, there are currently no generally
accepted international legal standards articulating labor, environmental, or human
rights obligations that are directly binding
on the operations or behavior of MNCs.1
The only standards that do exist are found in
the domestic laws of some countries, and
they vary greatly in terms of what they
require. By and large,these laws are not well
enforced. In countries where such laws do
exist and are enforced, MNCs can easily
evade them by moving their capital, investments, and production facilities to other
1

International law standards governing labor and

human rights, such as the ILO Conven ti ons and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, have sovereign states as their subjects.
There are only a handful of instances in which corporations have been assigned the status of legal personalities in international law. See Multinational
Corporations and Human Rights (Utrecht: Amnesty
International/Dutch Section and Pax Ch ri s ti , 1998),
chap. II. For a more recent study of the potential for
enforceable international legal standards governing
MNCs, see Beyond Voluntarism: Human Rights and
the Developing Intern a ti onal Legal Obligations of
Companies, International Council on Human Rights
Policy(January 2002); ordering information is available
online at www.ichrp.org.

Morton Winston

countries that have lower or non-enforced

standards. Since developing countries compete with one another for foreign investment and hard currencies,MNC production
and capital mobility can lead to a race to the
bottom in which states compete to provide
MNCs with the least demanding regulatory
environment for business. 2 The inaction of
governments has created a regulatory vacuum. Social activists have seized this opportunity to place human rights, labor rights,
and global environmental concerns on the
agenda of global business.
The popular demonstrations against
corporate-led globalization that took
place around the WTO meetings in Seattle
in November 1999, and subsequent demonstrations against other multilateral economic institutions in New York, Washington,
Prague, Quebec City, and Genoa, provide
evidence of growing popular resistance to
globalization in its current form. This anticorporate activism has provided some of
the impetus for a number of human rights
and environmental NGOs to become
involved in debates over global economic,
trade, and investment policies.
The recent growth of NGO interest in
business reflects an interesting twist on
globalization:the concerns of Northern and
Southern NGOs are beginning to converge.
Large Northern human rights NGOs such as
Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch were founded in order to combat violations of trad i ti onal civil and political
rights, such as abuses of freedom of expression, arbitrary imprisonment, and unfair
trials. Southern human rights activists are
more keenly aware of the legacies of colonialism and imperialism, and they tend to
see the most pressing human rights issues in
economic and social rather than only in civil
and political terms. For many years Southern human rights activists have complained

that Northern human rights NGOs have

shown little interest in combating abuses of
economic, social, and cultural rights.3
During the past decade at least some
members of the Northern human ri gh t s
establishment have found reason to agree
with this cri ti qu e . In its recent annual
reports, Amnesty International has stressed
the indivisibility and interdependence of
human rights and has highlighted their relationship to globalization.4 In the past several years Human Rights Watch has produced
groundbreaking reports dealing with topics
such as child bonded labor, mistreatment of
maquiladora workers, and trafficking in
women and girls. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have
reported on human rights violations linked
to the activities of major energy companies
in countries such as Nigeria, Burma, India,
Colombia,and Sudan. There is now a grow2

There has been a lot written about the so-called race

to the bottom. See especially Terry Collingsworth, An
Enforceable Social Clause, Foreign Policy in Focus 3,
no. 28 (October 1998); Debora Spar and David Yoffe,
Multinational Enterprises and the Prospects for Justice, Journal of International Affairs 52 (Spring 1999).
See also the more extended treatment by William H.
Meyer on the question of whether foreign investment
helps or hurts human rights in developing countries
in his Human Rights and International Political Economy in Third World Nations: Multinational Corporations, Foreign Aid, and Repression (Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 1998).
3
This critique was persuasively voiced at a conference
organized by Henry J. Steiner of Harvard Law School in
1990 that was attended by representatives of Northern
international NGOs and several Southern NGOs. See
Henry J. Steiner, Diverse Partners: Non-Governmental
Organizations in the Human Rights Movement. The
Report of a Retreat of Human Rights Activists, Harvard Law School Human Rights Program and Human
Rights Internet (1991), p. 25.
4
See Amnesty International Report 2001, especially the
foreword by Pierre San, pp. 5-10. At its 25th International Council Meeting in Dakar, Senegal, in August
2001, Amnesty revised its organizational statute so as to
allow it to undertake significantly more research and
campaigning on economic, social, and cultural rights.

NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

73

ing sense within the human rights community that the major human rights NGOs
must find ways of effectively addressing
abuses of economic and social rights. The
recent focus of many human rights NGOs
on the activities of MNCs in developing
countries has emerged as one way in which
this demand is being met.
Another important reason for many
human rights NGOs increased focus on
MNCs is a desire to find new allies. Human
rights NGOs have traditionally drawn most
of their membership and financial support
from the better-educated, better-travel ed ,
more cosmopolitan segments of society.
Many executives of MNCs fit this profile,
and many businesspeople are pers on a lly
supportive of NGO activities in a variety of
fields. Just as NGOs attempt to attract support and expertise from other professional
groups, some within the NGO community
are actively trying to enlist support from
people in the business world. In some cases
there may be a role for business executives as
potential agents of political influence, for
instance, by interceding with host governments to raise human rights issues. Some
even think that corporations themselves can
be used as levers for progressive social and
economic change, rather than just being
engines of profit.5 Several recent studies
have cautiously suggested that multinational corporations may have a constructive role
to play in conflict prevention and conflict
resolution in the worlds troubled countries.6 A contrary view is also widely held.As
Maria Ottaway notes, during an earlier era
of globalizationempire buildingcharter
companies played a major role in bringing
civilization to the South.She warns against
allowing private corporations to combine
their entrepreneurial activities with the role
of political and moral reformers.7 Likewise,
not all NGOs believe that MNCs can or
74

should function as agents for the promotion

of human rights.
NGOs are diverse in terms of their missions, strategies, m et h od s , and organizational forms,and the NGO world as a whole
is anarchic. Quite appropriately, there are a
number of distinguishable views and
approaches within the NGO world about
the appropriate goals, strategies, and tactics
for dealing with transnational corporations.

ENGAGING MNCs: THE

C O R P O R ATE SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY MOVEMENT
While MNCs do not generally commit violations of traditional categories of civil and
political rights (with some notorious exceptions), they are often indirectly complicit in
such abuses, and they are directly and routinely implicated in abuses of many important social and economic rights. MNC
managers control employment for millions
of people around the world and are in a position to influence directly the enjoyment of
the labor rights and economic rights of their
own employees, and to influence indirectly
those of the employees of their subcontractors and suppliers. Companies also have
direct control over health and safety issues in

Debora L.Spar, The Spotlight and the Bottom Line,

Foreign Affairs77 (March/April 1998), pp. 7-12.
6
Jane Nelson, The Business of Peace: The Private Sector
as a Partner in Conflict Prevention and Resolution (London: Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum, 2000).
See also Virginia Haufler, Is There a Role for Business
in Conflict Management? in Chester A. Crocker, Fen
Osler Hampson,and Pamela Aall, eds.,Turbulent Peace:
The Chall en ges of Managing International Conflict
(Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace,
2001), pp. 659-76.
7
Marina Ottaway, Reluctant Missionaries, Foreign
Policy (July/August 2001), available online at www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2001/ottawayprint.html.

Morton Winston

the workplace, worker compensation, and

rights to organize and bargain collectively.
Over the past several decades there has
been a gradual but steady evolution of the
idea that corporations have certain ethical
responsibilities toward society. Prior to the
1970s the dominant view was that the only
responsibility of businesses is to increase
profits for owners and investors. This is a
legal obligation only.8 In the 1970s, in the
wake of the Lockheed, ITT, Ford Pinto, and
other scandals, the view that businesses
must not engage in bribery, fraud, or collusive practices, nor may they interfere in the
political affairs of host states, gained acceptance. This led to passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the United States, and
to the first wave of attempts by the UN Economic and Social Council and other international organizations to regulate MNC
behavior. In the 1980s the corporate social
responsibility (CSR) agenda was significantly broadened when, in the wake of Bhopal,
Exxon Valdez, and other highly publicized
environmental disasters, the NGO environmental movement pressed home the idea
that MNCs must also protect the environment, thus further expanding the notion
that corporations have social responsibilities. From the early 1990s on, human rights
NGOs and other voices within civil society
have been calling upon corporations to
accept responsibility for promoting labor
rights, human rights,environmental quality,
and sustainable development.
The contemporary CSR movement aims
to persuade MNCs to adopt voluntary codes
of conduct and implement business practices that incorporate commitments to
respect and protect labor rights and human
rights as well as the environment. Those
who favor the voluntary CSR approach talk
a bo ut companies paying atten ti on to the
triple bottom linethe financial account,

the environmental account, and the social

accountand urge MNCs to embrace these
new kinds of ethical responsibilities voluntarily. The voluntary CSR approach is seen
by its boosters as a practical response to the
current lack of MNC accountability, not as
an alternative to government regulation or
enforceable international legal standards.
At the present time, however, there is no
universal agreement as to exactly what the
social and environmental responsibilities of
corporations are. In the past decade there
has been a proliferation of voluntary codes
and guidelines, including the Global Sullivan Principles, the Caux Principles, the
Ceres Principles, and others, as well as
numerous company codes delineating
socially responsible business practices.9
Recently, the UN Subcommission on the
Protection and Promotion of Human Rights
has published a set of principles that may
become the benchmark for articulating a
comprehensive and widely acknowledged
set of ethical and legal obligations for
MNCs.10 But none of these guidelines or
codes has yet received universal acceptance.

CONFRONTING MNCs:
ENACTING ENFORCEABLE
LEGAL STA N DARDS
The voluntary CSR approach is not the only
NGO strategy. Another influential school of
8

See Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of

Business Is to Increase Its Profits,New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970.
9
For a c omprehensive review of codes of conduct see
Oliver F. Williams, ed., Global Codes of Conduct:An Idea
Whose Time Has Come(Notre Dame,Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2000).
10
Proposed Draft Human Rights Code of Conduct for
Companies, U.N. Doc.E/CN.4/Sub.2/2000/XX (2001),
available online at www1.umn.edu/humanrts/links/
principles11-18-2001.htm.

NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

75

thought within the NGO world views

MNCs as constitutionally unredeemable
and incapable of voluntarily acting in a
socially responsible fashion; companies can
only be made to be socially and environmentally accountable by means of economic coercion or through binding legal
obligations. Those who take this view look
toward the development of a mass social
movement that will compel governments to
enact enforceable international legal standards (EILS) that will make MNCs legally
accountable to global society. Private voluntary CSR initiatives are viewed as exercises in
corporate public relations and as poor substitutes for strict legal regulation. Often
allied philosophically and strategically with
unions, NGO activists who take this view
may seek to support trad i ti onal union
organizing efforts to win rights and fair
compensation for workers worldwide
through collective bargaining agreements
with free labor unions.
The strategic split between NGOs that see
themselves as primarily working for voluntary CSR and those that favor moving
immediately to EILS creates some tensions
within the NGO community, but the combination of the two strategies has shown
itself to be effective in at least some cases.
Many NGOs see EILS as the ultimate goal,
but believe that the widespread adoption of
voluntary CSR standards by many large
MNCs is a necessary way station on the
route to that goal. NGOs following the voluntary CSR approach believe that while
enforceable international legal standards for
MNCs are desirable and in principle are
preferable to voluntary ones,in practice they
are not achievable in the present or near
future. Many in the NGO world share the
view of Noam Chomsky, who told me:
You can force corporations to reform. They
dont care about the arguments; they care

76

about the threats. You know like Monsanto

started reforming when their stock started
going down . . . . Its like dictatorships. You can
threaten a dictatorship so that it becomes more
benevolent . . . thats good for two reasons: for
one thing it helps people, and thats good, but
for another it is very educational; it tells you
just how far you can go. Take, for instance,
slaveowners. You can tell them to treat their
slaves more nicely. But if you tell them they
have to give up their slave s ,t h en youve hit the
limit. And its important to understand that
11
limit. Its the same with corporations.

While some companies are now willing to

accept voluntarily their human rights,labor,
and environmental responsibilities, at the
present time the limit that Chomsky talks
a bo ut is reached when one demands that
companies give up their freedom of action
and submit to enforceable legal standards.
Supporters of the voluntary CSR
approach generally believe that fear of public shaming will con ti nue to work as an
effective means of moving more companies
to embrace voluntary CSR. They worry that
working directly for EILS at this stage will
lead to a corporate backlash that will undermine efforts to establish a critical mass of
CSR companies. Many NGOs also believe
that voluntary standards should not be seen
as a substitute for enforceable international
legal standards, but as a complement to
them, since any conceivable future global
enforcement system would need to rely in
great part on companies monitoring and
regulating their own behavior. In this view,
voluntary CSR is not just a first step toward
legally enforceable standards,it is also a necessary component of any future global compliance regime.
Many NGOs believe that MNCs may now
be somewhat more willing to cooperate in

11

Personal communication, April 18, 2000.

Morton Winston

the development of international CSR standards. During the 1990s public criticism of
their labor practices,security arrangements,
and other human rights practices in the
global media embarrassed a number of
companies. Some MNCs that have experienced these kinds of crises have now begun
to consider seriously the human ri gh t s
implications of their activities and have
established private voluntary codes of conduct for overseas offices, subsidiaries, suppliers, and contractors. These voluntary
codes generally deal with such issues as
compliance with national and local laws;
nondiscrimination; adequate wage levels;
workplace safety and health; working hours
and overtime; freedom of association and
the right to organize trade unions; prohibitions on child and forced labor; environmental protection; dissemination of company
policies; implementation of company policies by supervisors; and protection for
employees who complain about breaches of
company policies. In addition,some associations of MNCs have developed joint standards, for instance, the Fair Labor
Association for the apparel industry, and
Rugmark for handmade carpets.
But critics of the CSR approach see voluntary codes mainly as corporate propaganda and as means of avoiding strict
government regulation. This crucial difference in political analysis leads to further differences among NGOs in terms of their
tactics in dealing with global corporations.

E VA LUATING STRAT E G I E S :
ENGAGEMENT OR
C O N F R O N TAT I O N ?
In practice, no NGO acts solely as an
en ga ger, nor do any act purely in a confrontational mode; all utilize strategies that

fall along an en ga gement-confrontation

spectrum. There are at least eight different
tactics that various NGOs have employed
with respect to different companies in order
to encourage them to accept social responsibilities. Arranged in order from the least to
the most confrontational, they are:
dialogue aimed at promoting the adoption

of voluntary codes of conductthe pure

CSR approach
advocacy of social accounting and independent verification schemes
the filing of shareholder resolutions
documentation of abuses and moral shaming
calls for boycotts of company products or
divestment of stock
advocacy of selective purchasing laws
advocacy of government-imposed standards
litigation seeking punitive damages

Most NGOs try to tailor the tactics to the

target based upon the specific characteristics
of the companys position on corporate
social responsibility issues, but there are
clear philosophical differences between
those that favor dialogue and those on the
confrontational side of the spectrum.

Engagement and Support

Although engagers, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, also
employ negative publicity and stigmatization of particular company practices in some
of their reports, they generally try to avoid
confrontational tactics and are more willing
to enter into dialogue with MNCs. Engagers
attempt to use high-quality research, rational persuasion, and moral argumentation
with corporate managers to get companies to
agree voluntarily to institute human rights
principles in their codes of conduct and to
implement and monitor their compliance.
This CSR strategy is based on the assumption that some corporate managers will

NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

77

respond to a combination of ethical and prudential arguments as to why it is in their

companys best interest to embrace CSR.
Making the business case for human
rights is a primary tactic of engagers. There
are in fact a significant number of purely
prudential reasons, based on solid business
considerations, for companies to adopt
good human rights policies and practices.
Among the kinds of prudential arguments
that can be advanced are that by embracing
CSR, companies can enhance their compliance with local and international laws; benefit from better control over their su pp ly
chains; protect their reputations and b rand
images; enhance their risk-management
strategies; increase employee productivity,
morale, and loyalty; reduce operating costs,
enhance financial performance and increase
stock value; and improve business relationships with external stakeholders generally.12
The philosophical differences between
en ga gers and confronters became evident
when the United Nations rolled out its
Global Compact (GC). Secretary-General
Kofi Annan launched the idea of a voluntary
global compact on human rights, labor
rights, and the environment at the Davos
Economic Forum in January 1999, where he
warned the gathered dignitaries of a popular backlash against globalization if it does
not promote human, labor, and environmental rights and ifthe benefits of corporate
globalization are not distributed fairly.
Unless people have confidence in the fundamental fairness of the global economy, its
long-term sustainability will be placed in
doubt and its future prospects will be fragile and vulnerablevulnerable to a backlash
from the isms of our post-Cold War world:
protectionism, populism, nationalism, ethnic chauvinism, fanaticism, and terrorism.13 On July 26, 2000, Annan appeared
with the CEOs of several dozen major cor78

porations that have committed their companies to the terms of the Global Compact.
Also in attendance were representatives of
several major international human rights
organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch, along with several other
NGOs,welcomed the Global Compact initiative, but deliberately stopped short of formally endorsing it, mainly because of its lack
of independent verification and enforcement mechanisms. They saw affiliation with
Global Compact as a first step on the path
toward global corporate social responsibility,
rather than the end of the journey.
At the same time, a coalition of other
human rights and environmental NGOs,
including Corporate Watch, Institute of Policy Studies, Green pe ace International, the
Third World Institute and several others,
issued a press release blasting the GC as
threatening the mission and integrity of the
UN. Joshua Karliner of Corporate Watch,
for one, charged that the Global Compact
partnership and the Guidelines for Cooperation do not ensure the integrity and independence of the United Nations and allow
business entities with poor records to bluewash their image by wrapping themselves in
the flag of the United Nations. 14
12

See John Weiser and Simon Zadek, Conversations

with Disbelievers: Persuading Companies to Address
Social Challenges, Ford Foundation, November 2000.
13
See www.unglobalcompact.org. The site contains a
full list of the participants in the launch as well as the
text of the Global Compact.
14
The term bluewash is presumably a cognate of
greenwash, which was coined by Jed Greer and Kenny
Bruno in their book Greenwash: The Reality Behind
Corporate Environmentalism(New York: Apex Press,
1996),in which they developed the thesis that corporations began cozying up to environmental NGOs as a
public relations strategy designed to create the myth of
good corporate citizenship.

Morton Winston

The charges have turned out to be

unfounded: Nike has not begun stitching UN
logos on its tennis shoes; public opinion has
not concluded that the UN has sold out to big
business; and joining in the GC initiative has
not turned out to be a free ride for companies. At the same time, some changes have
been made in the terms of the GC since it was
launched. The main change is that the companies that join the initiative are no longer
called partners or even signatories. Interested companies are asked to have a letter sent
by their CEOs expressing their acceptance of
the principles and their intent to put them
into practice. There is still no independent
verification or monitoring system; instead,
participating companies are asked to submit
a case study every year detailing an activity or
initiative they have undertaken to promote
one or more of the nine principles that make
up the GC. The International Labor Organization has set up a database on its Web site
the Business and Social Initiative Database
(BASI)that lists topics, companies, and
NGOs and allows users to search for reports
by participating organizations.15 Many more
companies, including many from the South,
have since joined in the GC, and there are
more than 1,000 organizations affiliated with
the initiative. Its popularity rests on its being
an entry-level standard, one that is not too
demanding.

Social Auditing and Reporting

The social auditing approach holds that corporations cannot be trusted to self-monitor
their compliance with their own voluntarily
adopted ethical codes and argues that corporate social performance needs to be independently audited on a regular basis by
credible outside auditors. Some of the main
NGOs taking this approach are the Fair
Labor Association (FLA) and Social

Accountability International (SAI), which

has developed a comprehensive and rigorously auditable social responsibility standard for retail manufacturing businesses
called SA8000.16
The FLA grew out of an initiative by President Clinton in 1996 called the Apparel
Industry Partnership (AIP). Created in
order to address the problem of sweatshop
labor practices, AIPs original membership
included major U.S.apparel retailers such as
Liz Claiborne, Nike, Reebok, Tweeds, Patagonia, and L. L. Bean; business associations
such as Business for Social Responsibility;
trade union organizations such as the Union
of Needlework and Industrial Textile
Employees (UNITE); and NGOs including
the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights,
the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. This group
labored for several months and came up
with a code of conduct for workplace practices and a set of principles for monitoring
compliance.17 However, before they could
conclude their work on a standard, a split
opened up between the corporations and
some NGOs and unions over the issue of the
living wage; in November 1998 the apparel
union UNITE and several other labor and
religious organizations dropped out. They
complained that the agreement granted corporations too much control over the monitoring process and lacked strong provisions
on the right to organize, and that the code did
not provide for a living wage but only for the
minimum wage required by law or the prevailing industry wage, whichever is higher.
15

BASI can be accessed at oracle02.ilo.org/dyn/basi/

vpisearch.first.
16
Available online at www.sa-intl.org.
17
Available online at www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/
nosweat/partnership/report.htm.

NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

79

UNITE went on to organize United Students

Against Sweatshops (USAS), a campusbased movement designed to link student
activists concerned about sweatshop conditions worldwide to the demands of the U.S.based unions. Some of the labor-oriented
NGOs supported UNITE and left the partnership, but other human rights NGOs such
as the Lawyers Committee and the RFK
Center stayed on, saying that they believed
that AIP had made significant progress, even
if the final agreement was not all they had
hoped for. The FLA has continued to develop its code and auditing practices, but it has
predictably con ti nu ed to draw criticism
from the trade unions and NGOs that
dropped out.18
SA8000 was developed in 1997 by a multisectoral advisory board consisting of experts
from trade unions, businesses, and NGOs,
along with several academics and representatives of accounting firms. Based on the
principles of international human ri gh t s
and ILO conventions, SA8000 covers eight
essential workplace issueschild labor,
forced labor, discrimination, discipline,
health and safety, working hours, compensation, and the right to free association and
collective bargaining. A ninth element on
management systems adds specific requirements for demonstrating ongoing compliance with the eight normative elements of
the standard, thereby helping to ensure full
institutionalization of the companys commitment to the standard.
Social auditing in this scheme works by
means of a two-tier system in which SAI
trains and accredits auditors and auditing
firms in the SA8000 standard. Large brandname retailers become signatories to the
standard and then require their subcontractors and suppliers factories in developing
countries to be audited against it. If the
auditors discover noncompliance problems
80

they give the factory managers warnings and

some time to correct them, return to reinspect, and if satisfied can issue an SA8000
certification that is good for three years.
Unlike the FLA standard for the apparel
industry, SA8000 contains a provision concerning the payment of a living wage, and
auditors are guided by a detailed set of specific procedures and criteria in making their
inspections and issuing certificates of compliance for each supplier, not just for a sample. But both the FLA and SA8000, in
keeping with the social accountability
approach, rely on companies to adopt these
ethical guidelines voluntarily. They also
assume that large companies with complex
supply chains cannot become socially
responsible overnight, and therefore set out
a process by which companies that are willing to commit themselves to CSR can practice continuous improvement in this field
and be recognized for making demonstrable
progress, even if some problems remain in
some supplier facilities.

Shareholder Activism
A third approach that is compatible with
voluntary CSR seeks to influence corporate
policy by means of shareholder resolutions.
This technique has been used successfully for
more than thirty years by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, which
mainly represents faith-based organizations
pension funds in shareholder actions against
companies.19 Areas addressed in such resolutions include health and safety, tobacco,
weapons, environment, discrimination,
labor and human rights issues, and issues of
corporate governance. Since large pension
funds often hold large numbers of shares in
many major companies,they can often exert
18
19

See www.fairlabor.org.
See www.iccr.org.

Morton Winston

considerable economic as well as moral

influence at annual shareholder meetings.
These kinds of resolutions do not usually
succeed in attracting a majority of votes, but
they do get the attention of the board of
directors and top managers, who often enter
into negotiations with the sponsors in order
to resolve the issues. Shareholder activism
makes use of the accountability of corporations to their investors in order to widen the
sphere of corporate accountability to other
stakeholders, and is regarded by a number of
NGOs as an effective way in which to influence corporate policy and practice.

Moral Stigmatization and

Shaming
The most widely employed NGO tactic is
moral shaming and stigmatization of corporations for bad behavior. There is abundant evidence that corpora ti ons are
sensitive to such public criticism, particularly when it links their brand name and
corporate reputation to unsavory environmental and social practices. The acknowledged leader in the field of corporate
s ti gm a ti z a ti on is a Washington-based
m on t h ly magazine founded by Ralph
Nader called Multinational Monitor, which
each year publishes a list of the Ten Worst
Corporations.20 Corporate Watch ,b a s ed in
San Francisco, produces a Web site that
specializes in reporting corporate misdeeds, as does Global Exchange.21 On the
opposite side of the fence, there are now
several publications that specialize in highl i gh ting corporate best practi ce s in the
areas of social and environmental responsibility. One of the leading publications of
this kind is the London-based Ethical Perfo rm a n ce Best Practi ce .22 The Fi n a n ci a l
Times, in assoc i a ti on with the Warwick
Business Sch oo l , also offers a series of

pamphlets entitled Visions of Ethical Businessthat make the business case for CSR by
highlighting the practices of the most CSRf ri en dly companies. 23 Most NGOs avoid
praising corpora ti ons for good behavior
out of fear it will undermine their own reputations for independence, but virtually all
NGOs that are active in the field of CSR
employ moral shaming to some extent.

Economic Pressure Tactics:

Boycotts and Divestment
A still more confrontational approach holds
that corporations will not voluntarily accept
their social responsibilities, but can be persuaded to do so if they fear adverse effects on
what they view as their primary economic
mission, to return a profit on investment.
Proponents of economic pressure tactics
point to the successful boycotts against Nestle, Nike, Starbucks, and others as examples
of how consumer boycotts can be powerful
levers for influencing corporate behavior.24
Adoption of boycotts as a tactic is generally
seen as moving an NGO from the engager
into the confronter camp. Company boycotts have been used extensively by labor
unions and some NGOs, but not by groups
such as Amnesty International or Human
Rights Watch. Engagers generally eschew
such tactics on the grounds that they often
harm workers, they are hard to start and
stop, and they only work against companies
with large retail businesses and lots of con20

Available online at www.essential.org.

See www.corpwatch.org and www.globalexchange.org.
22
See www.ethicalperformance.com.
23
See www.business-minds.com.
24
For a comprehensive study of the Nestl infant f ormula campaign,as well as a persuasive argument for a
global regulatory approach,see Judith Richter, Holding
Corporations Accountable: Corporate Conduct,International Codes, and Citizen Action (London: Zed Books,
2001).
21

NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

81

sumer exposure. Proponents of boycotts

and divestment campaigns argue that they
speak in the only language that corporations
really understandmoney.

Selective Purchasing Laws

A stronger form of economic pressure is
exerted through selective purchasing laws.
An interesting example of this approach is
the 1996 Massachusetts Burma Law, a selective purchasing law that penalized companies that continued to do business with the
repressive regime in Myanmar by adding a
surcharge to contracts with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Shortly after the
Massachusetts law was enacted, the federal
government enacted its own anti-Burmese
trade sanctions. In 1998 the National Foreign
Trade Council (NFTC), an umbrella group
representing a coalition of corporations,
sued the Massachusetts secretary of administration and finance to block the selective
purchasing law, contending that it unconstitutionally interfered with the federal foreign-relations powers, violated the foreign
commerce clause of the Constitution that
gives Congress the right to regulate foreign
commerce, and was preempted by the later
federal sanctions on Myanmar. Supporters
likened the Massachusetts law to those used
in the 1980s to bring about divestment in
apartheid South Af ri c a , and argued that
cities and states have the right to base their
purchasing decisions on moral considerations. But in 1998 the U.S. District Court in
Boston backed the NFTCs arguments, as
did the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Massachusetts appealed the case to the U.S.
Supreme Court, hoping to clarify the limits
on a state or local governments authority to
draw up its own procurement rules. Amicus
briefs were filed on behalf of Massachusetts
by numerous NGOs and several other states

82

attorneys general, and some people in the

NGO world were confident that the conservative U.S. Supreme Court would uphold
the states rights to determine their own purchasing policies.
But on June 19, 2000, the U.S. Supreme
Court issued a unanimous ruling upholding
the Appeals Court ruling that struck down
the Massachusetts Burma Law. Justice David
Souter, who wrote the Supreme Court opinion,argued that the state law is at odds with
the presidents intended authority to speak
for the United States among the worlds
nations in developing a comprehensive,
multilateral strategy to b ring democracy to
and improve human rights practices and the
quality of life in Burma,and denied the parallels with the divestment laws of the 1980s.25
This Supreme Court decision was a blow to
NGOs and their allies. But the ruling was
narrowly drawn, saying only that the U.S.
federal sanctions preempted the Massachusetts law. The Court did not rule on whether
state and local selective purchasing laws
were per se unconstitutional infringements
on the federal governments foreign-policy
powers or on the power of Congress to regulate foreign trade. The ruling did not eliminate the possibility that states and local
governments could use their purchasing
power to influence corporations on human
rights issues.

25

See Simon Billenness, Burma Law on Trial: Case

Threatens Anti-Apartheid Legacy, Investing for a Better
World (April 1999), p. 1; USA*Engage, Amicus Briefs
Filed in Support of the National Foreign Trade Council,
available online at www.usaengage.org/background/
lawsuit/ProAmicusBriefs.html; Public Citizen/Global
Trade Watch , Federal Appeals Court Rules Against MA
Burma Law (June 23, 1999), www.citizen.org/pctrade/
burma/update2.htm; judgment in the case of National
Foreign Trade Council v. Natsios and Anderson, United
States Supreme Court, June 19, 2000, available online at
www.supremecourtus.gov.

Morton Winston

Government-Imposed Standards
A seventh tactic assumes that only national
governments have sufficient power and
authority to force companies to adopt ethical practices that protect human rights and
the environment.NGOs accepting this view
tend to focus their efforts on enacting legislation at the national or, preferably, the
international level, by imposing enforceable
legal obligations on MNCs. NGO activists
would like to see multilateral trade and
investment agreements such as NAFTA,and
the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment, incorporate strict and enforceable
standards on labor rights, human rights,and
environmental protecti on . But there are
other legislative initiatives in the works.
In January 1999, the European Parliament
passed a Resolution on Standards for European Enterprises Operating in Developing
Countries. The resolution calls on the European Union to establish legally binding
requirements on European companies to
ensure that these MNCs comply with international law relating to the protection of
human rights and the environment. The resolution proposes that European MNCs be
monitored by a panel composed of independent experts and representatives from
European businesses, international trade
unions, environmental and human rights
NGOs, and the developing world. It also
calls on the European Commission to
ensure that MNCs acting on behalf of, or
financed by, the European Union act in
accordance with basic requirements for
human rights and environmental protecti on . However, this resolution was not
approved by the Commission and did not
become a law. In s te ad , in June 2001 the
Commission issued a green paper on Promoting a European Framework for Corpo-

rate Social Responsibility, whose provisions,

however, are not legally binding.
In the United States, the Corporate Code
of Conduct Act (H.R. 2782) has been introduced into the 107th Congress by Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). It would
require all U.S.-based corpora ti ons that
employ more than twenty persons in a foreign country to implement a corporate code
of conduct establishing a number of core
human and labor rights standards specified
in the bill, and would also require that the
code apply to all of the companies subsidiaries, subcontractors, affiliates, j oi n t
ventures, partners, and licencees. A similar
bill, H.R. 4596, failed to make it out of committee during the 106th Congress, and at
present the chances of enactment of this or
other comprehensive legislation along these
lines are slim.
A more successful legislative initiative is
represented by the passage in late 2001 by the
U.S. House of Representatives of H.R. 2722,
the Clean Diamond Trade Act, by a vote of
408 to 6. The Senate passed a similar piece of
legislation, and a presidential signature in
early 2002 seems likely. Although weaker
than what NGO proponents had wanted,
the bill passed by the House permits the
president to prohibit the import of rough
diamonds into the United States from countries that are not implementing verifiable
controls. The passage of this legislation represents a victory for the 1998 Conflict Diamond campaign launched by a small human
rights NGO, Global Witness, de s i gn ed to
stop the trade in illicit diamonds that gave
rise to grave human rights violations in
Angola and Sierra Leone.26 De Beers and the
26

See Conflict Diamond Report, available online at

www.one.world.org/globalwitness/reports/conflict.

NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

83

world diamond industry became involved in

the negotiating process at a relatively early
stage, because diamond retailers were
understandably unhappy about having their
products associated with amputated limbs.

Litigation
An eighth tactic being used against some corporations involves holding them accountable
in U.S. courts for human rights violations
committed by them or their business partners. Examples of this adversarial approach
are the suits against Unocal for its role in
Burma, a suit against Texaco for its operations
in Ecuador, and suits against Chevron and
Shell for their alleged involvement in human
rights abuses in Nigeria.27 These suits are
based upon the provisions of the Alien Claims
Torts Act of 1789 (ACTA) that gives U.S. courts
jurisdiction over torts claimed by aliens
resulting from violations of jus cogens norms
of international law such as piracy, torture,
and slavery.
The most famous of these cases is John
Doe v. Unocal Corporation, in which the
plaintiffs, a group of Burmese refugees
presently residing in California,alleged that
Unocal is liable for torts committed against
them in connection with sec u ri ty operations carried out by the Myanmar militar y
during the construction of the Yadana oil
and gas pipeline from Myanmars eastern
Tenasserim region to Thailand. Unocal is a
joint venture partner in this project along
with the French oil company TotalFinaElf,
the National Petroleum Company of Thailand,and the military government of Myanmar, known as the SLORC, or more recently
as the SPDC. The plaintiffs, who are
Tenasserim villagers whose identities have
been concealed in order to protect their
families from reprisal, alleged that the
Myanmar military forced them to leave their

84

villages under threat of violence and to work

for weeks at a time on the building of army
barracks and helipads and clearing roads
along the proposed pipeline route. They also
claimed that they were subjected to numerous acts of violence in connection with this
forced labor and forced relocation, including violations of international human rights
law such as torture, rape, and murder.
In March 1997 Judge Richard Paez of the
U.S. District Court of California issued a
ruling that denied a motion by Unocal Corpora ti on to dismiss the suit, finding that
Unocal could be sued by these plaintiffs in
California under the ACTA.28 However, on
August 31, 2000, Judge Ronald Lew rendered
a decision granting summary judgment in
favor of Unocal, dismissing all of the plaintiff s claims.29 His decision found that
because Unocal had not actively participated in seeking to employ forced or slave
labor, it was not liable for the plaintiffs
injuries. The lawyers for the plaintiffs have
recently filed an appeal, but its prospects in
the appeals courts remain uncertain.

THE CORPORATE RESPONSE

The fact that there is such a wide array of
strategies and tactics available to NGOs is
fitting in light of the range of company atti27

See Morton Winston, John Doe vs. Un oc a l : the

Boardroom/Courtroom Battles for Ethical Turf,Whole
Earth Magazine (Summer 1999), pp. 17-19; Eyal Press,
Texaco on Trial, The Nation (May 31, 1999), online at
www.thenation.com. Also see Peter Waldman,Nigerians Suit Alleges Chevron Backed Attacks that Violated
Human Rights, Wall Street Journal, May 28, 1999, p. B2.
28
See Order granting in part and denying in part defendant Unocals motion to dismiss in case of Doe v. Unocal Corp., U.S. District Court for the Central District of
California, March 25, 1997, www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diana/unocal/31198-1.htm.
29
Doe v. Unocal Corp., 110 F. Supp. 2d 1294 , August 31,
2000.

Morton Winston

tudes NGOs encounter. Some major companies are engaged in fighting the ideas of
social responsibility and environmental sustainability and cling to the classical view that
the only social responsibility o f business is
to make money for investors. Others are
basically passive and have no considered
position on CSR issues. Still others have
begun internal discussions about CSR and
human rights issues as they affect their businesses, and are moving cautiously in the
direction of embracing greater social
responsibility for their own operations and
supply chains. In addition, there are a few
leading companies that have turned the corner by formally and publicly accepting the
view that they should base their business
practices on international human rights and
labor standards,and adopting codes of conduct or business principles that embody this
commitment. Finally, a few companies have
made serious attempts to implement such
commitments by educating their own
employees,identifying and operationalizing
performance benchmarks, communicating
their standards to their suppliers and business partners, carrying out internal audits,
and in some cases seeking external independent auditing to verify their social performance to external stakeholders. What
progress has been made on CSR thus far is
largely the result of NGO activism.
On the positive side one can see the
engager/confronter split as an example of a
good copbad cop interrogational strategy
in which the confronters push MNCs to put
human rights onto their agendas by means
of stigmatization and economic pressure,
while the engagers pull them further toward
corporate social responsibility by means of
ethical and prudential reasoning. This combination of push and pulltactics appears
to have worked in several cases. Since the
confronters make it their business to dig up

and publish embar rassing revelations, their

work provides imp etus for lagging companies to move in the direction of greater CSR.
But it is also possible to view the split
between engagers and confronters within
the NGO community as the result of a deliberate divide-and-rule strategy by corporations. To the extent that corporations can
successfully split the NGO community into
responsible and radical groups,they can
use the difference as the basis for public relations campaigns designed to deflect criticism of their behavior. Joshua Karliner
argues that many corporations now look
favorably on partnerships with environmental NGOs because such partnerships
are seen as part of a strategy to divide and
con qu er the environmental movement,
since by co-opting the mainstream, moderate groups, the corporations delegitimize
the more radical and progressive elements of
the movement.30 A similar strategy is being
used in the human rights field. At the 1997
Shell Annual General Meeting, several
groups, including Friends of the Earth and
the Nigerian group MOSOP, were planning
to stage demonstrations in front of Shells
headquarters. But the company countered
by announcing the day before that it had
agreed with Amnesty International and Pax
Christi to adopt human rights principles in
its business code. This public relations ploy
may have allowed Shell tempora ri ly to
deflect criticism of its human rights record
in Nigeria, but did not prevent it from being
sued by relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa.
In the short term, NGOs involved in the
corporate social responsibility movement
should combine stigmatization and other
pressure tactics, such as shareholder resolu30

Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet: Ecology and

Politics in the Age of Globalization (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997), pp. 189-90.

NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

85

tions and boycotts, with parallel attempts to

change corporate thinking about human
rights by means of dialogue, rational persuasion, and the sharing of best practices.
The tactics employed should be geared to
the particular company being targeted, with
the more adversarial tactics reserved for the
laggards and the more cooperative ones
used with the industry leaders. But NGOs
must not be seen as getting too close to corporations; they need to guard their independence so as to avoid being viewed by
their primary activist constituencies as dining with the devil.This means,among other
things, that even for engagers, voluntary
company commitments to CSR principles
should not be seen as buying companies
immunity from criticism. However, from
the point of view of the engagers, it is also
important to recognize those companies
that have tu rn ed the corner on CSR, and
treat them differently from those that have
not. By rehearsing endlessly the past abuses
and mistakes of companies like Shell, BP,
Nike and others that have now embraced
CSR, confronters ensure that no good deed
goes unpunished. Confrontational tactics
can easily become counterproductive. When
they are not used skillfully they produce a
backlash within both the business and the
NGO communities.
Confrontation and public accusation are
distinctively Western ways of behaving and
are generally regarded as uncivil in many
Asian cultures, where a higher value is placed
on acting skillfully in interpersonal relations
so as to preserve reputation and social harmony. Unfortunately, the evidence so far
suggests that changes in corporate behavior
regarding environmental and social issues
have been brought about mainly by means of
public stigmatization. Corporations respond
to damage to their reputations and brand
image, and to their bottom lines, not prima86

rily to moral persuasion. This general conclusion is amply supported by recent developments in a va ri ety of industry sectors,
most notably the pharmaceutical industry,
which bowed to public pressure to allow
generic versions of proprietary HIV/AIDS
drugs to be made available to developing
countries. In the future, more companies
may seek to avoid the risks associated with
such negative publicity by adopting and
implementing a comprehensive human
rights code of conduct before they have been
spotlighted and publicly shamed.

C O N C LU S I O N
NGOs cannot really force corporations to
do anything, and their attempts to influence
corporate behavior by means of any combination of strategies and tactics are unlikely
to be successful in the long run unless they
are able to mobilize two other important
constituencies: consumers and governments. Recent studies of consumer preferences have consistently found that
consumers are motivated to avoid purchasing products that they know are being made
under abusive labor conditions. However, as
the authors of one of these studies conclude:
The implication is that firms can lose greatly
from having their products identified as being
made under bad conditions but have only limited space to raise prices for products made
under good conditionsunless consumers see
competing products as made under bad conditions. The differential consumer response to
information about good and bad conditions
helps explainthe behavior of activists and
firms in the market for standards.31
31

Kimberly Ann Ell1iott and Richard B. Freeman,

White Hats or Don Quixotes? Human Rights Vigilantes in the Global Economy, National Bureau of Economic Research (January 2001), working paper 8102,
available online at www.nber.org/papers/w8102.

Morton Winston

As long as the majority of consumers

remain either ill informed or indifferent to
the labor and human rights conditions
under which corporations produce the
goods they deliver to the marketplace, no
amount of NGO pressure is going to produce sustainable reform.
In the last analysis it is the responsibility of
national governments to enact and enforce
global labor, human rights, and environmental standards for multinational corporations, and governments must be persuaded
that they need to accept and act on these
responsibilities. Governments could and
should be doing a great deal more than they
currently are, not only in the process of standard setting and negative regulation, but also
in providing tax and other regulatory incentives that will reward corporations for good
behavior. The NGO-led corporate social
responsibility movement must now move

the CSR agenda from voluntary compliance

to soft law a pproaches, and finally to rigorous national and international enforcement
regimes; but it is unlikely to be able to do so
unless it can mobilize support for greater
corporate social accountability from
informed consumers, concerned government officials, and progressive companies.
The struggle for environmental sustainability and global social justice will continue
to be waged on many fronts. The current
corporate social responsibility movement
may one day lead to the adoption of globally enforceable legal standards that bind
MNCs to their social and environmental
responsibilities. But for this to happen,
MNCs and NGOs will need to continue to
learn from their current encounters and
negotiations and cooperate in placing corporate social accountability on the political
agenda of nation states.

NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

87