Corporate Responsibility

Activists are often unhappy with the laws governing business behavior and with their enforcement. One strategy they use to alter the behavior of corporations is to target not the laws but the corporations, hoping that they will change without being...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: World Bank
Format: Viewpoint
Language:English
Published: Washington, DC 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/05/4971605/corporate-responsibility
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11270
Description
Summary:Activists are often unhappy with the laws governing business behavior and with their enforcement. One strategy they use to alter the behavior of corporations is to target not the laws but the corporations, hoping that they will change without being legally obliged to. Sometimes firms do, because they would rather incur the costs of behaving better today than the costs of being shamed later. But how does this reputational mechanism work? Will it achieve the right standards? Which companies will it affect? And are there good reasons to prefer it to alternative ways of setting standards?