Human Rights and Business Ethics: Fashioning a New Social Contract

Abstract

This paper argues that widely accepted understanding of the respective responsibilities of business and government in the post war industrialized world can be traced back to a tacit “social contract” that emerged following the second world war. The effect of this contract was to assign responsibility for generating wealth to business and responsibility for ensuring the equitable sharing of wealth to governments. Without question, this arrangement has resulted in substantial improvements in the quality of life in the industrialized world in the intervening period. I argue that with advance of economic globalization and the growing power and influence of multi national corporations, this division of responsibilities is not longer viable or defensible. What is needed, fifty years after the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, is a new social contract that shares responsibilities for human rights and related ethical responsibilities in a manner more in keeping with the vision captured by the post war Declaration. I conclude by suggesting some reasons for thinking that a new social contract may be emerging.

Wesley Cragg is the Gardiner Professor of Business Ethics at the Schulich School of Business, York University (Canada) with a cross appointment to the philosophy department. He is responsible for encouraging and coordinating research and curriculum development on the ethical dimensions of public, para-public, not-for-prcfit and private sector management in the business school. He has published widely in applied ethics, philosophy of law and punishment, philosophy of education and moral, social, political and legal theory. His current research includes issues in business and occupational ethics, environmental ethics, and the use and effectiveness of voluntary codes to regulate international business transactions.