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An Emerging Market for the New Millennium: Transnational Corporations and Human Rights

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Transnational Corporations and Human Rights

Abstract

Transnational corporations (TNCs) are increasingly subject to high-profile consumer boycotts over their alleged complicity in human rights abuses. Textile manufacturers have, for example, been accused of physically abusing workers, actively assisting government campaigns against labor organizers and forcing workers to toil in ‘sweatshop’ conditions (see Frynas, Chapter 8 of this book). Resource extraction companies have been accused of providing logistical and financial assistance to repressive state security forces and relying on those forces for protection in countries such as Burma, Colombia, Nigeria and Sudan (Gagnon and Ryle 2001; Larsen 1998; Manby 1999; Pegg 1999). More recently, De Beers, the diamond industry cartel, has come under fire for purchasing diamonds from rebel groups in Angola and Sierra Leone and thus providing the bulk of their financing. De Beers has consequently become one of the latest TNCs to attract the critical scrutiny of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and suffer the threat of consumer boycotts against its products. The corporate role in tolerating, financing, facilitating and benefiting from human rights abuses is now an issue of considerable media and public interest.

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Authors
  1. Scott Pegg
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. International Management Birmingham University, UK

    Jedrzej George Frynas (Lecturer) (Lecturer)

  2. Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, USA

    Scott Pegg (Assistant Professor of Political Science) (Assistant Professor of Political Science)

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© 2003 Jedrzej George Frynas and Scott Pegg

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Pegg, S. (2003). An Emerging Market for the New Millennium: Transnational Corporations and Human Rights. In: Frynas, J.G., Pegg, S. (eds) Transnational Corporations and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403937520_1

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