Corporations and Duties to the Global Poor

Synonyms

Charity; Multinationals; Poverty relief; The third world

Introduction

In a world characterized by intense global poverty, do active corporate efforts to help the global poor constitute discretionary acts of charity, to be praised but not to be thought of as mandatory? Or, conversely, are such efforts a matter of binding moral duty? The traditional position among business ethicists – and still, perhaps, the dominant one – is that there is no such duty, except perhaps in exceptional circumstances such as rescue cases (see Dunfee 2006). In recent years, however, several authors have made the case that corporations have quite wide-ranging positive duties to the global poor. This entry outlines the contours of the various arguments given in favor of the latter position, before highlighting two theoretical challenges which arise if we are to embrace this position – first, the issue of determining what sorts of actions count as adequately fulfilling positive duties to the global...