Florian Wettstein

Human rights have not played an overwhelmingly prominent role in CSR in the past. Similarly, CSR has had relatively little influence on what is now called the "business and human rights debate." This contribution uncovers some of the reasons for the rather peculiar disconnect between these two debates and, based on it, presents some apparent synergies and complementarities between the two. A closer integration of the two debates, as it argues, would allow for the formulation of an expansive and demanding conception of corporate human rights obligations. Such a conception does not stop with corporate obligations "merely" to respect human rights, but includes an extended focus on proactive company involvement in the protection and realization of human rights. In other words, the integration of the two debates provides the space within which to formulate positive human rights obligations for corporations.

In this paper, we analyze an emerging problem area in CSR and the ongoing debates on corporations as political actors which we call corporate political advocacy. Advocacy denotes the phenomenon of corporations taking a stance, politically, by showing explicit and public support for certain ideals or values with the aim of convincing others to embrace them as well. An example of advocacy is Ben and Jerry's active support of a law legalizing gay marriage in Vermont. Yet, such behavior raises normative challenges: what, if any, notion of moral responsibility can account for corporate political advocacy? Under what circumstances and from what perspective can it be considered legitimate or even desirable? We argue that while advocacy shares some overlaps with existing debates on the political role and responsibility of corporations (e.g. Political CSR and Corporate Political Activity), none of these debates succeeds in making conceptual and normative sense of the phenomenon.