Human Rights

Business and human rights have not traditionally been addressed or theorized in close connection to each other. Rather, human rights have been seen as the exclusive domain of the state, that is, as a legal or political concept with little relevance or implication for companies. This has changed dramatically in recent years. There is now a broad interdisciplinary and dynamic discussion on the potential human rights responsibilities of business. While a systematic debate on the issue can be traced back at least to the mid-1990s, contributions to this debate have increased substantially in the wake of Prof. John Ruggie's appointment as the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) on business and human rights in 2005. This bibliography attempts to structure this evolving debate and guide readers to the most relevant sources in the field. The debate has attracted contributions from a wide variety of disciplines and perspectives. This bibliography has been limited to contributions published in the management and business ethics literature; with a few exceptions, the legal literature has not been considered. Furthermore, and again with just a few exceptions, only contributions that explicitly refer to human rights in the context of business have been included. Articles that relate to or inform the debate on business and human rights-such as, for example, the discussion on corporate social responsibility or that on human rights in general-but lack the specific connection of both fields were not included. The authors gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of Rutgers University PhD student Akiko Shigemoto and a research grant from the Rutgers Business School Research Resources Committee.