Hajduk, ThomasThomasHajdukBrändli, SandraSchister, RomanTamò, Aurelia2023-04-132023-04-132013https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/90101The post-war period saw the rise of the multinational enterprise (MNE). This new phenomenon drew increasing attention from academia, trade unions, governments and the wider public, often evoking fears about seemingly powerful businesses operating across countries and beyond control. Against the background of these impressions and more general crises (e.g., oil shock, inflation and rising unemployment), international organisations like the United Nations (UN), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched comprehensive inquiries to grasp the nature of the new phenomenon. The ensuing reports concluded that MNEs were neither good nor bad per se but constituted a dilemma. They could be instrumental in promoting economic and social development, while at the same time they could abuse their powers in fields such as taxation, employment and their relations to foreign governments. The UN reports recommended the creation of a code of conduct which would stress the positive role and put a check on corporate misbehaviour. The UN was the first to pursue such a code but was soon torn between the diverging views of developed and developing countries. The OECD, which at the beginning of the debate had been reluctant towards a code, stepped in and adopted the 1976 Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the first code of conduct to emerge. The Guidelines were the result of an internal trade-off: minimum ethical standards for MNEs in turn for investment-friendly government responsibilities. The UN negotiations, by contrast, dragged on and were abandoned by the early 1990s. Nevertheless, the MNE dilemma and the code debate established or "codified" the very idea that MNEs had moral responsibilities vis-à-vis government and society. This idea has survived until the late 1990s and 2000s when another wave of international standards of corporate conduct-now called corporate social responsibility (CSR)-emerged.enMultinational EnterprisesCodes of ConductSoft LawOECDGuidelines for Multinational EnterprisesUnited NationsUN Code for Transnational CorporationsHistory1970sbook section