Beyond Pragmatism: Appraising UN-Business Partnerships

UNRISD PROGRAMME ON MARKETS, BUSINESS AND REGULATION
PAPER NUMBER 1
likely focus attention on a set of crucial issues that to some extent explain the plight of many
developing countries, and in which TNCs are heavily implicated. These include socially
perverse patterns of deregulation and labour-market flexibilization, privatization and FDI, as
well as global economic rules that are applied to countries at very different levels of
development and that favour corporate interests and developed countries. They also include
the gross distortions that have occurred in the distribution of income between capital and
labour under corporate globalization, and the salaries of CEOs and workers. 89 Specific concerns
on which more discussion is needed include speculative financial flows, transfer pricing and tax
evasion, monopolizing practices and competition policy (Zammit 2003; Bendell 2004b). Many of
these issues relate more to broader policy frameworks associated with neoliberalism than
company policy. However, companies that claim to be proactive on the CSR front, and UN
institutions that promote CSR, should be concerned not only with what measures are being
taken to compensate for the negative effects of certain conventional business practices, but also
what, if anything, companies, and the business associations to which they belong, are doing to
lobby against such macroeconomic policies. The issue of lobbying and corporate influence on
public policy is a crucial one that has received only limited attention in the UN system. 90
The issue has been raised by the Global Compact through recent work on “responsible
lobbying” (Accountability and the Global Compact 2005). The approach adopted suggests a
number of useful principles, instruments and guidelines to encourage companies to consider
their lobbying practices more carefully. The problem is that an approach that centres on the
firm, and on normative appeals and calls for greater consistency of lobbying practices with CSR
principles and discourse, can only go so far. The key to progressive lobbying, historically and at
the present, has as much, if not more, to do with the political economy context in which firms
operate. Whether organized business interests support (or at least do not actively resist)
progressive social and environmental policies depends crucially on the correlation of social
forces and the types of pressures they encounter from other social actors; the types of
compromises and bargains entered into with the state and other actors; and the strategic
interests of particular industries or business groups (Evans 1997; Wilson 2003).
Concerns have also arisen with regard to gender dimensions of development and human rights.
The preliminary findings of a study which is examining whether the Global Compact has
addressed issues of gender equality indicate that:
• “[there is] no indication that gender equality or women’s equality is an important
issue;
• a signatory would have to look very hard to ‘learn’ about how the issue of gender
inequality can be addressed, and whether it should be addressed…;
• [there are] very few references or case studies that refer to women specifically;
• the issue is missing from Global Compact discourse;
• [one is] left with the impression that having anti-discrimination and equal
opportunities policies would address the ‘women’s question’.” 91
The fact that the Global Compact has not embraced critical thinking is to some extent to be
expected. From a strategic point of view it would not have made sense, early on, to ask difficult
questions of those it was trying to court. And the Global Compact Office was quickly forced
onto the defensive by the barrage of criticism that emerged from some civil society and
academic quarters regarding UN relations with TNCs. As noted above, there are concerns,
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For a recent analysis of such aspects, see Harvey (2006).
There are some important exceptions, such as the WHO report on the strategies of tobacco companies to influence public health
policy (WHO 2000).
These findings were presented by Maureen Kilgour at the conference, Beyond CSR? Business, Poverty and Social Justice, coorganized
by the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR) at Warwick University, and Middlesex University, at
the National Liberal Club, London, 22 May 2006, and are reproduced here with permission from the author.
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