This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 0007650309332378v1 48/4/511    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Rasche, A. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

"A Necessary Supplement"

What the United Nations Global Compact Is and Is Not

Warwick Business School, andreas.rasche{at}wbs.ac.uk

The United Nations Global Compact is with currently more than 6,000 voluntary participants the world’s largest corporate citizenship initiative. This article first analyzes three critical allegations often made against the Compact by looking at the academic and nonacademic literature. (1) The Compact supports the capture of the United Nations by "big business." (2) Its 10 principles are vague and thus hard to implement. (3) The Compact is not accountable due to an absence of verification mechanisms. This article discusses these three allegations and argues that they rest on a misunderstanding of (a) the nature of the Compact as well as its mandate and (b) the goals it tries to achieve. From this discussion of what the Compact is not, the article then outlines a perspective that classifies the initiative as a necessary supplement to incomplete state and nonstate regulatory approaches in order to illustrate what the Compact is.

Key Words: United Nations Global Compact • regulation • public-private partnerships • stakeholder engagement

This version was published on December 1, 2009

Business & Society, Vol. 48, No. 4, 511-537 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0007650309332378


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?