Business and Human Rights Scholarship in Social Issues in Management: An Analytical Review

Abstract

AbstractBusiness and human rights (BHR) scholarship addresses whether corporations have human rights responsibilities and if so, what such responsibilities mean for corporate behaviour. BHR scholarship is cross-disciplinary and scattered across numerous academic disciplines such as law, philosophy, management, political science and accounting. While BHR scholarship in law is well established, this review focuses on BHR scholarship in the social issues in management (SIM) field, which – like BHR scholarship – addresses the nature and content of corporate responsibility. Based on a review of 180 articles from SIM speciality journals published between 1990 and 2017, the article suggests that BHR research has emerged as a subfield of study within SIM. BHR scholarship to date has largely focused on the justification for why firms have human rights responsibilities, and on descriptive research studies at the organizational and macro level. The article develops a conceptual framework for future BHR research which can usefully guide scholars – both SIM and non-SIM BHR scholars – in identifying potential research gaps and embedding their research in related focus areas.