Bennett, Craig; Burley, Helen --- "Corporate Accountability: An NGO Perspective" [2005] ELECD 215; in Tully, Stephen (ed), "Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility

Editor(s): Tully, Stephen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843768203

Section: Chapter 21

Section Title: Corporate Accountability: An NGO Perspective

Author(s): Bennett, Craig; Burley, Helen

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

21 Corporate accountability: an NGO
perspective
Craig Bennett and Helen Burley




Introduction
Environmental organisations like Friends of the Earth have campaigned
against the socially and environmentally destructive practices of companies
for as long as they have been in existence. Over the years, groups have won
campaigns against companies on a range of issues but how much has really
changed in the corporate world?
We argue that the corporate sector's response to campaigns by civil society
(ethical consumerism and corporate social responsibility: CSR) fails to
address the unprecedented social and environmental challenges faced by
humanity in the twenty-first century. In particular, it fails to challenge the
growth of unaccountable corporate power. As a result, we now see the devel-
opment of a `corporate accountability movement'.
Corporate accountability can be defined as the ability of those affected by
a corporation to control that corporation's operations. It is a concept that
demands fundamental changes to the legal framework in which companies
operate. These include social and environmental duties being placed on direc-
tors to counterbalance their existing duties on financial matters and legal rights
for local communities to seek compensation when they have suffered as a
result of directors failing to uphold those duties.
In this chapter, we briefly review how the concept of corporate account-
ability has come about and how it is fundamentally different to voluntary CSR.
We outline some of the mechanisms that could help deliver corporate account-
ability at an international and EU level, but we ...