Dr Marisa McVey of Queen’s University Belfast, School of Law.

Title: "After the Divorce: Assessing States' Obligations under the UNGPs Post-Brexit"

Marisa will be drawing on her ongoing work around Brexit and business and human rights.

The UK's withdrawal from the EU has been cast as a 'leap into the unknown', a rare instance of a state exiting an integrated legal order. Yet its consequences have proven to be less like a dramatic break than an ongoing process of reorientation: ongoing and fragmented.

While Brexit’s effects on UK have been extensively mapped, from devolution and constitutional change to trade and rights rollbacks, one area remains notably underexplored: corporate responsibility for human rights.

Reading list:

• McVey, M., and Montgomery A. (2024) 'NI business and human rights index: assessing the corporate implementation of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights in Northern Ireland' NI Human Rights Commission
• Hackett, C., O'Kelly, C., Hopkins, S., and Patton, C. (2024) 'Covid-19 as a lens to investigate local approaches to BHR: The case of Northern Ireland' NI Legal Quarterly 75(2) 238-266.

We will end the series this summer by hosting a panel on teaching BHR – just in time for those who are revising their syllabi for the next academic year. Our panellists will discuss their pedagogical approach to BHR, given its varied audiences, engaged learning activities, and how to teach BHR in a politically charged environment. This panel will be co-organized with the Teaching BHR Form.

The panel will be Chaired by Dr Judith Schrempf-Stirling, Associate Professor at Geneva School of Economics and Management and we are delighted to welcome three panellists:

• Dr Rachel Chambers is Assistant Professor at School of Business, University of Connecticut and is Co-Director of the Teaching Business and Human Rights Forum, a body comprising 350 teachers of business and human rights from 140 different countries
• Professor Jette Knudsen is the Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Business, Tufts University
• Dr Samentha Goethals, is Assistant Professor at Skema Business School

Robert Phillips, Professor of Sustainability and George R. Gardiner Professor in Business Ethics, York University’s Schulich School of Business, Canada.

Title: “Bringing together business and human rights with stakeholder theory”

Rob will first discuss the philosophical foundations of BHR and then engage in conversation with Harry Van Buren and Judith Schrempf-Stirling about their working paper that brings BHR together with stakeholder theory. The audience will then consider some key philosophical questions, such as is BHR liberal? If not, what are its foundations? Or does it need such foundations? How does the answer alter our expectations for the theory? If BHR does rest on liberalism, how broadly does it define positive duties? Or is it safer and more convincing to think of rights as negative injunctions against rights violations?

Reading

• Walzer, M. (2023). The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On" liberal" as an Adjective. Yale University Press.
• Rob also recommends this book review: With Liberals Like These | Gary Saul Morson | The New York Review of Books which discusses Paul Robinson’s, Russian Liberalism.

You can watch the recording on YouTube.

Tricia Olsen, Professor and the Stassen Chair of World Peace at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs and Department of Political Science, USA and Daniel Marín López of Los Andes University in Bogotá.

Title: “How does the use of legal sanction shape corporate behavior?”

Tricia and Daniel will be discussing their research on strategic litigation, or the use of legal sanctions to shape corporate behavior. They will share the varied goals of strategic litigation, which involve both victim-oriented goals and movement-oriented goals, the challenges therein, and the current state of play in this field.

You may like to read this article from justiceinfo.net by Tatiana Devia and Daniel Marin Lopez on addressing the corporate complicity of Chiquita in armed conflict: Insights from the Chiquita trial: 25 years of struggle.

Readings:

• Kölbel, J. F., Busch, T., & Jancso, L. M. (2017). How media coverage of corporate social irresponsibility increases financial risk. Strategic Management Journal, 38(11), 2266-2284.
• Haslem, B., Hutton, I., & Smith, A. H. (2017). How much do corporate defendants really lose? A new verdict on the reputation loss induced by corporate litigation. Financial Management, 46(2), 323-358.

You can watch the recording on YouTube.

Vivek Soundararajan, Professor of Work and Equality at the University of Bath School of Management, UK.

Reading list

• Soundararajan, V., Wilhelm, M., Crane, A., Agarwal, P., & Shetty, H. (2024). Towards a Systemic Approach for Improving Working Conditions in Global Supply Chains: An Integrative Review and Research Agenda. Academy of Management Annals, (ja), annals-2023.0071.
• Soundararajan, V., Sharma, G., & Bapuji, H. (2024). Caste, social capital and precarity of labour market intermediaries: The case of Dalit labour contractors in India. Organization Studies, 45(7), 961-985.

You can watch the recording on YouTube.

Elisa Giuliani, Professor of Management at the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pisa, Italy.

Title: Dual Failure of Democracy: How Businesses Infringe on Human Rights and Avoid Taxes

Elisa will draw from her work with the rebalance project, a collaboration between seven European universities and an international NGO. It seeks to provide new insights, resources, events, and learning materials to help foster a rebalancing of capitalism and democracy. The project is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe funding program and Innovate UK.

Reading list

• Giuliani, E., Nieri, F., & Vezzulli, A. (2023). Big profits, big harm? Exploring the link between firm financial performance and human rights misbehavior. Business & Society, 62(6), 1248-1299.
• Van der Straaten, K., Narula, R., & Giuliani, E. (2023). The multinational enterprise, development, and the inequality of opportunities: A research agenda. Journal of International Business Studies, 54(9), 1623-1640.

You can watch the recording on YouTube.

Florian Wettstein, Professor of Business Ethics at University of St Gallen, Switzerland, in conversation with Harry Van Buren, Lupton Patten Endowed Chair of Business Ethics at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA.

Reading list

• Wettstein, F. (2012). 'CSR and the debate on business and human rights: Bridging the great divide'. Business Ethics Quarterly, 22(4), 739-770.
• Wettstein, F., Giuliani, E., Santangelo, G. D., & Stahl, G. K. (2019). 'International business and human rights: A research agenda'. Journal of World Business, 54(1), 54-65.

You can watch the recording on YouTube.

• Professor Tricia Olsen
• Dr Kathleen Rehbein
• Dr Judith Schrempf-Stirling
• Dr Annie Snelson-Powell
• Professor Harry van Buren
• Dr Michelle Westermann-Behaylo
• Ms Amanda Willmott