The United Nations Global Compact: the business implementation and accountability challenge

Thomas A. Hemphill

International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2005, vol. 1, issue 4, 303-316

Abstract: The United Nations Global Compact, the world's largest voluntary corporate citizenship initiative, has enrolled over 1500 companies and two dozen Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and labour groups from over 70 countries since its inception in 2000. There is, however, a vocal chorus of critics of the Global Compact (primarily from the NGO community) that focus their criticisms on: the questionable level of participating company compliance with the ten principles that define the Global Compact (which address human rights, labour, environmental, and corruption issues); the lack of transparency of actual company results to outside auditors. In this paper, I offer a coherent set of recommendations that strengthen a self-regulation regime whose purpose is enhancing the efficacy of the Global Compact and transnational corporate citizenship. These recommendations focus on implementing a systematic approach to corporate accountability and transparency that is built on a foundation of the Global Compact's ten principles.

Keywords: accountability; codes of conduct; transnational corporate citizenship; global compact; globalisation; non-governmental organisations; NGOs; principles; self-regulation; transparency; United Nations; human rights; labour; environment; corruption. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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