Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights

by John Gerard Ruggie

One of the most vexing human rights issues of our time has been how to protect the rights of individuals and communities worldwide in an age of globalization and multinational business. Indeed, from Indonesian sweatshops to oil-based violence in Nigeria, the challenges of regulating harmful corporate practices in some of the world’s most difficult regions long seemed insurmountable. Human rights groups and businesses were locked in a stalemate, unable to find common ground. In 2005, the United Nations appointed John Gerard Ruggie to the modest task of clarifying the main issues. Six years later, he had accomplished much more than that. Ruggie had developed his now-famous "Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights," which provided a road map for ensuring responsible global corporate practices. The principles were unanimously endorsed by the UN and embraced and implemented by other international bodies, businesses, governments, workers’ organizations, and human rights groups, keying a revolution in corporate social responsibility.
Just Business tells the powerful story of how these landmark “Ruggie Rules” came to exist. Ruggie demonstrates how, to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem, he had to abandon many widespread and long-held understandings about the relationships between businesses, governments, rights, and law, and develop fresh ways of viewing the issues. He also takes us through the journey of assembling the right type of team, of witnessing the severity of the problem firsthand, and of pressing through the many obstacles such a daunting endeavor faced.


Just Business is an illuminating inside look at one of the most important human rights developments of recent times. It is also an invaluable book for anyone wanting to learn how to navigate the tricky processes of global problem-solving and consensus-building and how to tackle big issues with ambition, pragmatism, perseverance, and creativity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Politics

305 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 14, 2013

About the author

John Gerard Ruggie is the Berthold Beitz Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government; and an Affiliated Professor in International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. Trained as a political scientist, Ruggie has made significant intellectual contributions to the study of international relations, focusing on the impact of economic and other forms of globalization on global rule making. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a recent survey published in Foreign Policy magazine identified him as one of the 25 most influential international relations scholars in the United States and Canada. He has won awards from the American Political Science Association and the International Studies Association.

Apart from his academic pursuits, Ruggie has long been involved in practical policy work, initially as a consultant to various agencies of the United Nations and the United States government. From 1997-2001 he served as United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning – a post created specifically for him by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. His areas of responsibility included establishing and overseeing the UN Global Compact, now the world’s largest corporate citizenship initiative; proposing and gaining General Assembly approval for the Millennium Development Goals; advising the Secretary-General on relations with Washington; and broadly contributing to the effort at institutional renewal for which the Secretary-General and the United Nations as a whole were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.

In 2005, responding to a request by the UN Commission on Human Rights (now Human Rights Council), Annan appointed Ruggie as the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Business and Human Rights, a post he continues to hold in the new UN administration of Ban Ki-Moon. In that capacity, his job is to propose measures to strengthen the human rights performance of the business sector around the world.

Reviews

[André · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just Business describes the process of negotiating the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The author John G. Ruggie describes his journey as UN Special Representative with the mandate to negotiate and design a framework on business and human rights that pleases civil society organizations and is accepted by the global business world and UN member states. The book is a good introduction to the topic of business and human rights with quite some cases of failing multinationals to respect human rights. On the downside: Some chapters are a bit repetitive and the author is a bit too much self-praising himself and the project.

[kinoko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally finished reading this. I read the first half rather quickly and felt rather excited learning what a break through the UNGPs had been and how far the endorsement of the UNGPs had advanced the conversation around this topic, especially when my recent learnings seem to evidence the effect it has had in the business and legal world. But thereafter, the self-congratulatory tone of the writing became tiresome. More importantly, I begun to have doubts about whether the UNGPs can ever do more than it has already done, and whether, albeit a great achievement, when compared with the magnitude of the problems, it is only scratching the surface.

I cannot help but think from a PRC perspective. The UNGPs were developed to advance the international human rights regime, and therefore has inherited all the unsolved problems of such regime. What does human rights mean for countries which are not founded on the liberalism ideology and do not believe in the rule of law? To what extent does the international human rights regime work in countries that claim they respect human rights but in practice have a different interpretation of them which in many places contradicts the western understanding? Professor Ruggie asserts that the corporate’ responsibility to respect is independent of the state’s responsibility to protect, and he did not overlook the problems with counties like China (in the first chapter he raised the Yahoo versus surveillance incident). The book, however, or the UNGPs for that matter, did not give a more sophisticated answer than to cut and run. We have seen in the past decade what that has done to the collective intellect of the PRC people. Very likely Google wouldn’t have been able to make much of a difference even if it had stayed. But it’s turning away didn’t seem to have helped either. There are some mentioning in the book, as if in astonishment, of China’s participation in some part of the mandate’s various projects and its approval of some international standards that incorporate similar values. However, if you look at Chinese literature, the UNGPs are only mentioned once in any Chinese official documents in the past 11 years and it was in the context of PRC corporations’ behavior in foreign territories. Not to mention that the phrase “human rights” itself is censored within the great firewall. Overall, I’m not convinced that, when the first pillar does not hold up, there is much the second pillar can do.

Setting aside the particularity of China, another doubt I’m having about the UNGPs is that they mostly appeal to the good conscience of the people, “the intrinsic power of the idea of human rights itself” using Professor Ruggie’s own words. Some attempts were made to link human rights to commercial impact, but rather feeble. B&HR is talked of the least in ESG because it is the most difficult to translate into figures. No concrete risk is given other than raputational risk. But how much weight does reputational risk have in the modern days of internet forgetfulness? This dependence on “intrinsic power” may have been one of the reasons why most of the “building on the UNGPs” to date are seen in the western world where such power has already penetrated both the population and the institution. These developments are valuable of course. I just can’t see them working their ways through the other half of the globe any time soon. I’m also skeptical whether, when the geopolitical situation escalates or when the environmental crisis progresses, it won’t be thrown out entirely. Although at that time probably humanity is beyond help anyway. So far, there seems to be no realistic way to really solve this problem (you cannot expect all companies to donate themselves to the Mother Earth). But all reliance also cannot be put on the calling-for-the-good-and-hope-for-the-better UNGPs.

All that being said, without forfeiting the exploration for more fundamental or effective solutions, it is certainly worth pushing forward along the lines drawn by the UNGPs.

[Kat Georgé · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great read for beginners wanting to understand the current state of business and human rights in the international context. Ruggie gives great insight into the process he went through while formulating the Guiding Principles framework. My only criticism is that it’s a little bit personal in parts as Ruggie responds to detractors, defends himself, or otherwise highlights his own achievement.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring book on bringing together various stakeholders with longstanding competing interests to agree on a workable human rights framework. A very good look at processes of engagement on a global scale. I have a newfound admiration for Professor Ruggie; I read this a year after I took his Global Governance class at HKS. A wonderful, approachable, and brilliant man.

[Emily Kamminga · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not Impressed. Both the title and description are misleading for the content that is found with the book. Very dense, most of the information went way over my head. It felt like you almost had to take 10 business and economic classes to understand.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important book for understanding business & human rights, at times a bit too defensive and focused on personal achievements.

[Rizwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this basically explains Ruggie's Rules, the conventions and recommendations he came up with to promote greater corporate responsibility especially in the face of the apparent global race to the bottom.

It was okay - I skipped a few pages here and there. The commendable part was that he really did try to explain the issue in an unbiased way - trying not to let the emotions and pull from both sides influence him too much. Also he did not invoke too much legalese - so this book is meant for the layman.

The part that I did not like was his tone would sometimes come off as an apologist. But not a bad book - instructive if you want to know how and why this rules came to be - which honestly I didn't.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book for practitioners in Business and Human Rights, NGO's, or other actors involved in the field. It describes the process by which Ruggie created the UN Guiding Principles and how he got them to be approved in the UN Human Rights Council under his special mandate, giving lights into what he considers to be the way forward regarding implementation. Be warned, it is an academic work, perhaps a bit too technical to be appreciated or enjoyed by people who are not involved in this line of work and have no previous knowledge of the UNGP's.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of the book are pretty interesting, but it is mostly about the back story of the creation of Ruggie's recommendations to the UN, rather than going through the General Principles framework and educating the reader about them specifically.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Assigned this book for my class.