Business and Human Rights: Explaining Variation in Justice and Remedy for Corporate Human Rights Violations

企业侵犯人权的指控无处不在。尽管学者、企业、国家、国际机构和人权组织对这一话题广泛感兴趣，但目前还没有系统的跨国研究来记录企业侵犯人权的指控。该项目将创建首个关于企业侵犯人权行为和相关补救或司法努力的全球数据库——企业与人权数据库（BHRD），以更好地了解企业、国家和全球层面的因素如何影响侵犯人权的可能性，以及当此类侵犯行为确实发生时如何获得补救。了解侵权行为可能发生的时间和地点，以及受害者、国家和企业如何应对此类索赔，对于以下方面具有重要意义：1)在成功的试点项目基础上推进商业与人权研究；B)通过提供系统的数据而不是少数众所周知的事件来影响政策辩论；c)激励下一代人权学者。除了学术贡献之外，该项目还将制作两个工具，一个是互动的、可搜索的人力资源开发网站，另一个是人力资源开发指数，后者长期跟踪公司一级的人权表现。这些工具将确保产生更广泛的影响，并通过允许学术、政策、从业者和商业研究人员为自己的目的轻松访问数据，为最佳实践提供信息。为什么会出现企业侵犯人权的指控？而且，为什么有些索赔对这些虐待行为进行了补救，而另一些却没有？本研究借鉴了人权、政治学和管理学术的相关文献，采用多层次分析，试图了解受害者在何时何地提出索赔，以及为什么在某些情况下通过司法或非司法补救程序解决这些索赔，而在其他情况下却没有。本研究项目分为四个阶段。首先，在拉丁美洲企业侵犯人权的成功试点项目的基础上，该小组将在2006年至2018年期间完成一个全球商业与人权数据库。使用独特的编码工具，BHRD团队将系统地收集有关虐待类型（何时、何地、何种类型的虐待）、公司和州一级的回应（回应的内容、来自谁）以及获得索赔救济努力（司法和/或非司法救济）（如果有的话）的公开信息。其次，该数据库将使PI能够检验与商业有关的侵犯人权行为和获得补救的假设，以填补商业和人权学术研究中的重要理论空白。第三，PI和她的团队将利用现有的网络向学术、政府和商业团体传播学术和政策论文。​倡议还将寻求激励和培训新一代人权学者和实践者。最终，这个项目的长期目标是减少企业侵犯人权的行为，并在侵犯发生时改善获得补救的机会。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Claims of corporate human rights abuse are ubiquitous. Despite widespread interest on this topic on the part of scholars, businesses, states, international bodies, and human rights groups, no systematic cross-national study yet exists to document claims of corporate human rights abuse. This project will create the first, global database of human rights abuses by businesses and related remedy or justice efforts - the Business and Human Rights Database (BHRD) - to better understand how firm-, state-, and global-level factors shape the likelihood of abuse and access to remedy for such abuses, when they do occur. Understanding when and where abuses are likely to occur and how victims, states, and corporations respond to such claims is important for a) advancing the business and human rights scholarship by building on a successful pilot project; b) influencing policy debates by providing systematic data, rather than a small number of well-known incidents; and c) inspiring the next generation of human rights scholars. In addition to the scholarly contribution, the project will produce two tools,an interactive, searchable BHRD website and a BHRD Index, the latter tracks company-level human rights performance over time. These tools will ensure a broader impact and will inform best practices by allowing academic, policy, practitioner, and business researchers to easily access the data for their own purposes. Why do claims of corporate human rights abuses emerge? And, why do some claims achieve remedy for those abuses while others do not? Drawing on related streams of literature from human rights, political science, and management scholarship, this research employs a multilevel analysis that seeks to understand when and where victims make their claims known and why such claims are addressed through judicial or non-judicial remedy processes in some cases and not others. This research project is comprised of four phases. First, building on a successful pilot project of corporate human rights abuses in Latin America, the team will complete a global Business and Human Rights Database between 2006 and 2018. Using a unique coding tool, the BHRD team will systematically collect publicly available information about the type of abuse (when, where, and what type of abuse), firm- and state-level responses (content of response, from whom), and access to remedy efforts for the claim (judicial and/or non-judicial remedy), if any. Second, this database will allow the PI to test hypotheses about business-related human rights abuses and access to remedy to fill important theoretical gaps in the business and human right scholarship. Third, the PI and her team will use existing networks to disseminate scholarly and policy papers to academic, governmental and business groups. The final phase will ensure the project's broader impact, by launching a searchable, interactive website to make the global BHRD user-friendly and widely accessible and developing a BHRD Index so that interested parties can track firms' human rights record. The PI will also seek to inspire and train a new generation of human rights scholars and practitioners. Ultimately, the long-term goal of this project is to reduce corporate human rights abuses and improve access to remedy when abuses do occur.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.