Extracting Legitimacy: An Analysis of Corporate Responses to Accusations of Human Rights Abuses

Abstract

We ask what type of neutralization techniques corporations apply to allegations of human rights abuses. We proceed by undertaking a Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) of 162 responses by ten extractives-sector firms over a period of 14 years. The firms were responding to accusations of human rights impacts documented by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. We use Garrett et al.’s (J Bus Ethics 8(7):507–520, 1989) framework of neutralization techniques consisting of denial, justification, concession and excuse to examine the responses. During our QCA, we observed emerging themes around self-promotion and evasive tactics. We contribute to existing literature by proposing ‘evasion’ as a novel neutralization technique, particularly in circumstances of corporate responses to accusations of wrongdoing. We argue that evasion occurs when firms refuse to engage in the debate brought forward in an accusation. In addition, we enrich our understanding of neutralization techniques by proposing subneutralization techniques in our analysis to diverge from that of other studies. We conclude by discussing the implications of the predominance of corporate narcissism and evasive neutralization techniques to the business and human rights movement and other international corporate responsibility standards.

Appendices

Appendix A

• “Denials are statements that deny the occurrence or existence of the questionable event, or deny that the accused organization is the cause of the event.

• Excuses are statements that argue that the accused organization should not be held responsible for the occurrence and/or impact of the questionable event because certain factors limited the organization's control over the occurrence and/or impact of this event.

• Justifications are statements that argue that, even though the accused organization is responsible for the questionable event, the standards being used by the accusers to evaluate the impact of this questionable event are inappropriate” (p. 511).

Within the justifications category, we followed Garrett et al.’s (1989) recommendation, adding the following five subcategories:

• (1) Appeal to Higher Loyalties—when a company presents reasons why the presumably desirable outcome justifies an otherwise questionable event.

• (2) Avoidance of Greater Harm—attempts by a company to justify its actions by arguing that if the company would have acted differently, the situation would be even more dire.

• (3) Appeal to Legal Rights—legal frameworks to justify a questionable event.

• (4) Presentation of Comparative Standards—utilized by companies who claim that other corporations engage in the same unethical behaviour without having faced charges, and therefore claim that they should not be sanctioned either.

• (5) Identification of Malicious Intentions of the Accusers—Here the argument centres on the accusing party, which the company claims have malevolent motives that seek to “accommodate a constituency” (Hearit 1995, p. 5), hence driven by a political agenda (Garrett et al. 1989).

Finally, the fourth category of:

• “Concessions are statements that agree that the questionable event did occur, that the accused organization caused this event, that the accused organization had control over the occurrence and/or impact of this event, and that the evaluative standards being used by the accusers are appropriate”(Garrett et al. 1989, p. 511).

Appendix B

162 responses in total	Amount	Relative frequency in relation to total amount (%)
Denials	67	41.40
Justification	71	43.80
Excuses	49	30.20
Concessions	45	27.80
Self-promotion	118	72.80
Evasion	69	43.00
	162		Relative frequency in relation to justification responses
Appeal to higher loyalties	18	11.10	25.40
Avoidance of greater harm	12	7.40	16.90
Appeal to legal rights	51	31.50	71.80
Presentation of comparative standards	5	3.10	7.00
Malicious intentions justification	15	9.30	21.10