Assessment of the Sullivan Principles As a Role Model for Developing International Codes of Conduct

Abstract

The promulgation of the Sullivan Principles was a watershed event in a drive that had been gathering momentum—primarily in the United States, but also in many other industrialized countries of the world—for enhancing the responsibility of multinational corporations.¹ This drive was a reflection of the worldwide operations of such corporations, coupled with a concern for the worldwide consequences of how those operations were conducted. In its most basic form, the notion of enhanced responsibility has three components:

• MNCs must deal with all of their stakeholders, and not merely stockholders, in a fair and equitable manner. This concern has special relevance when the operations of MNCs involve developing countries or poor people (anywhere); that is, involve those who lack the necessary economic and political power to bargain with MNCs on more equitable terms.

• MNCs must act as positive and proactive agents of change through the use of their enormous economic power—even, when necessary, against the express wishes or prevailing customs of host countries. The goal is to protect and foster basic human rights and democratic values that are the foundation both of MNCs economic strength and of their prosperity in their home countries.

• MNCs must not consider enhanced responsibility and the actions thereby required either as discretionary or as a necessary inconvenience (for example, simply as a cost of doing business). Instead, the standards of enhanced responsibility must be treated as de minimus standards of behavior, compliance with which must be mandatory, transparent, and subject to external validation.