Uncovering Pathways to Remedy for Corporate Human Rights Abuses

Abstract

How do victims of corporate social irresponsibility obtain redress for the wrongs against them? Scholars have evaluated many factors that may help such victims, and suggest that corporate policies, national institutions, NGO pressure, and transnational governance can each have a role in ensuring that corporations are held accountable for negative social impacts. Recognizing that these factors can be inter-related, and there can be multiple pathways toward this end, we explore the causal complexity in the area of business and human rights to uncover combinations of corporate policies, NGO involvement, national institutions and transnational governance to explain the conditions under which victims obtain access to mechanisms to provide remedy for corporate human rights violations. To investigate this, we developed a unique dataset that investigates access to remedy for human rights violations in the extractive industry in a range of host countries. Taking a neo-configurational perspective, we use fuzzy set logic to analyze the varying configurations of these elements that lead to remedy mechanisms for human rights abuses. Our results provide various explanations but strongly confirm the role of host country rule of law and NGO involvement in providing a pathway to remedy.