For several decades, the global human development agenda and the international human rights agenda have been heading in the same direction, sharing similar assumptions and ideas about the links between human development and human rights. Since the early 2000s, the discussions on both sustainable development and business and human rights have started to converge. This paper explores the extent to which signs of convergence can also be observed at the corporate level. It analyses and elaborates on the incidence and extent of corporate commitment to human rights and the SDGs, drawing on annual reports and sustainability reports published in 2010 and 2020 of multinational corporations listed in the DAX-40 stock market index. The chapter first outlines the discussion on the link between business, sustainable development, and human rights. It then uses quantitative word frequency analysis and text-mining methods to map and analyse corporate reporting activities on the SDGs and on human rights. The last section of the chapter discusses the implications of the findings for the debate on the role of business with respect to the potential links between sustainable development and human rights and proposes potentially fruitful avenues for future research.

Multinational mining companies (MNMCs) play a significant role in advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). MNMCs help communities to achieve SDGs through the provision of infrastructure and employment. In this article, we analyse the different roles that two top ranking MNMCs play to achieve some SDGs in local communities in developing countries using mining in Ghana as an exemplar. We use an ethnographic approach to explore the types of sustainability activities these MNMCs engage in, the challenges they face in the process and how the beneficiary local communities perceive these efforts. Our findings reveal that MNMCs engaged in community capacity building, programmes delivery, financing and partnership in community development. However, continuing and historic conflicts obscure community perceptions. Our findings emphasise the importance of community involvement in delivering SDGs. We extend the stakeholder theory from a firm-centric perspective to a more community-focused one.

This study explores how a firm’s foreign operation that was motivated by a notion of sustainability fell short of advancing sustainable development in the host country and considers contributing factors to the shortcomings. It draws on the framework of sustainability governance from the global value chain perspective while revisiting the concept of immiserizing growth. The paper adopts a single case study design relating to a Japanese hand sanitiser manufacturer, Saraya, and its operation in Uganda over a decade. Saraya’s scope for sustainability and its approach to the host-country context are analysed through content analysis of archival data. Given the complexity of sustainability, one solution could create unintended problems, and the impact of such problems can be significant in developing countries. To minimise the adverse impact of local operation in the host country, an MNE needs to not only focus on optimising its value chain but also have a comprehensive perspective of sustainable development and an understanding of the potential repercussions of value chain activities. By considering the context-specific factors, the study sheds light on the nexus between value chains and poverty in the host country during the coronavirus pandemic, in particular.

This study explores the underlying mechanisms through which non-market strategies (NMS) affect firm performance. Unfortunately, studies examining the benefits of NMS continue to generate mixed results despite NMS being a common feature amongst Multinational companies. The United Kingdom (UK) Open Government Dataset is used to capture 480 corporations’ political encounters with the UK government between 2012 to 2019. Following Hillman and Hitt (1999) conceptual framework, the mean of political encounters (3.04) is operationalised to construct a dummy variable to categorise firms’ political approach as relational or transactional and General Least Square – Random Effect is utilised to conduct regression models. The results demonstrate that only the transactional approach yields an increase in firms’ fortunes and only if it constitutes a unilateral or hybridised (unilateral + collaborative) mode of participation. Agency theory, Resource-based View and institutional perspectives are utilised to reveal a clear underlying mechanism explaining how firms’ performance is impacted when conducting NMS. More widely, the research shows that different firms need to adopt different strategies according to firm-specific factors and whatever it is they want to achieve. Both transactional and relational approaches can generate benefits under the right circumstances and any simple valorisation of more corporatist approaches is arguably misplaced.