BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

14 Legal aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility – – selected examples from the Czech Republic Jana Ondřejková As the literal meaning of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) indicates, CSR relates to the issues that are not usually covered by legal liability. Traditional issues connected to CSR are the level of human rights protection, working conditions and fair remuneration, environmental protection, or anti-corruption. 1 Therefore, some companies, in order to distinguish themselves as more socially sensitive, adopt specific instruments of self- regulation coupled with internal or external oversight and reaching beyond their perceived legal obligations. At the same time, however, it does not mean that the above-mentioned issues or areas could not be covered by some legal regulation. In other words, there might be no legal vacuum, but the legal regulation and legal liability resulting thereof are considered insufficient or ineffective. An intuitive question follows: should these observed shortcomings in legal regulation be overcome through the transformation of selected voluntary CSR issues into legal duties? For the next few pages I put aside the pragmatic approaches explaining why states and governments are being discouraged from similar regulatory attempts by fear of losing the important tax payers or employers if companies decide to transfer their registered seat or production into a more business-friendly, i. e. not so regulatory demanding, country. We can notice similar tendencies in attempts to shop for the least demanding forum. 2 But the “legalization” of CSR is not limited to the enactment of new provisions by parliament. The decisive influence can also come from courts and their assessment of the legal nature of the existing CSR codes and commitments contained therein. In order to produce arguments regarding the problem of the legalization of CSR, the basic cleavages in doctrinal as well as public perception of the nature of the CSR need to be shown. For a part of the doctrine, the voluntary nature remains to be the decisive feature of CSR which renders it to be generally an ethical or philanthropic issue. 3 Opposing voices claim that the state regulation represents an important factor in motivating companies to adopt their own CSR code of conduct. These scholars even consider such regulation as a part of the duty of the government to prevent and prohibit possible harm caused by companies. 4 A similar split can be observed on the part of public perception: in countries with so-called liberal market economies the legalization and judicial enforcement of CSR is 1 For general overview see e.g. The Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact available at: https://www. unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/mission/principles 2 See the contribution of prof. Harald Ch. Scheu in this volume. 3 MASAKA, D.: Why Enforcing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is Morally Questionable. 13 Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies 2008, p.13 and foll. 4 See e.g. CAMPBELL, J. L.: Why would corporations behave in socially responsible ways? An institutional theory of Corporate Social Responsibility. 32 Academy of Management Review 2007, p. 946 and foll.

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