The United Nations in Codes of Conduct and Human Rights Violations: Examining Instances and Effects in MNC CSR statements” (Paper#194)

In this paper we examine the extent to which United Nations (UN) documents and resolutions on human rights are reflected in company statements pertaining to their corporate social responsibilities (CSR) or codes of conduct. All data utilized in this paper was collected from publicly available online sources and used to code whether business of the United States Fortune 200 refer to UN documents in their codes of conduct and whether they have committed, or been accused of, human rights violations in the past fifteen years. Generalized linear models were utilized to test whether a relationship exists between propensity to cite UN documents and resolutions and prior human rights violations. The results demonstrate a positive and statistically significant relationship between human rights violations in the past and likelihood of citing UN human rights documents in a company’s codes of ethical conduct or CSR statement.