Overview

This book provides a critical socio-legal study that brings together the latest scholarly advances on corporate social responsibility, and, at the same time, addresses the pressing issue of corporate liability for harmful acts across the supply and production chains. Corporations have seldom been held responsible and virtually never liable for the acts of their subsidiaries and subcontractors. Actors as different as workers, investors, individual consumers, and shareholder activists claim that corporations should accept greater responsibility for communities and environments affected by their activities. The book argues that a global value chain’s head corporations remain immune to any liability because of the ‘economically dependent-legally independent’ relationships between core corporations and their periphery suppliers and subcontractors. To tackle this problem, globally, the author acknowledges that ‘we’ as a society need to reduce the economic dependence as described above – which is far too excessive – by ensuring a level playing field both economically and socially. More concretely, she argues that in order to realise transnational corporate liability, ‘we’ as lawyers need to find a way (or ways) to establish legally effective relationships between head corporations and their economically dependent entities. Readers of this book will be able to export the concept of corporate social liability, developed in the context of value chains, and apply it to other contexts involving corporate activities where they need to tackle unrestrained corporate freedom and make global businesses responsible and socially useful.

Full Product Details

9781509949144

Table of Contents

Reviews

A thought-provoking book … Beyond its legal reach, the book, written in the midst of an unprecedented public health and socio-economic crisis, provides a perceptive account of our society’s dominant values and contributes to paving the way towards a mindful and sustainable recovery from the pandemic. -- Claudia Pharaon, Leiden University * International and Comparative Law Quarterly * This book is a sophisticated addition to what Socio-Legal Studies has to offer to the formulation of legal policy towards the harmful effects of TNCs. It very interestingly suggests the gains in theory and policy that may be made from giving GSCs, so far largely a feature of business literature, such prominence in legal discussion. -- David Campbell, Lancaster University * Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies * This book is a very welcome contribution to business and human rights and one which scholars and practitioners in the field will no doubt find useful. The book provides us with an impressive and critical survey of legal tools already available to combat corporate irresponsibility, as well as the social and historical context through which GVCs emerged. -- Marisa McVey, Queen’s University, Belfast * Business and Human Rights Journal * This is an important book. Anna Aseeva's study of corporate social liability brings together comparative legal scholarship with a socio-legal assessment of the ways in which corporate responsibility for societal issues is regulated across global value chains. She demonstrates that we, as lawyers, can influence corporations' behaviour if we look beyond legal liability and acknowledge the ex ante effects of norms. * Vanessa Mak, Chair in Civil Law, Leiden University, the Netherlands * Aseeva deftly examines the shortcomings of existing soft and hard law for preventing and addressing environmental, human rights and other social harms of business conducted through GVCs and puts forward innovative ideas for filling these governance gaps. Her book is an important contribution to the literature on corporate accountability and should be required reading for Business and Human Rights scholars and students, as well as legislators concerned with the excesses of global capitalism and corporate impunity. * Penelope Simons, University of Ottawa *

A thought-provoking book ... Beyond its legal reach, the book, written in the midst of an unprecedented public health and socio-economic crisis, provides a perceptive account of our society's dominant values and contributes to paving the way towards a mindful and sustainable recovery from the pandemic. -- Claudia Pharaon, Leiden University * International and Comparative Law Quarterly * This book is a sophisticated addition to what Socio-Legal Studies has to offer to the formulation of legal policy towards the harmful effects of TNCs. It very interestingly suggests the gains in theory and policy that may be made from giving GSCs, so far largely a feature of business literature, such prominence in legal discussion. -- David Campbell, Lancaster University * Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies * This is an important book. Anna Aseeva's study of corporate social liability brings together comparative legal scholarship with a socio-legal assessment of the ways in which corporate responsibility for societal issues is regulated across global value chains. She demonstrates that we, as lawyers, can influence corporations' behaviour if we look beyond legal liability and acknowledge the ex ante effects of norms. * Vanessa Mak, Chair in Civil Law, Leiden University, the Netherlands *

A thought-provoking book ... Beyond its legal reach, the book, written in the midst of an unprecedented public health and socio-economic crisis, provides a perceptive account of our society's dominant values and contributes to paving the way towards a mindful and sustainable recovery from the pandemic. --International and Comparative Law Quarterly This is an important book. Anna Aseeva's study of corporate social liability brings together comparative legal scholarship with a socio-legal assessment of the ways in which corporate responsibility for societal issues is regulated across global value chains. She demonstrates that we, as lawyers, can influence corporations' behaviour if we look beyond legal liability and acknowledge the ex ante effects of norms. --Vanessa Mak, Chair in Civil Law, Leiden University, the Netherlands

A thought-provoking book ... Beyond its legal reach, the book, written in the midst of an unprecedented public health and socio-economic crisis, provides a perceptive account of our society's dominant values and contributes to paving the way towards a mindful and sustainable recovery from the pandemic. -- Claudia Pharaon, Leiden University * International and Comparative Law Quarterly * This is an important book. Anna Aseeva's study of corporate social liability brings together comparative legal scholarship with a socio-legal assessment of the ways in which corporate responsibility for societal issues is regulated across global value chains. She demonstrates that we, as lawyers, can influence corporations' behaviour if we look beyond legal liability and acknowledge the ex ante effects of norms. * Vanessa Mak, Chair in Civil Law, Leiden University, the Netherlands *

Author Information

Anna Aseeva is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law and Administration at Lazarski University, Warsaw, Poland.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available