1 - Introduction and Overview

Summary

A radically new understanding of the ethics of business enterprises, or “corporate responsibility,” in the global context is offered that combines wealth creation in a comprehensive sense with the respect for human rights by strengthening the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The chapter provides an introduction to this new understanding and an overview of the following chapters. After delineating the global context with globalization, sustainability and financialization, Part One explicates the seven features of wealth creation: the substantive contents of natural, economic, human and social capital; public and private wealth; the productive and distributive dimensions of the process of creating wealth; material and spiritual aspects; sustainability in terms of human capabilities; creating as making something new and better; and self- and other-regarding motivations. Part Two conceives human rights as public goods in wealth creation; it accounts for all 30 internationally recognized human rights based on the UN Framework and Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, defines them as minimal ethical requirements needed in the global and pluralistic context and offers cost-benefit considerations about human rights. Part Three develops the implications of Part One and Two for the conception of “corporate responsibility.”