Corporate Responsibility: Private Initiatives and Public Goals

Private initiatives for corporate responsibility have been a major development in international management over the last twenty years. The initiatives include issuance of codes of business conduct, implementation of management systems and broader efforts to improve business accountability. Yet, there is little agreement about what these initiatives mean or how effective they are.

The OECD project on corporate responsibility seeks to shed light on various aspects of the corporate responsibility movement: What are firms and business associations doing? How have governments influenced the initiatives? What contributions, if any, have these initiatives made to improving the business sector's ability to comply with law and regulation and to respond to broader societal expectations?

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For further information, consult the following papers from the series of Working Papers on International Investment:

• Private Initiatives for Corporate Responsibility: An analysis
• Corporate Responsibility: Results of a fact-finding mission on private initiatives
• Making Codes of Corporate Conduct Work: Management control systems and corporate responsibility
• Public policy and voluntary initiatives: What roles have governments played?
• The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and other corporate responsibility instruments
  Codes of Corporate Conduct: Expanded Review of their contents