BEQ’s Best Article, 2012: Wettstein on Human Rights & CSR

The Editors of BEJR would like to congratulate Florian Wettstein on having won Business Ethics Quarterly’s “Best Article” award for 2012. (The award was handed out this weekend at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Business Ethics.)

Here is Jeffery Smith’s commentary on Florian’s paper, as published in BEJR: “Corporate Human Rights Obligations: Moral or Political?”

Abstract: This discussion reviews Florian Wettstein’s conclusion that multinational corporations should assume greater “positive” obligations to protect against and remedy violations of human rights. It thereafter suggests an alternative to his defense that remains open to his conclusion, but sketches a moral, rather than political, grounding of those obligations. [Full PDF here.]

And finally, here is Florian’s response to Jeffery, also published in BEJR: “Morality Meet Politics, Politics Meet Morality: Exploring the Political in Political Responsibility”

Abstract: This brief response to Smith focuses on his distinction between moral and political responsibility in general and how it relates to human rights in particular. I argue that the notion of political responsibility as it is used in the debate on political CSR often does not exclude morality but is based on it. [Full PDF here.]