Values-Based Multinational Management: Achieving Enterprise Sustainability through a Human Rights Strategy

Preface

xi P r e f a c e This volume addresses the values concern of multinational managers. Always a difficult balance, the values dimension of multinational decisions is becoming more complex with the worldwide integration of economies and peoples. The digital revolution that drives the integration process known as globalization shows no sign of abating. In this broader environment, a more informed society is changing its mind as to what it expects of the business enterprise. At the same time, with globalization, the business enterprise with its remarkable adaptability is gaining power relative to the nation state. As the state slowly loses its policy freedom and thus its regulatory power, its ability to represent the values of its citizens erodes. With this increasing power for the multinational enterprise comes increasing responsibility. In meeting its responsibility, management must first reassess the appropriate role for its firm in the rapidly changing global environment. As with all major business decisions, values are an essential component, although difficult both to discern and to articulate. The agenda for action is to strategically position the firm in the new setting. This consists of anticipating the trends of technical and social change in order to advantageously meet the macro demands not only of the present but also those of the next decade. Carrying out this agenda is a true managerial challenge, particularly as we work our way through the effects of macroeconomic trauma. Strategies that fit the firm to its future, and specific uniform corporate standards that become the global rules of the organization, must be established today. Resources need to be committed ; managers must be chosen, developed, and integrated; flexible organizations must be created now in order to implement strategies. The argument unfolds in the following steps. Part I presents the problem of evaluating the corporate environment. Chapters 1 and 2 assess the digital revolution as the driving force of change xii preface in the multinational corporate environment and its integrating impact on global economies and political regimes, as well as cultural values and social structures. As the digital revolution continues, so will its economic, political, cultural, and social effects. These changes lead to a long-term transition in corporate governance—a regulatory void—and the need for principles based on social values as distinct from a reliance on compulsory external regulation. The multinational enterprise, as the institution most adaptable to global change, must assume the responsibility associated with this enhanced power. Part II shifts to the problem of strategically positioning the firm in this new dynamic environment. Changes in cultural values and social expectations as a function of the digitally enhanced information revolution, joined with economic integration and the demand for political participation, call for a fundamental reassessment of corporate strategies, as outlined in chapter 3. In this process, the basic market model must be extended to incorporate a strategy of long-term enterprise sustainability, and beyond that to consider normative departures from the market model. Given the diversity of the societies operationally integrated within the multinational enterprise network—consisting of multiple business units around the world—the strategic extension of the basic market model as well as its implementation calls for an in-depth understanding and sensitivity to local operating settings. This understanding is best accomplished through partnering with NGOs—the topic of chapter 4. Part III addresses establishing a strategy of human rights. A human rights standard, we argue, is the most universal, enduring, appropriate, and workable social standard for the enterprise. The concept of human rights has deep global roots in both religious and secular traditions. A moral statement of human rights as it has evolved in Catholic social thought, among other traditions, is presented in chapter 5. This body of teachings on social morality in a human rights context represents a dramatic reversal in the history of the Catholic tradition. The secular tradition of human rights has roots in the liberal rights theories of the seventeenth century, also discussed in chapter 5. A modern, detailed statement of social values in a human rights framework, hammered out at a critical moment in world history, is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, outlined in chapter 6. Part IV discusses implementing a human rights standard. The United Nations Global Compact is a code based on the Universal Declaration preface xiii of Human Rights and the ensuing activities triggered by the Declaration, which is specifically formulated for the business enterprise. The content of...