A Human Rights Approach to Management Education: Research with and for Corporate Practitioners

In today’s increasingly complex global economic and political environment, multinational companies confront a range of human rights challenges that are core to their business operations. While they differ significantly by industry, each presents growing reputational and financial risks to these companies.

The co-organizers of this workshop are developing approaches to research and teaching that respond to these growing challenges, which are of relevance to the 2022 Annual Meeting theme Creating a Better World Together. The approaches presented combine (a) rigorous academic assessment of the challenges, with (b) development of practical recommendations that companies can adopt to address human rights problems. They are designed to produce research products and pedagogical tools that are readily accessible to a broad audience, including business leaders and government policymakers who have the capacity and authority to drive better outcomes.

We recognize the need to develop and win support for industry-specific human rights standards, and the development of practical metrics to measure compliance with those standards. It is also essential to address the current lack of adequate data pertaining to company operations, a deficit that seriously hampers a meaningful assessment of performance against these standards. The approaches we present thus offer scholars organizational frameworks that integrate managers, organizations, and stakeholders to address today’s human rights challenges.

This two-part professional development workshop, incorporating a moderated panel discussion and interactive workshop, will explore this evolving approach to human rights research and teaching and examine how it is being applied to labor rights issues in global supply chains.