'The elephant and the mouse: how corporate giants can avoid trampling on their stakeholders', 21 Jun 2021

Business is increasingly keen to be seen to be doing due diligence on ESG. The 'affected stakeholder' concept is a key way of identifying those most impacted by corporate actions. This year's Global Future Council on Human Rights aims to give insight on corporate actions regarding the living wage and human rights defenders... One of the main critiques of stakeholder capitalism is identifying who precisely is a stakeholder of a company and who is not... [T]he UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights ... understands affected stakeholders to be those most impacted by a company's operations, most often workers, community members or consumers, sometimes human rights defenders. Some organizations represent these parties (such as trade unions, representative NGOs or community-based organizations), but they are not in themselves affected stakeholders. Hopefully this guiding principle will be chosen by the European Union and others in terms of mandatory due diligence requirements with board-level oversight. This year the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Human Rights ... is focused precisely on the question of how to identify and engage with those most affected. We have agreed to take two very different human rights issues – living wage in the supply chain and the protection of human rights defenders... On the living wage, we will be joined by directors whose companies have recently made supply chain commitments, or are considering the possibility, to hear from workers, not necessarily in their own supply chain, about why those in power must make this a central concern in how companies maintain business relations. It might be a difficult conversation, but it won’t be an abstract one. The same in relation to human rights defenders, often seen as the canary in the coalmine for the health of a company’s operating environment...