There continues to be many attempts to articulate what is meant by Human Rights but Griseri and Sepella's (2010, p. 176) adaptation of Leighton et al. (2002) as “entitlements that one holds by virtue of being a human being” takes us to the heart of the matter. What is it to be human and what does humanity demand of us? But the notion is far from settled; it is far from uncontentious; despite its domination by lawyers it is far from simply legalistic; and the matter has only relatively recently been taken up as a matter of focus amongst business and management academics. Human rights have, as yet, almost no presence in accounting and finance. This short essay seeks to provide an introduction to the practitioner papers presented in this issue of CPA and in doing so to provide some context within which the papers might be better appreciated. As happens too often for comfort, practice (at least regulatory and NGO practice) is still leading research and theory in the field of Human Rights. Providing that context offers us the opportunity to speculate on how – notwithstanding the potentially seminal papers that also appear in this issue – we might see accounting academe recognising and responding more widely to Human Rights.
Despite the notion of the rights of humans being self-evidently core to any consideration of social responsibility, ethics, social justice and the implications of how mankind (sic) organises its affairs, it is only relatively recently that there has been a concerted effort to relate the notion of human rights more formally to the activities of business and other non-statal organisations (see, for example, Wallace and Martin-Ortega, 2004). Such effort as there is, has been at its most visible at the international level – especially through the United Nations. And whilst lawyers – both practitioner and academic – have been closely involved in the field for some time, it is only very recently indeed that human rights has begun to attract the (long overdue) attention of business discipline academics (see, for example, Frynas and Pegg, 2003). Indeed, Mary Robinson's appeal in February 2009 for business schools to “take on the challenge of human rights” is just one more (albeit high-profile) illustration of the importance of the strangely overlooked relationships between business activity and the dignity of humanity.1
If business academics are late onto the scene, accounting (at least until recently) appears to have largely ignored the area altogether. There are, of course, notable exceptions. Adams and Harte's (1999) analysis of equal opportunities in employment (disabled, race, gender with especial focus on women) is informed by the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Gallhofer and Chew (2000) and Gallhofer et al. (2000) place the concept of human rights at the centre of their examination of “indigenous peoples”. The influence of human rights can also be found in Grosser and Moon's (2008) analysis of gender in reporting; in Guidi et al.’s (2008) exploration of business ethics and in Lamberton's (2005) examination of sustainability, for example.
Despite the appearance of these few brave swallows, it would be as yet premature to presume a human rights spring in accounting and finance. Just such a spring is, however, envisaged and possibly presaged by the papers in this issue of CPA.
This essay is an attempt to introduce and contextualise the two practitioner papers which follow. This essay is structured as follows. Following this introduction, we attempt to provide a brief introduction to the field of Human Rights and, particularly, its institutional arrangements. Section 3 then extends that review to consider, broadly, the interplay between business and human rights and a number of the key issues which emerge as a consequence. Section 4 offers a brief introduction to the papers from Kavita Chetty and Peter Frankental. Section 5 is the final section and speculates upon some of the directions and possibilities for accounting and finance academic engagement and research in this field. Our purpose (however sketchy its execution) is to seek to stimulate, within the accounting community, a more active and considered engagement with accounting, accountability and human rights.
