Corporate social responsibility motives of Indian firms

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the motives of Indian firms for engaging with corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and their interplay by using interpretive structural modelling methodology (ISM) and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MICMAC) analysis. Design/methodology/approach The research uses ISM and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MICMAC) analysis to find the structural relationship among the CSR motives of the Indian firms identified from the past literature and agreed upon by the experts. Findings The ISM model indicates that firms primarily engage in CSR either because of top management commitment to certain values, to meet the legal mandate or of the pressure from the NGOs. The top management commitment gives a strategic orientation to CSR, which results in community engagement by the firm as one of the important components of the strategy. The community engagement helps in engaging with its employees and investors along with finding sources of innovations, which, in turn, help the firm in engaging its customers, managing corporate reputation and getting a cost advantage. Collectively, these help them in improving their financial performance. However, the model highlights two autonomous sources, meeting legal mandate and pressure from NGOs also motivate firms to engage in CSR without having any strategic thought or engagement with its strategic system. Originality/value The study provides a comprehensive listing of CSR motives of Indian firms along with the structural relationships among the identified CSR motives. The model developed provides CSR professionals and policymakers an understanding of the primary CSR motives along with their driving power and dependence. This insight will help them in manipulating these motives for better CSR engagement by the Indian firms.

Book review: Nayan Mitra and René Schmidpeter (Eds.), Corporate Social Responsibility in India: Cases and Developments after the Legal Mandate

Nayan Mitra and René Schmidpeter (Eds.), Corporate Social Responsibility in India: Cases and Developments after the Legal Mandate. Cham: Springer, 2016, 238 pp., ₹135.19 (Hardback). ISBN: 978-3-319-41781-3.

Seeking the best system to protect human rights: should we follow the african cat or the inter-american lion?

This article represents an attempt to compare the leading positive assets and the major fragilities of the Inter-American and the African human rights systems, in the light of the activity of the Commission and the Court in both systems. The analysis – focused on the main human rights instruments for both regions – is articulated in two sections, in their turn structured in multiple paragraphs. The first section explores the legal mandate of the bodies concerned. The second section examines the functioning in practice of such bodies, in the form of a review of how they use their legal mandate and what impact is concretely accomplished. Moreover, the article will discuss the pivotal influence of historical, social and other contextual factors, fundamental cornerstones of any consequential legal consideration on human rights systems.

Allowing ‘leeway to expediency, without abandoning principle’? The International Court of Justice’s use of avoidance techniques

As the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has an ambitious mandate. However, due to its institutional design, the ICJ depends in large part on whether the states allow it to play this role, and their resistance can prove particularly damaging for the ICJ in this regard. Against this background, the article argues that resort to judicial avoidance techniques may be a pragmatic way for the ICJ to adapt to this reality, and that it seems likely that the ICJ has been relying on such techniques on several occasions. With reference to the ICJ’s case law, the article highlights different avoidance techniques at the ICJ’s disposal, proposes a categorization based on their effects, and evaluates the potential and risks each category holds for the ICJ. Accordingly, the article distinguishes between merits-avoidance techniques, issue-avoidance techniques, and resort to deferential standards of review. It demonstrates that relying on merits-avoidance techniques and issue-avoidance techniques is counterproductive and sometimes even dangerous for the ICJ. In contrast, resort to deferential standards of review allows the ICJ to reconcile its ambitious legal mandate with the political realities, and accordingly holds the greatest potential for the ICJ.

Placing Children’s Freedom from Violence at the Heart of the Policy Agenda

Violence knows no geographic, cultural, or social borders. Around the world millions of children of all ages continue to be exposed to appalling levels of violence, in their neighborhoods, in their schools, in institutions aimed at their care and protection, as well as within the home. Children’s rights law, most notably the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), provides a legal mandate to address all forms of violence against children. This chapter reviews the various forms of violence against children, their impact on child well-being, and the children’s rights law mandate to prevent it. It then discusses the global policy agenda for confronting violence against children and the challenges that must be overcome to achieve progress toward a world free of violence against children.

The Duty Consult as the Authority to Recognize

This essay performs an analysis of the duty to consult and accommodate principle, a legal mandate that requires the Canadian state to consult and accommodate Indigenous nations when taking action that might interfere with established Aboriginal or treaty rights. Though Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British did make progress in terms of providing Indigenous peoples with more authority in the consultative process, the power still ultimately remains with the Crown in dictating whether or not the interference on Aboriginal or treaty rights is justified. That is, the Indigenous nation is invited to participate in the process, but they are not granted the authority to truly determine what happens on their land. In light of this limitation, this essay claims that this principle still operates within the presumption of Crown sovereignty, and therefore ultimately fails to confer upon the Indigenous nation their rightful political independence. In order to truly reconcile the relationship between Indigenous nations and the Canadian state, this essay concludes that it is necessary to establish a relationship premised on the rightful treaty-federalist framework.