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REMINDER

The International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility is pleased to announce its sixth annual symposium on Friday 7th November 2008

The theme this year: Spheres of Influence/Spheres of Responsibility: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights.

In his third report as Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, Professor John Ruggie has argued:

·         States have a duty to protect human rights

·         Corporations have a responsibility to respect human rights; and

·         States have a duty to ensure that when and if corporations fail to respect human rights, these failures be investigated, punished and redressed.

These arguments are of vital interest to business ethics and business and society scholars and practitioners. Ruggie's suggestions arguably represent a reassertion of a more traditional division of labour between business and government: i.e. a reassertion of the belief that businesses should predominantly be concerned with the production of goods and services (and the obeying of laws, social norms, and more generally recognized moral precepts); whilst governments should, in addition to various "soft regulation" initiatives, concern themselves with the establishment and enforcement of "rules of the game".

Ruggie's third report demands serious engagement from those who argue for more (and less) expansive notions of corporate social responsibility.

The ICCSR's sixth annual symposium will bring together international expertise on business ethics, human rights, business and corporate social responsibility with the aim to contribute to a wider understanding of the implications of these recommendations for business practice and academic research.

Keynote Speakers and Contributors include:

Gerald Pachoud - serves as Special Adviser to Professor John Ruggie, the United Nations Secretary General's Special Representative for Business and Human Rights.

Professor Robert McCorquodale - Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.  He is also Professor of International Law and Human Rights, and former Head of the School of Law, at the University of Nottingham.

Professor Denis Arnold - holds the Jule and Marguerite Surtman Distinguished Professorship in Business Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. 

Luke Wilde – Director of TwentyFifty Ltd

A final programme and registration form is now available from www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/iccsr.  The closing date for registration is Friday 31^st October 2008.