The moral authority of transnational corporate codes

Ethical guidelines for multinational corporations are included in several international accords adopted during the past four decades. These guidelines attempt to influence the practices of multinational enterprises in such areas as employment relations, consumer protection, environmental pollution, political participation, and basic human rights. Their moral authority rests upon the competing principles of national sovereignty, social equity, market integrity, and human rights. Both deontological principles and experience-based value systems undergird and justify the primacy of human rights as the fundamental moral authority of these transnational and transcultural compacts. Although difficulties and obstacles abound in gaining operational acceptance of such codes of conduct, it is possible to argue that their guidelines betoken the emergence of a transcultural corporate ethic. William C. Frederick is Professor of Business Administration, Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh. He is President (1990) of the Society for Business Ethics, former chair of the Social Issues in Management division of The Academy of Management, and was the Charles Dirksen Professor of Business Ethics at Santa Clara University in 1980–81. He is coauthor of Business and Society: Corporate Strategy, Public Policy, Ethics (McGraw-Hill, 1988).