Although there have been significant efforts towards the creation of an overarching global style for company reporting, currently there is no accepted style. Most of the countries do not have laws related to companies’ general reporting. As such, company directors tend to follow their own formats for preparing non-financial reports and disseminate only the information necessary to promote companies’ images. This trend undermines the capacity of reporting as a mechanism to promote accountability practice of the companies. By providing an assessment of the development and challenges of company reporting, this chapter suggests that companies must provide clear information regarding the economic benefit they created and the social cost attached to the creation of the economic benefits in their non-financial reports.

This article reviews some of the roles environmental lawyers have played in ensuring environmental justice in Bangladesh. It leans on law and social movement theories to explicate the choice (and ensuing success) of litigation as a movement strategy in Bangladesh. The activists successfully moved the courts to read the right to a decent environment into the fundamental right to life, and this has had the far-reaching effect of constituting a basis for standing for the activists and other civil society organisations. The activists have also sought to introduce emerging international law principles into the jurisprudence of the courts. These achievements notwithstanding, the paper notes that litigation is not a sustainable way to institute enduring environmental protection in any jurisdiction and recommends the utilisation of the reputation and recognition gained through litigation to deploy or encourage more sustainable strategies.

In most developing countries, the overall quality of the livelihood of labourers, work place environment and implementation of labour rights do not progress at the same rate as their industrial development. To address this situation, the ILO has initiated the concept of ‘decent work’ to assist regulators articulate labour-related social policy goals. Against this backdrop, this article assesses the Bangladesh Labour Law 2006 by reference to the four social principles developed by the ILO for ensuring ‘decent work’. It explains the impact of the absence of these principles in this Law on the labour administration in the ready-made garment and ship-breaking industries. It finds that an appropriate legislative framework needs to be based on the principles of ‘decent work’ to establish a solid platform for a sound labour regulation in Bangladesh.

The core principles of CSR are being integrated into the core policy objectives of different economies and global companies and are also moving beyond their individual business initiatives. This integration can be seen from individual states’ perspectives; states are also accepting these issues in their socio-economic strategies and thus are establishing these issues within national economies. Given this background, this chapter explicates the trends in implementing CSR principles in the EU and USA. It demonstrates that companies in the developed countries use a mix of different strategies to incorporate CSR principles in their self-regulatory mechanisms. Strategies based on legal regulation are not foremost in this mix; rather, in these countries regulation-based strategy is meant to assist the non-legal drivers of CSR.

Although the pharmaceutical industry is a multi-billion-dollar business, it fails to save the lives of millions. Astronomical drug prices are not just an economic problem that can be settled through clever marketing strategies but a significant ethical issue. This article delves into the ethical health care paradigm, which can supplant the present economistic paradigm. Grounded in the ethical-philosophical argument for recognising an individual's right to be healthy, it asserts the practical proposal of cost rationalisation and universal availability of essential and lifesaving drugs. This is achievable by supporting research and development funding for drug innovation by the business establishment, and as such falls within the scope of corporate social responsibility.

The convergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance has immense impact on the participants in global supply chains. The global buyers and retailers tend to incorporate CSR in all stages of product manufacturing within their supply chains. The incorporated CSR thus creates the difficulty to small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs). Incompetence in standardized CSR practices is an important issue that causes SMEs either losing their scope to access global market directly or serving as subcontractors to large enterprises. This article explores this issue by focusing on Bangladeshi SMEs under the CSR requirement of the important global buyer.

The business corporations’ internal strategies in weak economies merely respond to the public policy goals for social development. The role of corporate self-regulation in Bangladesh is not an exception. The extent to which legal regulations related to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of Bangladesh could contribute to including CSR notions at the core of self-regulated corporate responsibility is the focus of this paper. It explains that the major Bangladeshi laws related to corporate regulation and responsibility do not possess recurrent features to compel corporate self-regulators to contribute to developing a socially responsible corporate culture in Bangladesh. It suggests that, instead of relying on the prescriptive mode of regulation, Bangladesh could develop more business-friendly but strategic legal regulations.

This book explores the challenges and opportunities presented by the formulation of a global code of conduct for transnational corporations. It assesses the current state of research on global regulations intended to enhance the social responsibility of transnational corporations, and provides a platform for future research. In particular the book examines frameworks and instruments for regulating social responsibility, reviews recent developments concerning the proposed UN Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations, and provides insights into international civil society groups’ movements in pursuit of a code of conduct. In a separate chapter the book discusses theoretical issues in regulating transnational corporations, and investigates their legitimacy and behavioral dynamics. In closing, the book discusses alternatives to a global code of conduct, the impact of sovereign power in the era of globalization, “soft regulations,” and the feasibility and normative efficacy of enforcing regulations.

The moral arguments associated with justice, fairness and communitarianism have rejected the exclusivity of cost-benefit analysis in corporate governance. Particularly, the percepts of new governance (NG) have included distributive aspects in efficiency models focused on maximizing profits. While corporate directors were only assigned to look after the return of investment within the traditional framework of corporate governance (CG), NG has created the scope for them to look beyond the set of contractual liabilities. This article explores how and how far NG notions have contributed to the devolution of CG to create internal strategies focusing on actors, ethics and accountability in corporate self-regulation.

There is a remarkable record of high and sustained economic growth from 1965-1990 in twenty three East Asian economies. In this area, most of the runaway growth focuses on eight economies, sometimes collectively referred to as the 'High Performing Asian Economies' (or HPAEs). Japan. the 'Four Tigers': Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, the three 'Newly Industrializing Economies' (or 'NIEs') of Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia amongst twenty three economies of Asia achieved higher growth than any other regions of the world.