Untangling the authority of external experts in the corporate implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
Abstract
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human (UNGPs) explicitly ask corporations to rely on “external expertise” for policy guidance, human rights due diligence (HRDD), and remedy. The broad conceptualization of expertise in the UNGPs signifies an amorphous, neutral, and largely unregulated community of consultants, human rights institutions, NGOs, impact assessors, and auditors (among other actors). I argue that external experts exert significant governance authority in the business and human rights space. Through empirical analysis of experts orbiting two multinational corporations, I identify experts as knowledge providers, diplomats, critics, and legitimizers in the corporate implementation of the UNGPs. In doing so, this work adds nuanced political dimensions to expert authority in business and human rights, offering evidence of its manifestations and limitations. Finally, I advance some considerations and suggestions for future research, particularly vital in the context of incoming mandatory HRDD legislation.
Citation
McVey , M 2022 , ' Untangling the authority of external experts in the corporate implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights ' , Journal of Human Rights , vol. 22 , no. 5 , pp. 620-638 . https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2022.2105646
Publication
Journal of Human Rights
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1475-4835Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
Funding: This research was part of a larger PhD studentship grant, which was funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland (ICAS).Collections
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