The Boundaries of Corporations’ Responsibility

UCL - ECGI Biennial Law and Ethics Symposium

The Boundaries of Corporations’ Responsibility

Location
University College London, Faculty of Laws
(This was an in-person event and was not be live-streamed.)

Organisers
Iris H-Y Chiu (UCL Faculty of Laws and ECGI)
Ernest Lim (National University of Singapore)

ABOUT THE EVENT

The Symposium’s theme, ‘Boundaries of Corporations’ Responsibility’, related to the debates regarding corporations’ roles in detecting and preventing mischief/harm caused by third parties to which they are related, for example, in the supply chain, or within a corporate group, business network or alliance. These mischiefs or harms relate to labour/human rights abuses in supply chains, harms to community/environment in relation to climate change, conflict minerals, misinformation leading to harms, such as online harms, etc. These risks, which the Symposium terms as ‘boundary risks’, often take place beyond the firm’s structural or control boundaries, but for which the firm may be regarded as having some extent of responsibility.

Pertinent legal frameworks relating to corporations’ ‘boundary risks’ include mandatory corporate due diligence duties, criminal legislation and public enforcement, civil enforcement and corporate liability, including enterprise liability, and the soft law/best practices relating to corporations’ own risk and reputational management. The theoretical debates regarding corporations’ ‘boundary risks’ have often focused on how a corporation is conceived, its purpose/s and private or public orientations. These debates are challenging to reconcile and have deep roots in political and economic ideology. Despite ideological contests, policymakers may make pragmatic choices in relation to corporate law and corporate governance reforms to redesignate corporations’ governance capacity over third parties. The Symposium wishes to focus on the potential ‘shapes and shifts’ for corporate law as doctrine and practice, the implications for corporate advisory work, general counsel, and corporate compliance practice.

This was a one-day Symposium, held at Bentham House, UCL Faculty of Laws, on 10 November 2023.

For any queries, please get in touch with Iris H-Y Chiu, Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation, UCL Faculty of Laws, at hse-yu.chiu@ucl.ac.uk.