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BIZ CONCENTRATION:
A CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE
source: www.corpwatch.org/article.
php?id=1728
www.etcgroup.org
/en/materials/publications
.html?pub_id=136
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Over 1/2 of the world's 100 largest economic entities are transnational corporations (TNCs), not nations… - Growing disparities between rich and poor, both within and between OECD nations and the South, mirrors trends in corporate concentration.
TNCs have unprecedented power to shape social, economic and trade policies…- In response to the pressure of public campaigns, TNCs have developed diverse programs of ‘corporate responsibility’, that is, voluntary programs to improve their images and activities. These same corporations most often oppose measures for ‘corporate accountability’, defined here as mechanisms for enforcing rules for companies.
- Some anti-corporate campaigners in the US are promoting the idea of ‘de-chartering’ corporations that are especially bad. (In the US, corporations are chartered by the state in which they are headquartered.) For environmental campaigners, for example, there is great appeal to the idea that a company can receive a corporate ‘death penalty’ as a deterrent to other companies.
- On the other side of the coin, organised workers seek to engage corporations in a social dialogue to improve corporate commitments to worker rights, while environmental campaigners do not always have the leverage or access to influence corporations in a ‘dialogue’ setting.
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