Global pact and the corporate sustainability: positivation and effectiveness of the guidelines and the brazilian legal system

Abstract

The contemporary view of private business, beyond the legitimate right to profit, must be accompanied by ethical action to be classified as a sustainable company. The concern with sustainability should be placed on companies, consumers and States. From the presented problem, the objective is the study guidelines that allow companies leave their origins to feed sustainable activity. In 2000 the United Nations (UN) presented the Global Pact, a document that brings together 10 principles of universalistic aspect, in order to establish guidelines for policies and practices of corporate social responsibility. They can be congregated into four groups, protecting the rights of the human, environmental, labor and anti-corruption. It was an important initiative, but for effectiveness depends on the actions of States, the companies and civil society on condition of conscious consumers, as the Pact has no legal-binding character. The investigation of this work makes it possible to define that the responsibilities of States, especially, are: normative acting for require planned pipelines in laws and regulations; acting through the administrative function for inspection; judicial action through its decisions. For companies the contribution is to implement such guidelines in business practice independently the country they operate. Highlight the important role of the consumer to decide by the company that has responsible attitudes. From these premises, the exploratory and comparative research turns to Brazil relating to the Global Pact, in particular to evaluate (i) if the law contains provisions that require business conducts, as the global principles of the UN; (ii) the importance of management by values for the companies; and, (iii) the consumer participation to feed the chain of social responsibility.