² Barnet, Richard and Muller, Ronald, Global Reach: the Power of Multinational Corporations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974) p. 363Google Scholar.

³ Gabriel, P. P., “MNCs in the Third World: Is Conflict Unavoidable?”Harvard Business Review, Vol. 56 (March-April 1978) pp. 83–93Google Scholar.

⁴ An example of disparity in wages between Mexican and U.S. workers is documented in the case study by Haddox, John H., “Twin-Plants and Corporate Responsibilities,” in Profits and Responsibility, eds. Werhane, Patricia and ĎAndrade, Kendall (New York: Random House, 1985)Google Scholar.

⁵ Barnet, and Muller, , Global Reach, p. 72Google Scholar.

⁶ Simpson, J. R., “Ethics and Multinational Corporations vis-à-vis Developing Nations,”Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 1 (1982) pp. 227–37Google Scholar.

⁷ I have borrowed this eight-fold scheme of categories from researchers Farr and Stening in Lisa Farr and Bruce W. Stening, “Ethics and the Multinational Corporation” (an unpublished paper) p. 4Google Scholar.

⁸ An analysis of such reasons, one which also contains many observations on the evolution of international public policy, is Lee E. Preston's “The Evolution of Multinational Public Policy Toward Business: Codes of Conduct,” a paper read at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Management, New Orleans, August 1987Google Scholar.

⁹ Luoma, Jon R., “A Disaster That Didn't Wait,” The New York Times Book Review, November 29, 1987, p. 16Google Scholar.

¹⁰ While I personally have coined the terms, “inter-industry,”“inter-government,” etc., the basic four-fold division of international initiatives is drawn from Preston, op. cit.Google Scholar

¹¹ See, for example, Waldman, Raymond J., Regulating International Business through Codes of Conduct (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1980)Google Scholar.

¹² See, for example, Tharp, P. S. Jr., “Transnational Enterprises and International Regulation: A Survey of Various Approaches to International Organizations,” International Organization, Vol. 30 (Winter 1976) pp. 47–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ LeMoyne, James, “In Central America, the Workers Suffer Most,” The New York Times, October 26, 1987, pp. 1 and 4Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Ibid.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Quoted in “Products Unsafe at Home are Still Unloaded Abroad,”The New York Times, August 22, 1982, p. 22Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977)Google ScholarPubMed. For other standard definitions of rights, see: Nickel, James W., Making Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) especially chapter 2; Joel Feinberg, “Duties, Rights and Claims,”American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 3 (1966) pp. 137–44. See also Feinberg, “The Nature and Value of Rights,”Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 4 (1970) pp. 243–57Google Scholar; Hohfeld, Wesley N., Fundamental Legal Conceptions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; and McCloskey, H. J., “Rights—Some Conceptual Issues,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 54 (1976) pp. 99–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Cranston, Maurice, What Are Human Rights? (New York: Taplinger, 1973) p. 67Google Scholar.

¹⁸ H. J. McCloskey, for example, understands a right as a positive entitlement that need not specify who bears the responsibility for satisfying that entitlement. H. J. McCloskey, “Rights—Some Conceptual Issues,” p. 99Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Feinberg, Joel, “Duties, Rights and Claims,”American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 3 (1966) pp. 137–44. See also Feinberg, “The Nature and Value of Rights,” pp. 243–57Google Scholar.

²⁰ Brooke, James, “Waste Dumpers Turning to West Africa,”The New York Times, July 17, 1988, pp. 1 and 7Google Scholar.

²¹ IbidGoogle Scholar.

²² Ibid, p. 7. Nigeria and other countries have struck back, often by imposing strict rules against the acceptance of toxic waste. For example, in Nigeria officials now warn that anyone caught importing toxic waste will face the firing squadGoogle Scholar.

²³ See Brownlie, Ian, Basic Documents on Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Nickel, James W., “The Feasibility of Welfare Rights in Less Developed Countries,” in Economic Justice: Private Rights and Public Responsibilities, eds. Kipnis, Kenneth and Meyers, Diana T. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allenheld, 1985) pp. 217–26Google Scholar.

²⁵ Shue, Henry, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) pp. 37–38Google Scholar.

²⁶ Donaldson, , The Ethics of International Business, see especially chapter 5Google Scholar. My formulation of these three conditions is an adaptation from four conditions presented and defended by Nickel, James in Nickel, James W., Making Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

²⁷ The fairness-affordability test implies that in order for a proposed right to qualify as a genuine right, all moral agents (including nation-states, individuals, and corporations) must be able under ordinary circumstances, both economically and otherwise, to assume the various burdens and duties that fall fairly upon them in honoring the right. “Affordable” here means literally capable of paying for; it does not mean “affordable” in the vernacular sense that something is not affordable because it would constitute an inefficient luxury, or would necessitate trading off other more valuable economic goods. This definition implies that—at least under unusual circumstances—honoring a right may be mandatory for a given multinational corporation, even when the result is bankrupting the firm. For example, it would be “affordable” under ordinary circumstances for multinational corporations to employ older workers and refuse to hire eight-year-old children for full-time, ongoing labor, and hence doing so would be mandatory even in the unusual situation where a particular firm's paying the higher salaries necessary to hire older laborers would probably bankrupt the firm. By the same logic, it would probably not be “affordable” for either multinational corporations or nation-states around the world to guarantee kidney dialysis for all citizens who need it. The definition also implies that any act of forbearance (of a kind involved in not violating a right directly) is “affordable” for all moral agentsGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Shue, , Basic Rights, p. 57Google Scholar.

²⁹ It is possible to understand even the first four rights as imposing correlative duties to protect from deprivation under highly unusual or hypothetical circumstancesGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Barry, Brian, “The Case for a New International Economic Order,” in Ethics, Economics, and the Law. Nomos XXIV, eds. Roland Pennock, J. and Chapman, John W. (New York: New York University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

³¹ Companies are also charged with undermining local governments, and hence infringing on basic rights, by sophisticated tax evasion schemes. Especially when companies buy from their own subsidiaries, they can establish prices that have little connection to existing market values. This, in turn, means that profits can be shifted from high-tax to low-tax countries, with the result that poor nations can be deprived of their rightful shareGoogle Scholar.

³² Kelly, Arthur, “Italian Bank Mores,” in Case Studies in Business Ethics, ed. by Donaldson, T. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984) pp. 37–39Google Scholar.

³³ Peters, Charles and Branch, Taylor, Blowing the Whistle: Dissent in the Public Interest (New York: Praeger, 1974) pp. 182–85Google Scholar.

³⁴ Berleant, Arnold, “Multinationals and the Problem of Ethical Consistency,” Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 3 (August 1982) pp. 182–95Google Scholar.

³⁵ Some have argued that insulating the economies of the less developed countries would be advantageous to the less developed countries in the long run. But whether correct or not, such an argument is independent of the present issue, for it is independent of the claim that if a practice violates the norms of the home country, then it is impermissibleGoogle Scholar.