Past years have witnessed a series of dramatic events reconfiguring the role of enterprises within globalization. Confronted with climate change, an ongoing economic recession and escalating international tensions, social scientists and corporate decision makers have been pondering the implications of these challenges on corporate responsibility. In his new book Corporate Responsibility for Wealth Creation and Human Rights, Georges Enderle engages in a timely philosophical reflection on the moral purpose of doing business, and its innate relationship to global wealth creation, inequalities and human rights. Enderle embarks on connecting different streams of social sciences concerned with wealth creation such as economics, business ethics and legal studies, providing a general philosophical analysis of the status quo in the current global economic system. He elaborates on the notion of wealth as a comprehensive concept encompassing social and environmental dimensions. Moreover, Enderle formulates a systematic defence of human rights as ‘minimum requirements’ of business ethics and as an institutional and cultural foundation of social organization. Here, he distinguishes between moral obligations that arise from collective norms and values that emerge in a self-binding process. Based upon both concepts, Enderle articulates an approach that aims to reconnect the parallel discourses on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business and human rights while integrating the social, economic and ecological pillars of sustainability within one holistic concept of corporate responsibility. Finally, he discusses the implications of human rights in the context of academia while identifying universities as powerful economic agents bearing distinct moral responsibilities.

As wealth and human rights are treated traditionally as separate concepts, Enderle’s elaborations on the meaning of wealth and its link to human rights are key aspects of the book. The author elaborates on the close but complex relationship between human rights and wealth, as well as on the relevance of social trust for functioning societies. This comprehensive conceptualization of wealth also includes an environmental perspective reflected in the notion of natural liabilities, caused by, among other events, nuclear disasters or climate change that are affecting the long-term wealth of future generations. Thus, Enderle argues that recalibrating the focus of economic theory from production to wealth creation with a specific focus on environment and social relations has the potential to bridge the perceived tension between traditional economic theory and business ethics. Further important remarks concern the distinction between private and public capital and the different set of motivations involved when producing these. The discussion of intrinsic motivations and other-regarding action as having a major role in economics, especially for public goods, is therefore extremely insightful and fits well into the elaborations on human rights developed in the second part of the book. In conceptualizing the parallelism between private and public goods on the one hand, and self-interest and altruism on the other, Enderle establishes a theoretical lens that enriches traditional utilitarian perspectives on economics.

Enderle’s defence of human rights as a major pillar of ethics is an essential aspect of the book. Human rights are understood as minimal ethical requirements as part of an indivisible system of rights that does not allow for trade-offs or compromises. These minimal ethical requirements must be maintained even in times of crisis and cases of norm derogation. His observations are timely, as contemporary decision-makers are concerned with multiple business ethics issues, crises and trade-offs that challenge our understanding of human rights, such as the role of Volkswagen in Xinjiang, human rights and social standards in the cobalt, nickel and lithium chains, as well as the climate change and human rights nexus. For Enderle, the human rights responsibilities of business transcend mere avoidance of direct human rights and labour rights violations, to encompass businesses’ contribution to further developing human rights. This view on human rights understood as public goods fits very well with the definition of human rights in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights or the conceptualization of a right to development. This echoes Enderle’s definition of human rights as goals, means and constraints of human action. For Enderle, institutions alone do not sufficiently safeguard these dimensions of human rights, as they require a cultural and educational foundation in tandem with individual action.

The business ethics discourse elaborates on the exact purpose of corporate responsibility and the implications of human rights for business. Enderle identifies the concept of CSR as lacking a common definition of responsibility and offers an alternative conceptualization. The author posits that the notion of responsibility contains ‘self-commitments’ and moral obligations resulting from direct or indirect relationships. This analysis of corporate responsibility is precise and aligns with the concept of organizational integrity, because Enderle emphasizes particularly the metaphysical freedom of individuals and organizations when making moral choices. The notion of integrity revolves around the idea that individuals, companies and states can develop norms in a process of self-binding to deal with issues that transcend compliance based on commonly defined standards. The emphasis on moral self-commitments by companies could have major implications in areas where over-achievement beyond minimal standards becomes critical, such as climate change or social development. It also connects to earlier theories on the evolution of norms through self-binding that are common in business ethics as well as international law. While commitments alone do not suffice in establishing common principles, they have the important function of integrating emerging normative beliefs and of signalling new moral preferences.

Scholars in business ethics, economics and international law tend to disagree on the exact moral status of business. Enderle acknowledges this deficit and the blurring lines between individual and collective responsibilities. Nevertheless, he addresses concrete areas that should be of concern for corporate responsibility such as comprehensive wealth creation including environmental and social capital. His argument encapsulates the purpose of business defined as ‘creating something new and better’ and connects Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction with the notion of sustainability. A timely example is the development of vaccines, but also corporate contributions to climate change. Moreover, companies are identified as having a direct responsibility for human rights when not only causing or contributing to human rights violations but also when a company’s operations, products and services are linked to human rights violations. Enderle refers to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and emphasizes the economic dimension of human rights obligations. Such responsibilities emerge as a derivative of human dignity as expressed in living wages, and depict a common ground for different theories on corporate responsibilities including the sustainable development goals and effective altruism. For example, Enderle discusses corporate responsibility to reduce inequalities. This contribution might prove to become one of the most influential passages of the book, as it shifts the responsibility for global inequality from states to companies. Enderle identifies internal minimum wages as a main contribution of companies to combat increasing inequalities. His argument connects to earlier empirical observations from Piketty and Atkinson and bears strong implications when states fail in tackling the long trend of increasing inequality. Doing so, Enderle reconnects corporate responsibilities to the economic issues of inequality, poverty and fair wages.

Finally, the author sheds light on the potential of the UNGPs for academic institutions. In line with the above-mentioned understanding of human rights, Enderle argues for the realization of social development as a key purpose of academic institutions. Universities have a specific role not only as generators of private and public wealth but also as defenders of human rights, owing to their contribution to the emergence and creation of social norms and values. Here, a stronger focus on human rights as minimum standards might be required as well, for example in technology transfer by universities to entities accused of human rights violations, but also regarding inclusion and non-discrimination in academia.

Georges Enderle’s book provides valuable insights on corporate responsibility by redefining the purpose of business as wealth creators in a holistic way while attending to human rights. Thus, Enderle integrates different discourses on wealth creation, sustainability, CSR and human rights within one conceptual framework. This approach is valuable and opens a new horizon for a further and more nuanced debate in business ethics on a comprehensive understanding of wealth. It also invites further research on practical decision making concerning ethical minimum standards and their relation to other aims in international ethics, such as social development or the response to climate change. The book can be recommended to anyone interested in globalization, sustainability and business ethics, as it offers a holistic perspective on the dominant social questions of our time.