Sarah Federman’s Corporate Reckoning: How Businesses Can Address Historical Wrongs explores why and how today’s corporate leaders might confront historical harms perpetrated or enabled by their predecessors, even if they are far removed from the original wrongdoing. She argues that companies have moral and strategic reasons to engage in what she calls ‘reckoning work’ for slavery, genocide and other serious crimes.
A former business executive turned academic, Federman writes with a blend of candour and pragmatic clarity. She quickly draws in the reader by sharing her own family’s complex history as both Holocaust victims and potential beneficiaries of apartheid South Africa, using these disclosures to gain credibility and explain her motivation for writing this book.
Federman frames her book as an ‘invitation and guide’ for corporate leaders who suspect (or fear) that their companies’ histories may be entangled in mass atrocity, but who feel ill-equipped to respond. She weaves together ethnographic work and anecdotal accounts of companies that have resisted, tried and failed, as well as succeeded at this work. While not a deeply theorised or heavy academic read, she nonetheless couches her contribution within Transitional Justice (TJ) and Business & Human Rights (BHR). However, unlike most of her cohorts recently writing on this theme, she draws attention to historical wrongs that call for restorative justice measures like truth-seeking, reparations and reform.
I. Why Do Reckoning Work?
Federman faces the scepticism that companies would bother to look at historical wrongs, especially due to shareholder pressure, short-term profit incentives, ignorance and the belief that ‘it was legal at the time’. While recognising the idealism of her proposal, she points out a business case rationale since reckoning work attracts talent, strengthens customer loyalty, satisfies ethical investors and positions companies to navigate a world increasingly intolerant of corporate impunity.
She refers to Karl Jaspers’ typology of guilt—criminal, political, moral and metaphysical—to argue for an expansive view of responsibility. She points out that just as historical harms compound over time, so do the profits gained by implicated companies. She illustrates this through examples like Credit Industriel et Commercial’s role in ‘gutting the Haitian economy’. She argues companies cannot dismiss the past as irrelevant, especially if they continue to benefit from harmful legacies.
Chapter 1 takes a more ominous approach to warn of the risks of civil litigation, even if criminal liability is rare. She provides examples such as recent suits against Lafarge, Chiquita, Cisco and Johnson & Johnson. She argues preemptive reckoning is cheaper and more effective than legal war.
II. Corporate Histories: From Hagiography to Honest Reckoning
Chapters 2 and 3 turn to corporate storytelling. Federman critiques the ‘thin historical accounts’ companies produce to glorify founders as a kind of ‘history for defence’ that erases lived experiences of suffering. Reducing human suffering to economic terms (entries in ledgers, insurance policies, freight lists) disconnects from the lives that were shattered by those transactions and reproduces the very dynamics of exclusion that produced the harm in the first place. Rushed exhibits, unilateral statements, or philanthropic donations offered without consultation only replicate invisibility, deepen mistrust and potentially retraumatise communities.
Here, she draws from the TJ concept of ‘collective memory’ to urge companies to work with independent historians who value inclusive, multi-voiced accounts of the past based on sustained engagement with affected populations, thus affirming the growing recognition in the BHR field that companies cannot meaningfully address their human rights impacts without transparent, stakeholder-centred processes.
Federman insists that this work requires companies to ‘tread into the messier process of democracy’ with open space for dialogue, dissent and shared authority. Democratisation is important because ‘individuals suffered more than flesh wounds; they suffered wounds to their dignity’, and repair includes addressing how slavery, forced labour, displacement and exploitation denied voice, agency and political power. To illustrate the process, she offers examples like Georgetown University’s work with descendants of enslaved people, Montpelier’s power-sharing with descendant communities, and The Guardian’s engagement with local stakeholders. As she observes, this type of power sharing ‘takes lots of education, patience, and commitment’, adding that ‘[o]nce you commit to structural parity, don’t pull back’. Federman reminds us that repair is not linear or universally applauded; it is a contested, iterative process requiring tolerance for discomfort and challenge from all sides.
Here, I was struck by Federman’s focus on truth-seeking not merely as a symbolic gesture, but as the redistribution of power. There is a quietly radical dimension to this claim, since such power-sharing represents a more serious form of accountability that would unsettle corporate cultures to their core and embrace the reality that corporate harm usually occurs ‘where people have little political voice or financial power’. Addressing power dynamics is not simply a matter of procedure, but a critical step towards transformative justice.
III. Statements, Apologies and the Politics of Corporate Speech
Chapter 4 explores the fraught terrain of statements (acknowledging harm) and apologies (accepting responsibility), viewing this work as ‘gnarly territory’ for companies fearful of potential liability or political backlash. Federman’s examples range from Hugo Boss’s apology for its Nazi past to New York Life’s reckoning with insuring enslaved people. She offers guidance on crafting apologies that are timely, sincere and grounded in relationships with affected communities. Crucially, she insists that apologies must be accompanied by action.
Federman refers to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), which call on companies to communicate their human rights impacts externally when concerns are raised, which, in my opinion, invites a new potential interpretation of UNGP 21. First, this requirement can be interpreted to include historical, not just contemporary harms. Second, disclosure can be read broadly to include ‘truth and repair’. Corporate communication is a form of truth-telling associated with TJ—an acknowledgment of harm and validation of affected communities as a precursor to repair.
Yet Federman’s approach leaves companies with great discretion over when and how they investigate and communicate uncomfortable histories, falling within the long-standing BHR debate over voluntary versus mandatory disclosure. Federman seems optimistic that even imperfect truth practices can shift corporate culture, yet one wonders if business leaders would assume this challenge without a larger risk compelling them to do so. As an alternative, she shares examples of jurisdictions in the U.S., such as Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, that require disclosure of slavery-related histories before granting economic permissions.
IV. Repair Beyond Money
Chapter 5 addresses remedies (or as Federman puts it: ‘meaningful responses’). She rightly points out that ‘the reparative acts of apologies, statements, research, and transparency legitimise the pain, but without action, written and spoken acts leave many with an impression of inauthenticity’.
Federman is reluctant to use ‘reparations’, preferring ‘financial compensation’. She does not engage with the rich transitional justice literature exploring a wider spectrum of remedial measures that go beyond money—the same recognised in the Comment to UNGP Principle 22, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. Nevertheless, Federman’s discussion aligns with the spirit of the expansive view of reparations. For example, she again calls for engaging with affected communities, suggesting co-designing remedies with them, weaving back to the examples from Georgetown, among others.
V. Reforming Corporate Ethos
The final chapter examines transforming corporate culture since singular acts of contrition do not guarantee changed behaviour. Doing this deep work requires sustained ethical commitments, human rights policies, board diversification and shareholder engagement, among other measures.
Federman’s framework invites a connection between repair and the principle of non-repetition. She calls for forward-looking responses such as investing in racial equity, reforming internal culture and diversifying leadership as not just optional add-ons, but instead a form of institutional repair and reform. This vision aligns with that of the UNGPs, which call on companies to embed human rights commitments into everyday practice. The bridge to the future is built on deliberate transformation of the very systems that allowed harm to occur in the first place.
Yet Federman recognises that the impetus for corporate reckoning tends not to come from institutional design or regulatory pressure but instead from individual leaders who have undergone ‘ethical epiphanies’. As she observes: ‘Maybe corporations don’t have souls, but owners do, and the shifts they make can affect millions’. Certainly, Federman herself exemplifies this personal journey. Thus, reckoning work is not a simple matter of compliance, but instead a function of individuals cultivating the capacity to recognise harm, acknowledge responsibility, and imagine a different future. Perhaps the greatest value of this book is that it might find its way to individual leaders who need affirmation of their instincts and guidance on how to move forward.
Recognising the role of enlightened leaders begs the question: How might we prepare leaders in general to be capable of this work instead of relying on happenstance? Federman suggests business schools might do better. Ultimately, the education she calls for would require moving away from shareholder primacy, risk minimisation and short-term profit maximisation. Such a proposal may be less edgy today given the growing legitimacy of the UNGPs and a move away from narrow economic metrics towards balancing with human rights considerations. These pressures do not guarantee reckoning, but they create conditions under which leaders inclined towards ethical engagement can act with greater confidence.
In a world where corporate power feels vast and accountability out of reach, Federman’s call for ethical leadership and repair is timely and necessary. It remains an open question whether business leaders will follow this call, but at minimum, Corporate Reckoning ensures they can no longer claim ignorance about what such work entails.
