Towards an EU strategy to combat trafficking and labor exploitation in the supply chain : connecting corporate criminal liability and state-imposed self-regulation through due diligence?

The distinction between voluntary and coerced labor has never been more blurred than today, with the supply of willing workers that find themselves in a grey zone between the choice for certain work and the borderline-coercive reliance on malafide employers, traffickers or the like. Policy makers are desperately seeking new ways to eradicate trafficking for labor exploitation. A shift in focus is currently happening, towards the demand-side of exploitative labor. This chapter examines approaches of dealing with the responsibility of the private sector for trafficking and labor exploitation in their supply chains. The issue is currently being dealt with in a variety of ways, such as through labor law, civil law, criminal law and through self-regulation of companies, be it sate-induced or fully voluntary. This chapter focuses on severe cases of trafficking or labor exploitation, committed by a subcontractor of a company bearing guilty knowledge of the exploitation. It will be examined in this chapter how the EU can take legislative action in the sphere of criminal law, to deal with the issue. Two possible approaches will be discussed: the creation of a new crime of “knowingly using the services of victims of trafficking” or the adoption of a European concept of participation in crime, specifically for trafficking and labor exploitation. It will become clear from this analysis that doing business with due diligence plays a crucial role for the conclusion to corporate criminal liability, as it is a vital aspect of concluding to guilty knowledge by companies, or the lack there-of, of malafide practices in the supply chain

Ethics, Social Responsibility and Tax Aggressiveness. Can a Code of Ethics Absolve a Company?

The aim of the paper is to contribute to the debate on the relationship between ethics, socially responsible behaviour and tax aggressiveness through the analysis and discussion of a case study.The case presented in this paper concerns a famous Italian fashion house, well known all over the world, which in recent times was tried in court for a tax inversion operation. D&G Group was involved in a long legal trial, whose outcome has given rise to many discussions. The story definitely ended, and after the final trial the Group was judged innocent. However, this case raised a fervent debate that is still ongoing, and it gives the opportunity to discuss some important issues: What is the boundary between legality and ethics in tax behaviour? Can a company claim to adhere to ethical principles if it adopts aggressive tax practices? Can aggressive tax behaviours be acceptable from an ethical point of view?The case also opens questions related to the boundaries between the responsibilities of directors/managers and institutional responsibilities, at both national and supranational level

Optimizing enterprise risk management: a literature review and critical analysis of the work of Wu and Olson

NoRisks exist in all aspects of our lives. Using data in both Scopus and ISI Web of Science, this review paper identifies pioneer work and pioneer scholars in enterprise risk management (ERM). Being ranked the first based on the review data, Desheng Wu has been active in this area by serving as a good academic network manager on the global research network, His global efforts with diverse networking have enabled him to publish outstanding papers in the field of ERM. Therefore, this paper also conducts a literature review of his papers and critical analysis of the work of Wu and Olson, from the perspective of the ERM, to glean implications and suggestions for the optimization and customization of the ERM.NFSC grant (Grant # 71471055), the 100-Talents plan Program at Chinese Academy of Sciences and 1000-Talents plan Program for the Young Scientists

Ethics of Corporate Taxation: A Systematic Literature Review

In recent times, corporations have been scrutinized for their tax behavior. Various groups of stakeholders have expressed their concern over certain corporate tax strategies that allow multinationals to pay ridiculous amounts of tax in the countries where they operate. Although national governments and international institutions are developing initiatives to reform tax rules to ensure that companies pay their fair share of tax, the international tax framework still offers MNEs several opportunities for minimizing their tax burden. In order to help businesses self-regulate their behavior in those “gray areas” where the tax law is imperfect and to drive changes in legislation, corporate taxation has recently been included in the business ethics field. In other words, the ethical responsibilities associated with corporate taxation have started to be investigated and companies are increasingly expected to exhibit a morally responsible approach to tax planning, above and beyond compliance with the letter of the law. The purpose of this chapter is to present a systematic review of literature dealing with the ethical issues associated with corporate taxation. A better understanding of the evolution, the scope and the state of the art of this academic debate is provided by the literature review. Three main topics will be critically discussed: the ethics of tax evasion, the ethics of tax avoidance and the ethics of tax practitioners. Finally, suggestions and future research paths will be offered, in order to encourage studies to foster the debate on the ethics of corporate taxation

Understanding Sustainability Innovations Through Positive Ethical Networks

In this paper, a positive organizational ethics (POE)-based framework is informed by the microfinance and socially responsible investing movements to capture the process of sustainable financial innovations. Both of these movements are uniquely characterized by the formation of positive ethical networks (PENs) to develop sustainability innovations in response to external crises. The crisis–PEN–innovation framework proposed makes four contributions to the POE literature: (1) positions corporate sustainability through a POE lens; (2) formalizes the PEN construction through POE theory; (3) proposes PENs are mobilized to respond to external crises; and (4) demonstrates how PENs facilitate sustainability innovations. The theoretical framework is tested using theory-guided process tracing in the sustainable banking sector to understand how sustainability innovations were realized. The findings are consistent with the crisis–PEN–innovation framework proposed