Depending on your political persuasion, you might think that there is too much regulation and companies can quite effectively rely on their customers to regulate their behaviors, or there is not enough regulation because the court of public opinion is insufficient to keep companies in line.

Research from the University of Oxford suggests that the latter is more likely to be the case, at least when it comes to protecting human rights.

Public opinion

The researchers examined how the general public assesses various types of human rights violations by presenting volunteers with a number of scenarios, all of which are regarded as unacceptable according to the United Nations’ widely recognized Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Sadly, in 40% of the scenarios, participants regularly thought that the companies had not done anything wrong and had not violated human rights. The scenarios themselves had been designed to ensure that the companies involved had various different relationships with the perpetrator, as well as engaging in different types of violations, and so on.

This showed that people were less likely to think the company had done wrong if they had a distant relationship with the perpetrator, with this especially so if the perpetrator was a government entity. For instance, if a government body had abused human rights in a way that helped a company, they were 10% less likely to think the company had done anything wrong.

Unintentional impact

What’s more, people were also likely to respond positively if they thought the company had conducted a degree of due diligence, such as performing impact assessments. In other words, as long as companies tried to prevent abuses, it didn’t matter so much if they were actually successful.

Suffice it to say, people were far more critical if companies were found to have not acted on information that later caused people harm. Intent very much matters.

They were also far more sensitive to particular forms of abuse, with associations with child labor particularly harshly treated. Violations involving workers rights and suppression of civil unrest were far more leniently treated.

Interestingly, people weren’t particularly swayed by local views on these matters, and instead tended to arrive at their conclusion based on personal values and their own moral compasses. Indeed, only 6% said they would resort to official legal frameworks or human rights law.

While the researchers highlight that our personal perspectives on these matters shouldn’t be dismissed, as they are often pretty stringent, they are nonetheless no substitute for internationally-accepted standards.