Research Seminar – Karin Buhmann

​This Research Seminar was organized by the Management & Organizations department and the ERA Chair in Social Innovation.

Karin Buhmann is Professor of Business and Human Rights at Copenhagen Business School, and Professor and Head of the Centre for Law, Sustainability & Justice at the Department of Law, University of Southern Denmark. Professor Karin’s research and teaching focus on sustainability and responsible business conduct (RBC) with a particular emphasis on social issues, especially climate change mitigation, business responsibilities for human rights, and sustainable finance.

Title: Avoiding losing the essence in translation? The transition of human rights due diligence into hard-law requirements and implications for organizational uptake. 

Abstract: 

Human Rights due diligence was conceived as a management process for business enterprises to identify and manage their adverse impacts. The EU’s proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) will be a major step in turning due diligence into a legally mandated task. This raises a fundamental question on how to ensure the essence of due diligence as an ongoing management process across multiple management functions, with a focus on sometimes complex qualitative issues across value chains – and particularly avoiding due diligence turning into narrow compliance. The CSDDD is far from the first step in mandatory due diligence, even within the EU. Previous steps have involved reporting requirements, amongst others. Based on her studies on the effects of the introduction of non-financial reporting requirements in Denmark and of the implementation of ‘meaningful stakeholder engagement’, a key element of due diligence, in green energy contexts, Professor Buhmann will identify some issues that challenge or condition the effective transformation of due diligence actions into law and back into responsible business conduct in organizations.  

This event will serve as an opportunity to discuss the current landscape of research on business and human rights across management, economics, and law, identifying the next important questions that deserve attention as well as research needs. Karin’s presentation will serve as an occasion to discuss more generally how to better connect legal discourses with management and economics discourses on Business and Human Rights, in research and in practice.