Howard J. Rubenstein, Founder and President, Rubenstein Associates (headquartered in USA):

[Excerpts from an interview]

"What is the ideal corporation?

The ideal corporation has a sense of global and community responsibility. Too many of them, faced with a problem internally, will say, “We’ll shut down the information flow, and if we’re called, we’ll answer the question, but not fully.” The ideal corporation realizes that it’s a member of the global community. That they have responsibility not only to their employees, to their stockholders, to the people that deal directly with them, their customers and so forth, but that they have a responsibility to the general public and to the financial community. If they realize that, and they act as if they are an individual, they will be able to protect their own reputation. Not by lies, not by spin control, but by the actuality of what they do....

What about the thorny question of human rights?

My advice to corporations is to focus on the issue and realize the environment of the country that they’re functioning in. I think worldwide there is a greater movement toward the protection of human rights. Countries that never paid attention to it in the past, are now paying attention to it.

I think the corporations, in whatever country they’re involved with, have to be advocates for decent living standards and human rights. Because, as I see globally, it’s just a matter of time, before virtually every country will walk away from the oppression that is often inflicted upon their populations. One of the reasons why? The communications explosion. You see now, all the time, photographs and television, exposing human rights violations. No country can sustain that attack, and live in our community of nations, in a successful way economically. So, I would say that the corporation should not be blind to the issues of human rights, and try to exert whatever influence they have to correct those violations."

[from Howard Rubenstein on Corporate Responsibility (Pranay Gupte, Forum Daily News, March 8, 2001)]