The Evolution, Transmission, and Hardening of Soft Laws in Corporate Social Responsibility

CSR, including ethical norms, soft law, and hard law instruments have been frequently discussed in an attempt to hold multinational corporations accountable and promote corporations’ socially responsible conduct–concerning human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. This paper examines the evolution and transmission of corporate values to norms to laws by exploring dynamics that diffuse CSR initiatives and CSR principles reflected and extended to domestic policies and corporate laws. Based on case studies in which norms or soft laws gain harder characteristics, the paper discusses the conditions under which CSR initiatives or corporate values are transformed into prevalent customs, norms, or soft laws (Hypothesis 1: From Values to Norms), while trying to understand an evolutionary process of soft law being incorporated in hard law on a broad level (Hypothesis 2: From Norms to Laws). The elements discovered in the two hypotheses are then applied to the case of Republic of Korea, to further examine their implications on the current status of the territory, and anticipate the prospects of Republic of Korea with its impact on promotion of human rights in Northeast Asian region, mainly Japan and China. Subsequently, rough data on Republic of Korea, Japan and China’s exports and imports, ISO standards adoption, the UNGC participation levels, and ILO ratification status have been collected. This paper concludes that norms and soft laws may tend to evolve into harder laws.