Ranking for human rights? The formative power of indicators for business responsibility

Abstract This article explores the increasing role of indicators and rankings in the case of business and human rights. It argues that indicators contribute to forming notions of companies’ responsibilities for human rights. The potentially formative power of indicators stems from their substantive content (human rights), from the authority of those who produce them (experts, governance bodies), and from the type of knowledge they convey (numbers offering a sense of precision and comparability). A case study of the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark shows that this indicator scheme shapes notions of business human rights responsibility as being equally centered on commitments, policies, and procedures as on human rights impact. In contrast to the rights-holding and duty-bearing subjects of international human rights law, indicators in the domain of business and human rights put a broad range of stakeholders on equal terms. Contestation has primarily concerned specific instances of highly ranked companies whose operations have negatively impacted human rights. The case shows that rankings can be contentious and are ultimately dependent on their credibility in broader perspective, subject to events that are not necessarily covered by indicators.