Values-Based Multinational Management: Achieving Enterprise Sustainability through a Human Rights Strategy

In this timely book, Lee Tavis and Timothy Tavis contend that the values dimension of the actions of multinational firms is becoming increasingly important, given the worldwide integration of economies and peoples. The digital revolution has broadened the reach of globalization and created an informed society that demands higher standards of behavior from the business enterprise; at the same time, multinational corporations have gained power often comparable to that of the nation state, and global society is in need of widely accepted, enduring social and ethical standards. Tavis and Tavis argue that multinational firms must embrace an ethically pro-active stance in their own long-term interests. A strategy of supporting universal human rights, often in partnership with NGOs, offers the greatest potential for success.

Values-Based Multinational Management provides an agenda for practical action, with special reference to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Global Compact. It informs and addresses the values concerns of multinational business managers. It presents its examples and analyses in a clear and concise manner and will be of use both to practitioners in the business community and students and scholars of business ethics.

Lee A. Tavis is C. R. Smith Professor of Finance, emeritus, at the University of Notre Dame.

Timothy M. Tavis holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Texas, Austin, and is a private practitioner in West Palm Beach, Florida.