Effects of National and Transnational Pressures on Human Rights Reporting: A Comparative Study of Chinese and Swedish State-Owned Enterprises

Abstract

While a wide array of regulation, national and international, soft and hard, has emerged out of the field of business and human rights (BHR) over the past few decades, there remains little consensus on the ideal policy and regulatory instruments to enforce responsibilities of business, particularly multinational corporations (MNCs), in the realm of human rights. To help guide future policy debate and discussion, an answer to the question of whether national or international (or transnational) pressures have a greater influence on getting business to respect human rights may be helpful. This thesis tackles this question by examining the relative influence of national and transnational pressures on the human rights reporting of state-owned MNCs in China and Sweden. Such a study contributes to existing literature that has predominantly focused on CSR reporting at large, single-country contexts in the developing world, and aims to identify the various influences on reporting. The findings point to three areas of significance. First, this study provides an institutional analysis of China and Sweden and illustrates how institutional priorities reflect in state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) reporting on human rights, as well as highlights the importance of institutional environments in affecting human rights reporting. Second, it examines changes and consistencies by comparing the human rights reporting of Chinese SOEs from 2015 and 2023, specifically examining the rise of nationalist language in reporting and how it coincides with a consolidation of power at the top of the central government. To conclude, the potential impact of emerging European Union (EU) legislation on BHR is evaluated and a variety of less traditional policy solutions are proposed.