Discussion Draft Posted: "Power, Purpose, and Control—the Corporation as Platform, Router, and Control/Compliance Space in an Emerging World Order"

 

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I was delighted when my friend and colleague Jorge Esquirol asked me if I was interested in producing a work for an anticipated upcoming issue of Sciences Po Law Review (La Revue des Juristes), which he is directing, the theme of which is “Power, Purpose, and Profit: The Corporation in a Fracturing World Order.” The essays in the issue are meant to :

examine the shifting role of the corporation in light of the significant global upheavals underway. As founder power concentrates, states weaponize corporate law, and society increasingly questions the purpose of large corporations, the foundational architecture of corporate governance is coming undone. This issue assembles scholarship on how power, geopolitics, and corporate purpose are simultaneously reshaping the legal structures that govern who controls corporations, and to what ends. In light of your experience in the interplay between corporate governance, international developments and human rights.

To those ends I have prepared a discussion draft entitled "Power, Purpose, and Control—the Corporation as Platform, Router, and Control/Compliance Space in an Emerging World Order."  This essay reconsiders the conventional narrative of a ‘fracturing world order’ by shifting the unit of analysis from the state to the enterprise. The notion of fracture, I argue, is bound up in the cognitive premises of its observer—a function of the observer’s commitment to the state as the foundational unit of ordering. Observed from the vantage point of the multinational enterprise, what appears as fracture is more accurately described as consolidation: the migration of ordering functions from state-based systems to enterprise-based systems organized around supply, production, and use chains, and mediated through compliance architectures and datafied governance. The corporation is reconceived as simultaneously a platform—a space within which ordering occurs; a router—directing flows of value, compliance expectations, data, and normative obligations across legal orders; and a control/compliance space—the site where governance is operationalized through internalized systems of accountability, risk, and compliance grammars. The emerging order fractures not only the state and its international system but also the individual, who is reconstituted as the sum of desires, behaviors, and data points within platform-enterprise spaces.

 

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I suggest that the corporation is indeed at the centre of a fracturing world order—but it is not being fractured. It is, rather, the site of re-ordering: the institutional form within which governance functions migrate as the state-based system loses its capacity to monopolize the production of normative order. The three functions developed in this essay—the corporation as platform, as router, and as compliance space—reveal that what appears as crisis from the state's perspective is transformation from the enterprise's. The platform function constitutes the space within which ordering occurs; the routing function directs the flows of normative obligation across polycentric governance landscapes; and the compliance function operationalizes governance through internalized systems of organizational cognition. 

The challenge for legal scholarship—and for La Revue des Juristes as a forum for that scholarship—is to develop analytical frameworks adequate to this reality. Such frameworks must resist the temptation to take the state as the primary unit of ordering, must take seriously the normative capacity of enterprises as governance systems in their own right, and must grapple with the computational transformation that is reconfiguring the modalities of governance from sovereign command to algorithmic processing. They must also reckon with the implications of the emerging order for the individual—the reconstitution of the human subject as data point and factor of production within enterprise-governance architectures that were not designed with the dignity or autonomy of the person as their organizing principle. 

This essay has offered one such framework—necessarily incomplete, necessarily provisional, necessarily open to the objection that it understates the resilience of the state, the agency of the individual, and the capacity of democratic institutions to reassert control over the ordering functions that enterprises have absorbed. These objections deserve engagement, and they will be engaged. But the starting point, I suggest, must be the recognition that the world order is not merely fracturing—it is reconstituting itself around institutional forms and governance modalities that the inherited categories of public international law, corporate law, and constitutional theory are ill-equipped to comprehend. The corporation—as platform, as router, as compliance space—is at the centre of this reconstitution. The task of legal scholarship is to see it clearly.

Comments and engagement  always welcome. The current version of the discussion draft can be accessed via SSRN here: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7372058];  and follows below.

 

Just Published: "Compliance as Governance: " [Cumplimiento como Gobernanza: Cognición Organizacional, Riesgo y la Transformación de la Toma de Decisiones Institucional; 合规即治理：组织认知、风险与制度决策的转型]— Larry Catá Backer in Revista Doctrina Distrital (bogotá) Vol. 6 Núm. 2 (2026)

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With great thanks to the brilliant Juan Pablo Sarmiento Erazo (University of La Sabana), and the marvelous editorial staff of Revista Doctrina Distrital, the official academic journal of the District Legal Secretariat (Secretaría Jurídica Distrital) of the Mayor's Office of Bogotá, Colombia (Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá) I am delighted to announce the publication of  Cumplimiento como Gobernanza: Cognición Organizacional, Riesgo y la Transformación de la Toma de Decisiones Institucional: Entrevista a Larry Catá Backer; Compliance as Governance: Organizational Cognition, Risk, and the Transformation of Institutional Decision-Making, Revista Doctrina Distrital (bogotá) Vol. 6 Núm. 2 (2026).

What happens when compliance stops being a checklist and starts becoming the way an organization actually thinks?  That is the question that I explore with Professor Sarmiento Erazo across seven dimensions of modern governance—from anti-corruption and public procurement to artificial intelligence, ESG, and reputational due diligence. The conversation introduces the concept of "governance grammars": the idea that compliance, risk management, ESG, human rights due diligence, and RegTech are not competing bureaucratic functions but distinct languages through which organizations interpret the same complex reality. The challenge, Backer argues, is translation among them.

 

Among the key points of discussion: (1) Internalized compliance is visible when it shapes decisions before problems arise—not after regulators ask questions; (2) In public procurement, risk-based models can replace blanket procedural scrutiny with targeted, auditable attention; (3) AI and RegTech shift risk from a discrete event to a continuously evolving system property—demanding a temporal dimension in how organizations define risk appetite; (4) Due diligence that remains purely internal manages risk; due diligence made externally verifiable builds trust capital.

The full interview is available open-access at Revista Doctrina Distrital (Bogotá, Colombia) under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Here is the abstract in English and Spanish: 

creación elaborado por Gok

A través de la reflexión sobre la internalización de la cultura de cumplimiento, la gestión del riesgo en el sector público, la eficiencia operacional, la inteligencia artificial y la tecnología regulatoria (RegTech), la convergencia entre el cumplimiento y los criterios ESG, la integración de sistemas de gestión fragmentados y las dimensiones reputacionales de la debida diligencia, este análisis despliega el concepto de gramáticas de gobernanza: aquellos vocabularios interconectados pero diferenciados —cumplimiento, riesgo, ESG, debida diligencia en derechos humanos, RegTech— mediante los cuales las instituciones observan, interpretan y actúan sobre entornos normativos superpuestos y con frecuencia contradictorios. Sustentado en la teoría de sistemas, la semiótica jurídica y la práctica investigativa sobre gobernanza transnacional, el trabajo sostiene que el rasgo distintivo de un cumplimiento maduro no estriba en la densidad de las reglas ni en la sofisticación técnica del monitoreo, sino en la capacidad institucional para traducir la información en decisiones responsables a través de fronteras organizativas y computacionales. Se presta especial atención a la transformación introducida por la inteligencia artificial y la gobernanza guiada por datos, la cual desplaza el riesgo de ser una categoría discreta y transaccional para convertirlo en una propiedad emergente y en continua evolución de los sistemas organizacionales, exigiendo repensar de modo correlativo la apetencia al riesgo, el juicio institucional y la rendición de cuentas a medida que la gobernanza misma se torna crecientemente computacional.

These responses to seven questions posed by the editors of the Revista Doctrina Distrital (Journal of the District Legal Se-cretariat of the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá, Colombia) examines compliance not as a static regulatory obligation but as an evolving architecture of organizational cognition, communication, and decision-making. Addressing seven questions concerning the internalization of compliance culture, public-sector risk management, operational efficiency, artificial intelligence and RegTech, the convergence of compliance with ESG, the integration of fragmented management systems, and the reputational dimensions of due diligence, the discussion develops the concept of governance grammars: the interconnected but distinct vocabularies—compliance, risk, ESG, human rights due diligence, RegTech—through which organizations observe, interpret, and act upon overlapping and often conflicting normative environments. Drawing on systems theory, legal semiotics, and the practical experience of transnational governance scholarship, the chapter argues that the decisive marker of mature compliance is neither the density of rules nor the sophistication of monitoring technology, but the institutional capacity to translate information into responsible decisions across organizational and computational boundaries. Particular attention is given to the transformation introduced by artificial intelligence and data-driven governance, which shifts risk from a discrete, transactional category to an emergent, continuously evolving property of organizational systems, and to the corresponding need to rethink risk appetite, institutional judgment, and accountability as governance itself becomes increasingly computational.

 这些针对《Distrito Doctrina Revista》（《地区法学评论》，哥伦比亚波哥大市市长办公室法律秘书处主办）编辑所提出的七个问题所作的回应，所考察的并非作为一种静态监管义务的合规，而是作为组织认知、沟通与决策不断演进的架构。围绕合规文化的内化、公共部门风险管理、运营效率、人工智能与监管科技（RegTech）、合规与ESG的趋同、碎片化管理体系的整合，以及尽职调查的声誉维度等七个问题，本文进一步提出“治理语法”（governance grammars）这一概念：即一组彼此关联但各自有别的词汇体系——合规、风险、ESG、人权尽职调查以及监管科技（RegTech）——组织正是通过这些词汇体系，对相互重叠且往往彼此冲突的规范环境进行观察、解释并采取行动。本文借鉴系统理论、法律符号学以及跨国治理研究的实践经验，主张，成熟合规的决定性标志既不在于规则的密集程度，也不在于监测技术的复杂程度，而在于一种制度性能力，即能够跨越组织边界与计算边界，将信息转化为负责任的决策。本文尤其关注人工智能与数据驱动治理所带来的转变：风险由一种离散的、交易性的范畴，转变为组织系统中一种涌现的、持续演化的属性。与此相应，当治理本身日益呈现计算化特征时，我们有必要重新思考风险偏好、制度判断以及问责机制。

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 English and Español versions HERE. 中文版本如下. Links to the articles in the entire issue also follow.

 

Save the Date: Compliance Net 2027 Conference and CfP

 

 

 This from our friends over at Compliance Net:

ComplianceNet 2027 will be hosted by Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. The event will take place on June 14-16, 2027, and it coincides with the annual festival of Luminara of San Ranieri. The Conference will consider submissions on all topics related to compliance. We hope that this announcement allows you to start thinking about potential contributions!

A formal call for papers will be issued in late fall 2026. For individual papers, you will be asked to submit the paper title and abstract (up to about 200 words). For panels (3 papers minimum with a maximum of 5 per panel), you will be asked to submit an integrative statement explaining the panel (approximately 200 words), the titles of each paper and their authors, and an abstract for each paper (approximately 200 words). We also offer awards for the best papers from students, junior scholars, and senior scholars.

ComplianceNet seeks to bring together scholars from a range of different disciplines to study the interaction between rules (broadly defined) and individual, group, or organizational behavior. The first seven annual conferences have been highly successful, bringing together academics from business, criminology, economics, law, political science, psychology, public policy, public health, and sociology, among other fields. See the ComplianceNet website for more details about the organization’s structure and goals, as well as for an opportunity to join the mailing list if you desire to do so.

We look forward to seeing you at ComplianceNet 2027 in Pisa!

Sincerely,

Roberta De Paolis (Conference Organizer); Wim Huisman, Elysa Dishman, Phil Nichols, Eric Chaffee, Antara Haldar, Vera Cherepanova, and Barbara-Ann Boehler (ComplianceNet Steering Committee)

"El Encuentro entre la Gobernanza Empresarial y los Principios Rectores de la ONU sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos": Discusro Pronunciado en la Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia, 19 March 2026

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ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION HERE

A continuación, se presenta el texto ampliado de la intervención realizada en la Universidad ICESI (Cali, Colombia) el 19 de marzo de 2026. Agradezco a los organizadores del evento y, especialmente, a los estudiantes del Semillero, cuyo trabajo es verdaderamente extraordinario y con quienes espero colaborar más estrechamente en el futuro.

Más abajo se incluye el resumen (en inglés y español) y se puede acceder al texto completo.

Foto crédito acquí

Resumen (Español): Este ensayo examina la intersección crítica entre la gobernanza empresarial y los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos (PRNU), derivado de una conferencia dictada por Larry Catá Backer en 2026. Superando los marcos tradicionales de cumplimiento técnico, la obra problematiza este campo al interrogar la naturaleza fundamental, la autoridad y el propósito socioeconómico de la empresa moderna. Se analiza la fricción constante entre tres paradigmas doctrinales en disputa: la teoría de la concesión, la teoría de la propiedad y la teoría de la entidad real. Asimismo, el texto explora cómo la globalización económica ha erosionado el poder estatal territorial, creando un panorama de gobernanza policéntrico donde el derecho público y el ordenamiento contractual privado se interpenetran. Al trazar la evolución histórica desde las fallidas Normas de la ONU de 2003 hasta el "pragmatismo de principios" de John Ruggie en los PRNU de 2011, el ensayo detalla cómo este marco alinea distintos registros institucionales. Descompone sistemáticamente la arquitectura asimétrica de los tres pilares: el deber vinculante del Estado de proteger, la responsabilidad de exhortación de las empresas de respetar y el acceso al remedio. Se otorga especial énfasis a la debida diligencia en derechos humanos como un eje operativo que despliega múltiples funciones institucionales. Finalmente, la obra concluye que la interpenetración de estos pilares desestabiliza las doctrinas clásicas del derecho corporativo —como los deberes fiduciarios y la elección de la ley aplicable—. De este modo, demuestra que la gobernanza empresarial y la regulación transnacional de los derechos humanos ya no pueden evaluarse de forma aislada, ya que se acoplan estructuralmente para rediseñar la legitimidad del orden económico global.

Abstract (English): This essay examines the critical intersection between corporate governance and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), derived from a 2026 lecture by Larry Catá Backer. Moving beyond traditional, checklist-oriented compliance frameworks, the work problematizes the field by interrogating the fundamental nature, authority, and socio-economic purpose of the modern enterprise. It analyzes the ongoing friction among three competing doctrinal paradigms: concession theory, property theory, and real-entity theory. The text explores how economic globalization has eroded territorial state power, creating a polycentric governance landscape where public law and private contractual ordering interpenetrate. Tracing the historical shift from the failed, state-centric 2003 UN Draft Norms to John Ruggie’s "principled pragmatism" in the 2011 UNGP, the essay details how the framework aligns distinct institutional registers. It systematically unpacks the asymmetric architecture of the three pillars: the binding State duty to protect, the expectation-based corporate responsibility to respect, and access to remedy. Special emphasis is placed on human rights due diligence as an operational hinge performing multi-layered institutional functions. Ultimately, the work concludes that the interpenetration of these pillars destabilizes classical corporate law doctrines—such as fiduciary duties and choice of law. It demonstrates that corporate governance and transnational human rights regulation can no longer be evaluated in isolation, as they structurally couple to reshape the legitimacy of the global economic order.

Quizás se pueda llegar al núcleo de la discusión de esta manera:  Un tratamiento convencional del derecho de las empresas y los derechos humanos procedería de forma taxonómica: identificaría el instrumento (los Principios Rectores), expondría su contenido (tres pilares) y catalogaría su implementación (planes de acción nacionales, legislación sobre debida diligencia, regímenes de divulgación). Tal tratamiento sería preciso pero incompleto, porque daría por sentado precisamente lo que el método problematizador insiste en interrogar —a saber, si la "gobernanza empresarial" y los "derechos humanos" nombran dos dominios regulatorios separados y estables que simplemente pueden ponerse en contacto, o si ambos son en sí mismos constructos inestables cuyo encuentro produce algo genuinamente nuevo.

La investigación se despliega a lo largo de seis ejes interconectados: el carácter fundamental de las empresas y de los objetivos económicos; el efecto de la globalización y de los regímenes comerciales sobre las fronteras de la autoridad estatal; las "paletas" (palettes) resultantes de ordenamiento normativo público y privado; el problema general de la corporación y de la gobernanza empresarial como tal; la manifestación específica de ese problema en el dominio de los derechos humanos corporativos, incluidos sus antecedentes históricos y su cristalización en los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos (PRNU); y, finalmente, las conexiones, alineaciones y transformaciones que vinculan la doctrina del gobierno corporativo con el marco de los derechos humanos. Lo que sigue aborda cada uno de estos puntos a su vez, antes de considerar lo que el encuentro entre ambos campos —la gobernanza empresarial y las empresas y los derechos humanos— sugiere sobre la condición actual de la regulación económica transnacional.

Una nota sobre la traducción

Nota sobre la traducción: To accurately integrate the academic context and refine the nuances between the English common-law corporate tradition and the Spanish legal framework, the translation has been revised to strengthen key transliterations and functional equivalents. Key Transliteration & Terminology Enhancements: (1) Corporate Governance: Maintained as Gobernanza Empresarial in headings, but translated as Gobierno Corporativo within the text when discussing strict corporate law doctrine, matching standard Spanish academic usage. (2) Creature of the State / Real-entity theory: Rendered as criatura del Estado and teoría de la entidad real, which are the recognized academic equivalents in comparative corporate law. (3) Remedy: Transliterated contextually. While "remedio" is used in the official Spanish translation of the UNGPs, the academic text demands reparación or vías de recurso depending on whether it refers to the outcome or the mechanism. Both are utilized to capture the full semantic weight. (4) Due Diligence: Maintained as debida diligencia, the stabilized term in international law.

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"Encountering Corporate Governance and the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights": Enhanced Remarks Delivered at Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia, 19 March 2026

 

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 Version en Español

The following is the extended  text of remarks delivered at Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia, 19 March 2026. I am grateful to the organizers of the event and especially to the students in the Semillero (Incubator) whose work is truly amazing, and with whom I hope to work more closely in the future.

The abstract follows (English and Spanish) and the full text may be accessed below.

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Abstract (English): These extended remarks examine the critical intersection between corporate governance and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), derived from a 2026 lecture by Larry Catá Backer. Moving beyond traditional, checklist-oriented compliance frameworks, the work problematizes the field by interrogating the fundamental nature, authority, and socio-economic purpose of the modern enterprise. It analyzes the ongoing friction among three competing doctrinal paradigms: concession theory, property theory, and real-entity theory. The text explores how economic globalization has eroded territorial state power, creating a polycentric governance landscape where public law and private contractual ordering interpenetrate. Tracing the historical shift from the failed, state-centric 2003 UN Draft Norms to John Ruggie’s "principled pragmatism" in the 2011 UNGP, the essay details how the framework aligns distinct institutional registers. It systematically unpacks the asymmetric architecture of the three pillars: the binding State duty to protect, the expectation-based corporate responsibility to respect, and access to remedy. Special emphasis is placed on human rights due diligence as an operational hinge performing multi-layered institutional functions. Ultimately, the remarks suggest that the interpenetration of these pillars destabilizes classical corporate law doctrines—such as fiduciary duties and choice of law. It demonstrates that corporate governance and transnational human rights regulation can no longer be evaluated in isolation, as they structurally couple to reshape the legitimacy of the global economic order.


Resumen (Español): Este ampliado discurso examina la intersección crítica entre la gobernanza empresarial y los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos (PRNU), derivado de una conferencia dictada por Larry Catá Backer en 2026. Superando los marcos tradicionales de cumplimiento técnico, la obra problematiza este campo al interrogar la naturaleza fundamental, la autoridad y el propósito socioeconómico de la empresa moderna. Se analiza la fricción constante entre tres paradigmas doctrinales en disputa: la teoría de la concesión, la teoría de la propiedad y la teoría de la entidad real. Asimismo, el texto explora cómo la globalización económica ha erosionado el poder estatal territorial, creando un panorama de gobernanza policéntrico donde el derecho público y el ordenamiento contractual privado se interpenetran. Al trazar la evolución histórica desde las fallidas Normas de la ONU de 2003 hasta el "pragmatismo de principios" de John Ruggie en los PRNU de 2011, el ensayo detalla cómo este marco alinea distintos registros institucionales. Descompone sistemáticamente la arquitectura asimétrica de los tres pilares: el deber vinculante del Estado de proteger, la responsabilidad de exhortación de las empresas de respetar y el acceso al remedio. Se otorga especial énfasis a la debida diligencia en derechos humanos como un eje operativo que despliega múltiples funciones institucionales. Finalmente, la obra concluye que la interpenetración de estos pilares desestabiliza las doctrinas clásicas del derecho corporativo —como los deberes fiduciarios y la elección de la ley aplicable—. De este modo, demuestra que la gobernanza empresarial y la regulación transnacional de los derechos humanos ya no pueden evaluarse de forma aislada, ya que se acoplan estructuralmente para rediseñar la legitimidad del orden económico global.

Perhaps one can get to the heart of the discussion this way: A conventional treatment of business and human rights law would proceed taxonomically: identify the instrument (the Guiding Principles), state its content (three pillars), and catalogue its implementation (national action plans, due diligence legislation, disclosure regimes). Such a treatment would be accurate but incomplete, because it would take for granted precisely what the problematizing method insists on interrogating—namely, whether “corporate governance” and “human rights” name two separate and stable regulatory domains that can simply be brought into contact, or whether both are themselves unstable constructs whose meeting produces something genuinely new.

The inquiry unfolds along six interlocking axes: the fundamental character of enterprises and of economic objectives; the effect of globalization and trade regimes on the borders of state authority; the resulting “palettes” of public and private normative ordering; the general problem of the corporation and of corporate governance as such; the specific manifestation of that problem in the domain of corporate human rights, including its historical antecedents and its crystallization in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP); and, finally, the connections, alignments, and transformations that link corporate governance doctrine to the human rights framework.What follows takes up each of these in turn, before considering what the encounter between the two fields—corporate governance and business and human rights—suggests about the present condition of transnational economic regulation.

The full text may be downloaded HERE.

Note on the Spanish translation: To accurately integrate the academic context and refine the nuances between the English common-law corporate tradition and the Spanish legal framework, the translation has been revised to strengthen key transliterations and functional equivalents. Key Transliteration & Terminology Enhancements: (1) Corporate Governance: Maintained as Gobernanza Empresarial in headings, but translated as Gobierno Corporativo within the text when discussing strict corporate law doctrine, matching standard Spanish academic usage. (2) Creature of the State / Real-entity theory: Rendered as criatura del Estado and teoría de la entidad real, which are the recognized academic equivalents in comparative corporate law. (3) Remedy: Transliterated contextually. While "remedio" is used in the official Spanish translation of the UNGPs, the academic text demands reparación or vías de recurso depending on whether it refers to the outcome or the mechanism. Both are utilized to capture the full semantic weight. (4) Due Diligence: Maintained as debida diligencia, the stabilized term in international law.

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OMFIF’s Gender Balance Index 2026

The OMFIF has released the latest iteration of its Gender Balance Index. Thery summarize its results this way:

For 12 years, OMFIF’s Gender Balance Index has analysed the state of gender parity in leadership roles across the financial sector. This year’s central banks recorded significant gains: Central banks saw the biggest improvements within leadership positions in the index this year.
The number of women governors reached a historic score of 35, six of whom head the regional Federal Reserve Banks.
This is the highest number of women who have led the regional Feds in a single year.Αt a critical moment when US federal and private organisations were under pressure to remove diversity, equity and inclusion information and abandon related initiatives, these trends suggest that progress in gender representation within central banks has continued.

The report reflects the sensibilities and taxonomies of the 2oth century transformation of identity based politics into the economic, social, cultural, and political spheres. And yet at the same time it is a marker of the obsolescence of those taxonomies and their semiotics—that is the obsolescence of the signification of sex and gender within a set of binary significs—male and female; man and woman.

The identity politics of the 20th century and its more formidably powerful insemination of cultural production within the generative fields of negotiations between individuals and collectives respecting the (re) construction of the female and with it the category woman continues. But it has been upended by the explosion of the binaries of the categorizations of the human, and the fusion of biology with its social signification, and then its reconstitution enhanced by advances in technologies, into a fluidity og both biology (that can be chemically and surgically altered); psychology (which can be a bridge between the body and the identity of the mind within a physical body), and the possibilities of multiple existence within physical and virtual spaces.

Read in this way, and in the spirit of the sensibilities of the ruling group within the normative framework of which these initiatives have been crafted, signified and provided pathways for communal interpretation, one might come to wonder whether, indeed, it replicates the hierarchies of sex and gender, and the semiotics of the signification (and constraints) of both within the cognitive cages of a society in which neither sex nor gender easily conforms to the forms and pathways that make reports like this entirely meaningful within its own cognitive normative premises.

More information about the report with links to acquiring a copy is provided below.

A Common Language Containing Differentiating Meanings Within Evolving International Standards for Sustainability Disclosure in Financial Statements: IFRS Foundation 2025 Annual Report—Fit for the Future

 

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The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation has released its IFRS Foundation 2025 Annual Report—Fit for the Future (31 March 2026).The IFRS Foundation described itself and the report as follows:

The IFRS Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organisation created in 2001 to develop—in the public interest—high-quality, understandable, enforceable and globally accepted standards for financial reporting, and to promote and facilitate their adoption. Our objectives are set out in the IFRS Foundation Constitution.
The Standards—IFRS® Accounting Standards and IFRS® Sustainability Disclosure Standards—are collectively referred to as IFRS® Standards. They are set by the Foundation’s two independent standard-setting boards, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), using a rigorous, inclusive and transparent due process. (Report, p. 3).

A focus of the 2025 Report was on ISSB efforts to support jurisdictions that adopt and/or using its stabdards and on the further elaboration of those standards as a function of the IFRS Foundation mission. 

In 2025 the Foundation continued to support the development, maintenance and adoption of high-quality global standards. The IASB advanced key accounting projects, notably issuing revised versions of the IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard and Practice Statement 1 Management Commentary and new guidance on disclosing uncertainties in the financial statements and hyperinflationary translation. It also consulted on a new risk mitigation accounting model. The ISSB supported jurisdictions adopting and using IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, clarified aspects of IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures, continued enhancing the SASB Standards and progressed its research projects on Human Capital and Nature-related Disclosures. (Web Report Press Release)

That mission was summarized in the 2025 Report:

 Our mission is to develop IFRS Standards that bring transparency, accountability and efficiency to capital markets around the world. Our work serves the public interest by fostering trust, growth and long-term financial stability in the global economy.
Both the IASB and the ISSB focus on the needs of investors by requiring companies to disclose financially material information— that is, information that, if omitted, is stated or obscured, could reasonably be expected to influence investment decisions. This concept aims to ensure that financial reports are decision-useful and free from unnecessary detail. (Report, p. 4).

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Of course many of these terms are value laden; for example "fostering trust, growth and long-term financial stability." One might foster trust through social credit systems as well as by disclosure systems. Growth is itself subject to contextually important cultural and structural values and realities. While under a global convergence cognitive fundamental framework one might be able to speak to uniformity of factors indicating growth, and a singular normative template against which it would be assessed, that may no longer be the case. The signification of trust as well as of growth may no longer be entirely amenable to convergence. Not that the concepts will fracture entirely in incompatible forms, but the extent of variation and approaches, and the fundamental differences in the normative ordering from which their value (their signification) arises, may substantially affect both the application of values (for assessment) across variation, and the possibility of a uniformity of interpretation substantial enough to permit comparison (across systems) at a minimum. What is left, then, are the terms--objects the values of which may not align, and interpretations of which may no longer permit simple comparative analytics--much less assessment of interpenetrations, transactions, and choices among, within, and between these differentiable significated "families."

But then so are the objectives: to bring "transparency, accountability and efficiency to capital markets around the world." At the beginning of the century one could understand it almost solely on the basis of the fundamental presumption of the orthodox cognitive view of the time--the need for a global language and discipline of disclosure in the operation of business, that is, the adoption of a single language around which one could understand the operations of an enterprise in financial terms and as a function of the relationship between operational performance and risk.  That single language was then meant to embed a single set of normative meanings that then served to signify the language used, and thus signified to be able to produce a single point of globally collective consensus around the interpretation (normative) of the values embedded in (signified by) the key terms around which that language would now develop--transparency, accountability, and efficiency.

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By the start of the second quarter of the 21st century, however, the common language, like written Chinese, covered a wide variation in how it would be "spoken" and the signification with which common use terms would be infused. take transparency, for example. Within the cognitive cages of early 21st century convergence globalization transparency could be read broadly to require disclosure of virtually everything but trade secrets and protected know how--and even that might require some disclosure as a function, for example of its connection with adverse human rights or sustainability impacts (as these terms were to be developed by international institutions through hard and soft measures, norms, declarations, finds, etc.)--subject to increasingly narrowed exceptions for national security, development and the like. A quarter century later, transparency remains a presumption but now much more tightly constrained and perhaps sieved through superior obligations (many generated through domestic legal orders of States) respecting, national security, sanctions, data protection and data sovereignty, anti-espionage statutes, and blocking legislation to counter extraterritorial projections of regulatory systems. Transparency remains the same; its signification is now fractured and defined as a function of higher ranking signified principles, rules, and expectations. The same applies, with substantially more bite, to the construction and deployment of the concept of "risk." 

One can then, and with enthusiasm, embrace a common language, while at the same time investing that language with regional or other contextual meaning, and constrain it through higher order local values, especially those encased in domestic (or regional) rules and legislation. The imaginaries of unity are preserved, and, indeed, a platform within which such values and contestations of values, may be produced and consumed,  without enforcing a centralizing fundamental political or normative line. Yet that also is a step forward. A single language encasing difference may not have been the goal at the start of the 21st century, but language binds all the same--it binds enough that difference may be constrained by the outer boundaries of rational learning inside a cognitive cage that through its language objects effectively defines both that rationality and its limits. And it is that common language that provides all that is necessary to achieve the fundamentally critical element of this project: comparability and communication across and despite of difference. The rest might come later; or it might not. That convergence is no longer necessary where a common language has been substituted for common norms, beliefs, practices, and expectations. 

It is with that in mind that one might assess the Report's summary of annual accomplishments:

IFRS Foundation: "Successfully initiated an organisational restructure to improve effectiveness and deliver efficiencies as part of an ongoing transformation programme focused on increasing income, reducing costs and strengthening leadership capacity in central functions."

IASB: "• Made substantial progress on the work plan and delivered decision-useful financialreporting outcomes for stakeholders, including a major update to the IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard, which is used in 85 jurisdictions, completion of the revised
IFRS Practice Statement 1 Management Commentary and amendments to IFRS 19 Subsidiaries without Public Accountability: Disclosures. • Reached a significant milestone with the proposed risk mitigation accounting model, which seeks to address a gap in how interest rate risk—one of the most important risks that financial institutions manage—is reflected in financial statements. • Responded to reporting challenges through engagement and targeted guidance, publishing illustrative examples on how to disclose uncertainties in the financial statements and issuing amendments to clarify how companies should translate financial statements from a non-hyperinflationary currency into a hyperinflationary one."  

ISSB: "• Assisted 40 jurisdictions in adopting or otherwise using IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards by providing targeted tools and guidance for regulators—including the Jurisdictional Roadmap Development Tool and Jurisdictional Rationale materials—and publishing profiles and snapshots to give stakeholders a clear view of jurisdictional adoption progress. • Supported consistent application of IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards by delivering educational materials, issuing clarifications to IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures and engaging with stakeholders, and supported interoperability and efficient disclosures by working with other standard-setters. • Published an exposure draft on a comprehensive review to enhance SASB Standards, advanced research on human capital disclosures and moved
from research to standard-setting in the project on nature-related risks and opportunities, with a plan to consult on proposed requirements in 2026." (Report, p. 6).

The Summary of the Report follows below along with the Trustee Chair's Statement.

 

“ESG in the Boardroom and Shareholder Proposals” April 28 | 2:00 to 5:30 pm | Wilmington

 

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 Delighted to pass along this announcement of a panel discussion,  “ESG in the Boardroom and Shareholder Proposals” April 28 | 2:00 to 5:30 pm | Wilmington.

Now in its fifth year, our ESG in the Boardroom program returns, hosted by Richards, Layton & Finger. As proxy season winds down, this will offer among the first and best informed gatherings to tally results and consider what the year’s debates mean for boards.
John White (Cravath) (Co-Moderator); Larry Cunningham (Weinberg; PubCo Director) (Co-Moderator); Peggy Foran (PubCo Director); Andrew Jones (The Conference Board); Tom Riesenberg (Ceres); Jane Sadowsky (PubCo Director); Christina Thomas (SEC); Paul Washington (Society for Corp. Gov.); John Mark Zeberkiewicz (Richards); Jennifer Zepralka (Mayer Brown); and Leo Strine (Wachtell, U. Penn.)

Register for the program here

 

Los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas y la evolución del gobierno corporativo/The UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights and the Evolution of Corporate Governance

 

 La gobernanza global está evolucionando y, en buena medida, ello responde a cambios regulatorios en materia de responsabilidad social empresarial. En un contexto en el que estos desarrollos tienen un carácter crecientemente transnacional, nos complace anunciar el primer evento con invitado internacional del del Semillero de Derecho Societario de la Universidad Icesi.

El profesor Larry Catá Backer, de Penn State Dickinson Law, ofrecerá la conferencia “Empresas y derechos humanos en la práctica: los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas y la evolución del gobierno corporativo”.

La conferencia abordará el papel que los Principios Rectores sobre Empresas y Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas han tenido en la transformación de las discusiones contemporáneas sobre gobierno corporativo, responsabilidad y propósito empresarial.

Este espacio busca reunir a estudiantes, académicos y profesionales interesados en reflexionar sobre los desafíos actuales que enfrentan las empresas en la integración de estándares de derechos humanos en su actividad económica.

📅 Jueves, 19 de marzo de 2026
🕔 5:00 p.m.
📍 Auditorio Delima, Universidad Icesi

El evento será principalmente por invitación, con un número limitado de inscripciones abiertas en el siguiente enlace: https://lnkd.in/ekYGrCu4

¡Los esperamos!

 Global governance is evolving and, to a large extent, this is due to regulatory changes in corporate social responsibility. In a context in which these developments are increasingly transnational in nature, we are pleased to announce the first international guest event of the Corporate Law Incubator of the Icesi University.

Professor Larry Catá Backer, from Penn State Dickinson Law, will give the lecture "Business and Human Rights in Practice: The United Nations Guiding Principles and the Evolution of Corporate Governance".

The conference will address the role that the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights have played in transforming contemporary discussions on corporate governance, responsibility and business purpose.

This space seeks to bring together students, academics, and professionals interested in reflecting on the current challenges faced by companies in integrating human rights standards into their economic activity.

📅 Thursday, March 19, 2026
🕔 5:00 p.m.
📍 Delima Auditorium, Icesi University

The event will be primarily by invitation, with a limited number of registrations open at the following link: https://lnkd.in/ekYGrCu4

We hope you can join us!

OMFIF: Gender Balance Index 2026

 

 

Happy to pass this along.

Gender Balance Index 2026

Live broadcast | Virtual | Wednesday 22 April 2026 | 14:00 – 15:30

OMFIF’s Gender Balance Index 2026 analyses the state of gender parity in senior leadership roles across the financial sector. This edition examines how far we are from achieving gender balance, drawing data from more than 300 institutions and 6,000 individuals. Be the first to explore these insights at the virtual launch event.

Reserve your spot now

Last year, for the first time, three organisations – Banco Central de Chile, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Norges Bank Investment Management – achieved perfect scores of 100, though they represent just 1% of the total sector. Will this year do better? Join us for the Gender Balance Index 2026 launch event to explore the findings and discuss the path forward.

Secure your place

 

Part 16 (Part IV, Chapter 15: UNGP--The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights: Remediation (UNGP Principle ¶ 22))--Vetting the Discussion Draft: "The United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights: A Commentary

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I have been working on the production of a comprehensive commentary of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights.  This is a humbling task. It follows the production of both an official commentary, written in tandem with the UNGP itself, and a collective commentary of the UNGP undertaken by some of the most distinguished students of other fields of human rights, business, and its related fields of academic  study ( The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: A Commentary (Barnali Choudhury (ed); Edward Elgar, 2023).  

I am at a point where I can start vetting portions of the draft. I hope to share those discussion drafts with a wider audience in hopes of getting feedback. In these posts I provide a short summary of the draft chapter and a link t access a 'pdf' version.  All draft chapters may be found on my Coalition for Peace & Ethics Website website at UNGP Commentary Page HERE.

Part I (On the Making of the UNGP), organized in five chapters, introduced the reader to the background, context, and sources that contributed to the drafting and eventual endorsement of the UNGP. Parts II through V then consider in detail the text and interpretation of the substantive provisions of the UNGP. Part II considered the UNGP's General Principles; Part III examines the State duty to protect human rights (UNGP Principles 1-10); Part IV then addresses commentary to the corporate responsibility to respect human rights (UNGP Principles 11-24); and Part V considers the remedial principles (UNGP Principles 25-31). 

 

The UNGP divides the principles for each of these Pillars into "foundational" and "operational" principles.  The former reflects the conceptual framework for each of the Pillars developed through the focus on the principled part of principled pragmatism exploration of the SRSG's initial mandate and culminating in the SRSG's 2008 Reports; the latter reflects the second mandate's direction to operationalize the conceptual framework, which focused on the pragmatism part of principled pragmatism that drove the SRSG's work throughout the mandates. The operational principles are then subdivided into a number of different categories of focus. 

 

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This post considers considers UNGP Principle 22 (remediation), one of the shortest, though at the same time, one of the most interesting principles in the 2nd Pillar corporate responsibility to respect human rights: remediation. On one level it sits at the end of part of the human rights due diligence (HRDD) decision tree--that adverse human rights impacts that have been realized and that caused harm, must be remediated--that is that a process (remediation) must be initiated through which it will be possible to provide an outcome or solution (remedy). On another level UNGP Principle 22 speaks to the relationships of causation and contribution to an expectation of responsibility that riggers process (remediation) producing solution (remedy).  Yet it also impacts the process of HRDD by serving itself (the process of remediation and the remedial outcome) as data necessary for the continuous testing of the effectiveness of HRDD processes. That data, in turn may also be essential in improving the HRDD process of identification and assessment of risk of actual or potential adverse impact, the central function of HRDD and the critical element for centering its core objective--to prevent and mitigate impact (rather than to remedy realized adverse impact). And it invokes process legitimacy as a touchstone of effective remedy, the character and protection of which touches on both the 3rd Pillar (access to remedy and the 1st Pillar (State duty--at least with respect to legal architecture for at least some remediation mechanisms). 

The Chapter's conclusion provides a summary:

UNGP Principle 22 invests its very few words (it consists of 25 words in English) with a substantial amount of meaning, and some ambiguity across its translations. It is deeply encased in the 2nd Pillar corporate responsibility to respect human rights. At the same time it looks back toward the 1st Pillar State duty for aspects of remedy and for a good bit of its remedial mechanisms, At the same time, UNGP Principle 22 looks forward (numerically at least) to the much more detailed elaboration of remedy, and remediation, in the UNGP’s access to remedy 3rd Pillar. UNGP Principle 22 focuses directly on remediation (the centerpiece of UNGP Principles 25-31 (access to remedy)) but cannot avoid remedy—the scope of actions that may be taken pursuant to the process of remediation to cure the injury that triggered the process of remediation. As such UNGP 22’s focus on process (remediation as the process of action necessary for fashioning a remedy and then having the remedy be enforced) makes unavoidable its consideration of outcomes or solutions (the remedy that is tied both to the character and effect of adverse impact, and its relevance to the larger project of informing the enterprise of those efforts necessary to reduce the likelihood of producing further adverse impact). It follows that UNGP Principle 22’s serves as the pivot point for HRDD systems (though the data extraction that is necessary for tracking the way that adverse impacts are addressed (UNGP Principle 21) and for using that data to improve system performance and the effectiveness of consultation based interactions with stakeholders (UNGP Principles 21/22). It also serves as the pivot point for the fulfillment both of the corporate responsibility foundational objective (UNGP Principle 11) and that of the State Duty (UNGP Principles 1 and 2). Lastly its serves as the pivot point between regimes of public remedy—based on the connection between a legal basis for the establishment of a right and the allocation of liability for its breach and the essence of the operationalization of the State duty—and regimes of private law and societal/market expectation, grounded in normative principles and private law between parties that are themselves expressions of allocation of duty and liability but as the “law” of non-State actors. UNGP Principle 22 accomplishes this implicitly; UNGP Principle 25 Commentary makes the connection explicit. 

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In this sense, but like remedy as a general proposition, UNGP Principle 22 sits comfortably within the 2nd Pillar and its centerpiece HRDD processes operationalizing the normative structures of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights as an autonomous expectation different from and autonomous of the State duty. At the same time, it is deeply intertwined with remedial measures arising through the legal architectures , the “smart mix of measures” States are expected to employ to meet their duty to protect, and also the elaboration of process and substantive elements that are expected to be built into the normative foundations and operational practices of remedial mechanisms. And it is deeply intertwined with the institutionalization of both the State duty (through law, policy and an institutional architecture to realize their objectives and specific direction, interdictions, and the like) and the corporate responsibility (through the constitution of HRDD systems and, at least for some, its projection into and through a general class of non-State grievance mechanisms.

To work with UNGP Principle 22, then, is to be in the middle of things. At the same time, UNGP Principle 22 also is significantly important for defining both the jurisprudential limits of the remediation expectation and the minimum nature of the enterprise’s cooperation expectation in remediaiton. It reinforces the limitations of the responsibility top respect—grounded in the establishment of a minimum connection between adverse impact and responsible enterprise. The “cause or contribute to” standard describes the core scope of responsibility. Beyond that there may be leverage and the encouragement to be more broadly responsible, but no more. The directly applicable expectation objective is remediation—the character of that expectation is “cooperation.” But as one comes to understand through a more focused study of the term, cooperation may merely reference the expectation that the enterprise must work with others to enable an outcome but not necessarily to fulfill a common goal, or more broadly it may refer to collaboration (perhaps the better term in light of the UNGP Principle 20 Commentary) in the sense of working together to achieve a common aim. Lastly, UNGP Principle 20 gives the enterprise the choice of cooperating but also of providing remediation. The provision of remediation becomes the subject of the 3rd Pillar, as does the elaboration of the nature and meaning of the factors necessary to build and evaluate the legitimacy of the process, especially with regard to UNGP Principle 31.

 

 

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 The Chapter 15 discussion draft may be accessed directly HERE (where revisions earlier chapters may also be accessed). The text of the draft of Chapter 15 as of the time of this posting also follows below along with its table of contents.