Companies must strike a balance between human rights and need for profits

Customers are always the core of McDonald's Hong Kong" . Until a few days ago, these were the words that greeted visitors to the McDonald's Hong Kong website. But this slogan has disappeared.

In recent days, several business tycoons have denounced Occupy Central as something bad for Hong Kong. Moreover, several chambers of commerce and other business associations have run anti-Occupy Central advertisements in newspapers. Again, the key message was framed in terms of the movement adversely affecting Hong Kong - from the city's overall economy and stability to people's livelihoods.

Do companies really care so much for consumers and their other stakeholders in society? They do care, but only when doing so is necessary for their bottom line, the so-called "business case" for human rights.

If these corporate actions are profit-driven, companies are merely using people and their human rights as a means to achieve the end of profit maximisation.

The corporate pursuit of profit often triggers unethical and sometimes illegal business practices. The list is a long one: from knowingly supplying chemicals and weapons for genocide to insisting on pregnancy tests before hiring women, discharging effluents from factories into rivers, exploiting poor children, bribing government officials to secure deals, evading tax, exposing workers to hazardous conditions, indulging in anti-competitive practices, and using complex corporate structures to evade legal liability.

Developing effective regulatory initiatives to deal with such corporate misbehaviour has not so far proved to be easy at either domestic or international levels, though some progress has been made in the last few years at the international level.