In 2003 Newmont has signed an investment agreement with the government of Ghana that resulted in the inauguration in 2006 of the large, gold-producing project at Ahafo. The challenge for Newmont has been to resolve the initial conflict resulting from a land dispossession that brought communities close to famine and address the lingering tensions by working towards sustainable solutions. This artic

An important part of responsible business practices is compliance with the law. This article details what actually happens when the laws of the host country fail to ensure adequate protection. The focus here is on land dispossession and loss of livelihood in relation to a gold mine project in central Ghana. How is it that a well-known international company—Newmont—with its own corporate social res

The Human Rights Council received well the ‘protect, respect, remedy’ framework that the SRSG for business and human rights, John Ruggie, presented in 2008 and his mandate was renewed for another 3 years. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights is defined narrowly for abuses linked to business activities only. In the same time, the SRSG remarks that conduct in the form of both acts an

Low-energy-electron-diffraction (LEED), scanning-tunneling-microscopy (STM), and photoelectron-spectroscopy measurements have been performed on the ordered submonolayer surface reconstructions of Yb on Si(111). Two of these reconstructions, namely, 3×1 and 2×1, have been studied in detail. STM and LEED revealed that what was considered to be the 3×1 reconstruction is actually a 3×2 reconstruction.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been customarily seen as an inherently voluntary corporate endeavour that inhabits the area stretching ‘beyond compliance’ with law. However a growing number of writers and practitioners deem this understanding of CSR inaccurate and unproductive. In this article CSR as ‘beyond compliance’ is questioned from logical, descriptive and normative points of view

Atomic C, N, and O chemisorbed on Ni(100) have been studied by x-ray-absorption spectroscopy. The atomic 2p orbitals are shown to form hybrid orbitals with the Ni 3d and 4sp bands. The spectral contributions from these hybrids are identified at the absorption threshold and in a region 6-12 eV above this. Between those regions, states derived from atomic 3p and higher np orbitals are observed. The

The formation of Sm silicides on Si(111) by means of solid phase epitaxy has been studied with low energy electron diffraction, Auger electron spectroscopy and photoelectron spectroscopy of the Sm 4f level and Si 2p level. A limited reaction is found to occur already at room temperature whereas at higher temperatures a strongly intermixed Sm/Si layer showing some long range order is formed. The Sm

One challenge in the area of supply chain management has been achieving sustainable compliance with labour rights throughout the entire production chain, including lower tiers of production. This article inquires specifically around sub-contracting, especially what is a brand’s or a buyer’s responsibility regarding workers’ rights beyond its first tier of suppliers. In-depth literature on this iss

In this paper, we present a photoemission study of the interaction of Cu, Ag and Au with clean single-crystal Bi2CaSr2Cu2O8 superconductor surfaces. Both the valence-band and the Bi 5d, O 1s and Sr 3d core levels were monitored for all overlayers. Cu, Ag and Au were deposited as consecutively thicker layers starting with a third of a monolayer and progressing in steps up to a deposition in the ran

The ordered c(2×2) Na on Al(100) and (3 × 3) R30°K on Al(111) structures formed at either 100 K or at room temperature are studied by high-resolution core-level spectroscopy. For both systems equal alkali coverages are found at these two temperatures. The core-level spectra, however, show strong changes with temperature. This behavior leads to the surprising conclusion that annealing at room tempe

The surface core-level shift of the Pd(100) single-crystal surface has been measured from high-resolution Pd 3d core-level spectra. The surface atoms are found to have 0.44+or-0.03 eV lower binding energy than the bulk atoms. The result is compared with theoretical estimates.

The presentation of the United Nation’s (UN) Global Compact (hereinafter “GC” or “Compact”) in a book dedicated to monitoring mechanisms requires an urgent clarification: the GC itself is not a monitoring mechanism meant to deliver corporate accountability. Still, the Compact is an important hub in a broader network of initiatives dealing with responsible business practices and corporate accountab

For the CSR movement the challenge is broadly speaking to make responsible business practices both effective and sustainable in the long run, communicate them credibly to third parties, and institutionalise them more widely in the business community. In this article, I address three main themes where I think more clarity would enable CSR to evolve to a new level and achieve its promising potential