ABSTRACT
Some ten years ago UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called upon global business leaders to join the fight against human rights violations, inhumane working conditions, the rising threat of pollution and the spreading problem of corruption. He proposed the Global Compact Initiative as a means to foster sustainable and socially responsible business practices. Since then the world has witnessed scandals like Enron, WorldCom, Siemens and many other high-profile cases of leadership failure and managerial misconduct. These developments reached a climax in the financial sub-prime crises starting in 2007 and the ‘Euro-crisis’ of 2010, events which have by now permeated public discourse and put regulators, as well as private actors, on the spot to find answers to the new challenges of global business.
