The harmful strategies applied by companies highlighted on this website have been identified through a collaborative process that combined experiences and research of human rights and environmental organisations with existing literature and emerging evidence.
A framework on harmful corporate strategies
Through a collaborative research process, including literature studies, surveys, and consultations, a harmful corporate strategy has come to be defined as: a series of actions taken by a company that results in avoidance of responsibility for human rights or environmental impacts.
The research resulted in a framework that identifies five main strategies under which 25 forms of these strategies are grouped. Although the identified strategies are not inherently illegal, the Mind the Gap project sheds light on the harmful effects of avoidance strategies used by companies, challenges their wide acceptance and calls on businesses, governments and the international community to close the underlying governance gaps in order to arrive at a situation whereby businesses are incentivised to respect human rights and the environment.
Evidence base
This website demonstrates the wide prevalence of harmful corporate strategies in practice in the form of case studies. The case studies featured all meet a set of criteria that, taken together, provide evidence that the identified framework of strategies is credible.
Right to reply
To ensure high-quality research, the companies cited in the case studies were invited to review a draft of the part of the website related to them and were given the opportunity to provide comments and make corrections.
Examples researched by others
Alongside the case studies, this website contains examples researched by others. These examples are presented with reference to the original public available sources.
