UConn Today – When it comes to climate change, one segment of society wants to do good and do well: investors. Be environmentally kind, yes; but build wealth, too. In short, hurting the planet is not only bad for humanity, it can be bad for business. All of which brings pressure to bear on companies that are polluters. How will this shake out? We ask Stephen Park, an associate professor of business law and the Satell Fellow in Corporate Social Responsibility at the School of Business.Continue Reading
Stephen Park
Waterbury Hosts Business and Human Rights Lecture Series
Former Timex executive Bob Werner will be the keynote speaker during the second of a three-part lecture series on business and human rights, hosted at the UConn Waterbury campus. Continue Reading
Investors Won’t Tolerate Corporate Misdeeds, Inhumanity
Investment titan Amy Domini, widely considered a leading pioneer in socially responsible investing, came to UConn and shared what can only be described as good news.Continue Reading
Industry Panelists Talk Sustainability with Students
A diverse panel of business experts from around the world addressed graduate students during a discussion titled, “A Global Environmental Response: CSR in Practice,” on April 19 at the Graduate Business Learning Center in Hartford. Continue Reading
Professor Stephen Park Named Satell CSR Fellow
Solutions to Climate Change, Poverty, Other Social Challenges Require Collective Effort, New Approaches
Business Law Professor Stephen Park has been named to the newly created position of Satell Fellow in Corporate Social Responsibility.
“The School of Business is deeply invested in the development of corporate social responsibility guidelines and shares the belief that this work is of utmost importance,” said Dean John A. Elliott. Continue Reading
Protecting the Vulnerable
UConn Human Rights Conference Gathers Experts to Address Ways to Watch Over Garment Workers
The new shirt that you are wearing is impeccably tailored and bears a prominent designer label, so it must be responsibly sourced.
Right? Continue Reading
Business Law’s Stephen Park Honored with ‘Distinguished Early Career Faculty’ Award
Business Law Assistant Professor Stephen Park was awarded the Distinguished Early Career Faculty Award by the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) at the 2017 annual conference in Savannah, Georgia in August. Continue Reading
Puerto Rico’s Debt Dilemma and Pathways Toward Sovereign Solvency
American Business Law Journal, Vol. 54, No. 1, 2017
Puerto Rico, as a quasi-sovereign U.S. territory, is confronting a debt crisis of unparalleled legal complexity. This article analyzes the collective action problems in sovereign debt finance in the context of Puerto Rico’s quasi-sovereign debt dilemma. We examine how sovereign debtors engage with their private creditors in the absence of a formal bankruptcy regime and show how various legal incentives, imperatives, and constraints shape the degree and form of creditor engagement. Drawing on this conceptual framework, this article analyzes the role of these factors in the market-based debt restructuring by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and hypothesizes how these factors may influence the statutory restructuring process underway under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA). Despite the idiosyncratic aspects of Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, the potential pathways for debtor-creditor cooperation in Puerto Rico provide valuable insights on the various ways that law influences debtor-creditor cooperation in sovereign debt finance beyond the enforcement of state-based public regulation and contract-based private legal commitments. Full article.
Turning Corporate Compliance into Competitive Advantage
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, Vol. 19, No.2 (2017)
Compliance is a core concern for corporate governance. Firms devote tremendous amounts of money, personnel, and attention to ensure compliance with regulatory mandates — and yet compliance failures proliferate. This is because the current static and binary view of compliance hinders both efficient compliance by firms and effective regulation by government. Understanding the reality that compliance is both dynamic and driven by efficiency empowers firms to evolve past mere conformance and into wealth maximizing innovation. This Article develops an efficient investment-risk (EIR) model of compliance that captures the tradeoffs between cost and risk, parses the oft-commingled concepts of technical efficiency and allocative efficiency, and enables firms to obtain a competitive advantage through compliance. We also turn our attention to regulators, and highlight how the EIR model can enhance regulatory design, foster regulator-firm cooperation, and advance the mutual goals of business and society. Full article.
Business and Human Rights
UConn Expertise Helps Strengthen United Nations’ Global Initiatives on Responsible Business Conduct
When a United Nations committee met last month in Geneva, Switzerland, to prepare new guidance on business and human rights, six UConn faculty offered suggestions to bolster the international treaty. Continue Reading