기업의 인권경영과 지배구조 개선방안에 관한 연구 - 세계의 인권경영 법제를 비교하여

Abstract

Recently, discussions have been actively underway that corporate social responsibility issues should be included in the company law, ranging from social issues such as gender equality, and workers' human rights. These discussions are issues of ESG management, that is, environment, social, and governance. Public issues of the environment, society, and governance are also included in the corporate law, emphasizing corporate public interest responsibility. This does not mean simple corporate ethical social responsibility, but legal responsibility. This paper discussed human rights management among social factor in ESG management. Global conglomerates have enormous capital and use cheap workers in developing countries to produce price-competitive products. In this process, human rights violations such as poor working conditions, excessive working hours, and low wages are occurring. Most of big companies do not take any liability because human rights violations do occur through small suppliers in developing countries. However, in order to protect the human rights of these workers, laws have recently been enacted in EU countries to enforce corporate human rights management. Supply chain due diligence law is a case in that point. Supply chain due diligence law refers to imposing due diligence obligations on the big companies to see if human rights violations occur from the company's production process to the arrival of products. This began with interest in human rights management by international organizations such as the UN and OECD. Korea has no specific laws on this yet. For human rights management, first, Korea also needs to prepare for the supply chain human rights due diligence law implemented in EU at the government level. At the corporate level, second, it is necessary to establish internal control standards and compliance monitoring bodies for human rights management at the board of directors, which makes important decisions for companies. Third, Korea has an outside director system for corporate transparency. It is necessary to establish a Human Rights Management Committee by appointing outside directors with expertise from outside. Fourth, in Korea, the quota system for female executives was recently implemented through the revision of the Capital Markets Act. However, most of them fill outside directors, not managing directors, with women, and the ratio is still insignificant compared to the case in EU. Therefore, it is necessary to gradually increase the ratio of female outside directors. However, if companies are forced to make female outside directors, there may be a problem of reverse discrimination and excessive burden on companies, as seen in the case of the United States, so the UK's "comply or expand" system will gradually solve the problem of diversity of company directors. The purpose of the company and the good corporate governance structure of the company law is the survival of the company after all. In order to survive, it must meet the company's public interest purpose, which is a social demand, and be sustainable in the long run. The company law should control the company's decision makers, such as the board of directors, to make reasonable and legal decisions so that the company can grow sustainably for ESG management such as profit generation, human rights, and the environment.