Prazo alargado até 15 de novembro: Call for Researchers “Do we need a paradigm change to regulate Business & Human Rights at the International Level: Are the Consumers expecting good Corporate conduct and legal assurance from international organisations?”

Call for Researchers “Do we need a paradigm change to regulate Business & Human Rights at the International Level: Are the Consumers expecting good Corporate conduct and legal assurance from international organisations?”

Introduction

 

Due to the ease came with globalisation, businesses started to expand their operations abroad, especially to third-world countries where they can find cheap labour and resources. Even though this expansion came with economic advantages especially for the host countries, more and more news started to appear about the bad working conditions or negative environmental effects.

As from the international point of view, the Guidelines on Business and Human Rights have been issued by the UN Human Rights Council. These guidelines rely on the fact that consumers are expecting the businesses to respect human rights. However, the research in the area of consumer behaviour is still very small and further data is needed to understand how the consumer behaviour is changing when informed that a business is causing human rights abuses.

For instance, what happens when the consumers hear about a company using child labour in order to produce their clothes? Do the consumers change their behaviour and stop buying from the brand? If not, do they feel guilty of buying from the brand? Would they support international organisations regulating this type of corporate behaviour?

This research will try to understand consumer behaviour and propose solutions for international law-makers.

 

Research Goals

 

–     To collect data from the general population to measure how they are being impacted by the human rights violations that are being conducted by companies, specifically human rights violations conducted over-seas,

–     To collect data on how the consumer behaviour is changing upon being informed by human rights violations conducted by the companies,

–     To collect data on how consumers perceive international organisations on dealing with business and human rights issues.

Project Team

 

The Project will be conducted under the institutional title of CEDIS, the Research Centre on Law and Society located under the organisation of Law Faculty of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal).

The research team will have two divisions located in Portugal and Turkey. It is planned to have two students working for each division divided by the country, that would help with the drafting and the distribution of the survey. The Portuguese team will be led by Ayse Elif Yildirim and the Turkish team will be led by Burcu Filiz.

The work distribution among the team members will be done once the team is formed. The working language of the team will be in English, however the surveys will be conducted in native languages of the countries.

At the closing of the project, the team members will be provided with detailed certificates of participation, indicating the tasks undertaken during the research period.

 

 

Tasks of the Researchers

 

–    To contribute to the creation of the consumer survey by researching on how to build a consumer survey, attending to regular team meetings and expressing ideas.

–    To help with the translation of the survey to their native language.

–    To spread the online survey through their own channels.

–    To contribute to the analysis of the data and help to form legal inferences by attending to the team discussions.

 

 

 

Requirements

 

The candidate must be;

 

–     Native in Portuguese (required from the applicants applying from Portugal)

–     Native in Turkish (required from the applicants applying from Turkey)

–     Fluent in English,

–     Studying in or graduated from law, business or data management schools;

–     Have strong skills and active usage of social media;

–     Have ability to read and summarize data reports.

 

 

Time Frame of the Project

 

Project B&HR
Deadline to Receive Applications 15th November 2017
Announcement of the Results 31st November 2017
First Draft of the Survey 31st December 2017
Finalization of the Pilot Round 1st February 2018
Final Draft of the Survey 28th February 2018
Public Distribution of the Survey 1st March 2018-31st May 2018
Analysis of the Results 31st May 2018-31st August 2018
Finalization of the Working Paper and Publishing of the Results 31st December 2018

 

 

 

 

 

To apply

 

In order to apply to become a part of the team please send a one-page motivation letter (written in English) alongside with your CV (created in Europass, https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/  ) to the following email:

Email: aey@cedis.novalaw.unl.pt

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