A. Consensus-Seeking Tendencies

One of the UNGPs’ most frequently emphasised achievements is their widespread endorsement, which has driven a ‘global consensus’ among the private sector, governments, civil society organisations and the UN regarding the role of companies in the human rights agenda.Footnote ¹⁵ Ruggie claims that ‘thick stakeholder consensus helped pave the way for unanimous Human Rights Council Endorsement’.Footnote ¹⁶ However, critics have argued that this broad consensus was essentially ‘without content’,Footnote ¹⁷ achieved by giving disproportionate weight to powerful business perspectives while marginalising the voices of victims. By making consensus an overriding objective, the UNGPs appear to have sidestepped controversial issues in order to avoid disagreements among stakeholders. For example, they remain deliberately vague on the issue of governments’ extraterritorial obligations.Footnote ¹⁸ Rather than signalling substantive agreement, the UNGPs’ alleged consensus reflects a process that sidelines more confrontational perspectives. This is particularly evident at the UN Forum for Business and Human Rights, which was established to ‘discuss trends and challenges in the implementation of the Guiding Principles and promote dialogue and cooperation on issues linked to business and human rights’.Footnote ¹⁹ While the Forum is open to participation from a broad range of actors, its structure reflects the broader consensus-seeking orientation of the UNGPs. Some scholars have pointed out that rightsholders and critical scholars are routinely underrepresented on panels, and private sector voices are frequently foregrounded.Footnote ²⁰ Dissent is not overtly suppressed, but rendered less visible through structural and discursive exclusions, allowing unresolved tensions to be reframed as agreement.Footnote ²¹

The ‘consensus attitude’ between corporations and the UN reflects a shift that occurred at the start of the where the dominant discourse moved away from viewing corporations as adversaries in the human rights sphere to positioning them as necessary partners in governance.Footnote ²² An earlier example of this shift can be seen in the UN Global Compact, which reframed corporate responsibility as an extension of global governance through voluntary business commitments.Footnote ²³ This partnership approach, characterised by voluntary cooperation rather than regulatory enforcement, has been primarily supported by states and organisations in the Global North. Proponents of this partnership model claim it reflects a global consensus.Footnote ²⁴ However, dissenting voices, particularly from the Global South, have critiqued it as a means of consolidating influence over human rights governance.Footnote ²⁵

It is important here to reflect on and problematise the widespread endorsement or achievement of ‘consensus’ of the UNGPs. Is the number of endorsers and partnerships evidence of their success? Is consensus what we should be aiming for? What does consensus really mean? From an agonistic perspective, which is characterised by a, ‘deep skepticism of underscrutinized notions of public interest and the common good; a preference for the constructive role of contentious engagement over consensus-focused discourse; and a favorable view of discord as a reflection of the tumult of political life rather than as a problem to be overcome’, consensus indicates the existence of hegemonic power, the silencing of those with less power and a concealment of underlying conflict.Footnote ²⁶ In other words, analysing the UNGPs with an agonistic lens reveals their hegemonic nature and exposes the power asymmetries that consensus tends to obscure. Under agonism, the goal is mutual understanding, while acknowledging power imbalances and different perspectives, realities and desires, and thereby recognising the inevitability of dissent.Footnote ²⁷ While consensus can stifle innovation, growth and alternate perspectives, dissent may not signify a lack of progress. In fact, Nilsson and Fougére (2024) argue that ‘dissensus is a force for good’ in BHR and that ‘society benefits when conflict is explicitly acknowledged and accommodated’.Footnote ²⁸

At another level, the stakeholder engagement approaches outlined in the UNGPs often encourage consensus-seeking.Footnote ²⁹ While the UNGPs rightly emphasise engagement with affected stakeholders as a key mechanism for due diligence and remedial processes, in practice, many engagement processes have been critiqued as ‘instrumentalized, coopting agreement and cajoling consensus, despite local dissent’.Footnote ³⁰ Such processes tend to marginalise more confrontational voices and reinforce existing power imbalances. Studies show that consensus-seeking engagements are often ‘structurally biased’ towards corporate and government actors, rendering the engagement encounter a rhetorical device.Footnote ³¹

B. Shifting Normative Foundations in BHR

From its inception, the field of BHR has been grounded in a normative commitment to the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all human beings.Footnote ³² This foundation framed business responsibilities as moral imperatives rooted in international human rights law rather than as corporate voluntarism.Footnote ³³ The adoption of the UNGPs in 2011 marked a turning point in the field. While Ruggie et al. (2021) claim that ‘The UNGPs are based on three normative pillars’, the UNGPs introduced a significant shift in normative emphasis, from aspirational, justice-based commitments to pragmatic, risk-based and procedural approaches shaped by political compromise and institutional feasibility.Footnote ³⁴

However, to critically examine the erosion of normativity under the UNGPs, it is important to reflect on the various forms that normativity can take and their implications for BHR. Examples of different types of normativity include aspirational, procedural and pragmatic normativity.Footnote ³⁵ Failing to recognise the differences between forms of normativity can obscure the impacts of governance frameworks that favour certain approaches, such as procedural, risk-based normativity, over others, like aspirational or transformative justice-based normativity. Rather than being devoid of normativity, one could argue that the UNGPs embody a form of procedural and managerial normativity rooted in institutional feasibility and risk management, treating human rights as risks to be managed, rather than as values to be upheld.Footnote ³⁶

While the UNGPs undeniably brought coherence, legitimacy and visibility to a field that was previously fragmented, with varying approaches to corporate responsibility and limited institutional access, this coherence came at a cost.Footnote ³⁷ By institutionalising a singular consensus-oriented approach, the UNGPs have narrowed the space for more critical, redistributive and justice-oriented visions of corporate accountability. In doing so, they contributed to a shift in the field’s normative orientation, which was once characterised by a plurality of commitments to human rights, equity and system change. What remains today is a more procedural, risk-oriented approach that risks marginalising the aspirational and justice-driven tendencies that once helped define the field’s potential.Footnote ³⁸

The pragmatic positioning of the UNGPs is what made them so accessible and appealing to private sector actors, but this pragmatism has also shaped implementation in ways that favour procedural over transformative approaches.Footnote ³⁹ In other words, the UNGPs’ flexibility and feasibility have tended to normalise a form of procedural normativity in which complying with processes becomes the goal, rather than advancing substantive human rights outcomes. For example, Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) exemplifies this procedural turn. Although developed as a mechanism for identifying and addressing harm, in practice, HRDD often amounts to superficial audits and disclosure reports that meet formal expectations without meaningfully transforming business operations or addressing root causes of harm.Footnote ⁴⁰ Landau refers to this as ‘cosmetic compliance,’ where firms convey ‘the appearance of taking action’ while failing to reduce their human rights impacts. ‘The UNGPs envision a “corporate responsibility to respect human rights” but not to advance human rights’.Footnote ⁴¹ This more limited and procedural approach to corporate accountability contrasts with earlier aspirations in the field to reimagine accountability through rights-based, distributive, justice-driven structures.Footnote ⁴²

We recognise that prior to the UNGPs, the field’s pluralism limited the perceived legitimacy of the field and constrained its influence on corporate and state behaviour.Footnote ⁴³ Yet, this same pluralism may have enabled space for more critical, experimental and transformative approaches to emerge and evolve. These approaches are increasingly constrained under the dominant procedural paradigm institutionalised by the UNGPs, where audits and disclosures now define due diligence itself, replacing the broader normative aspirations they were initially designed to advance. This pragmatic shift mirrors the ‘pragmatic turn’, where the UNGPs prioritised institutional feasibility over transformative normative commitments, leading to an approach that appears ‘principled’ but is ultimately shaped by political and corporate constraints, repackaging human rights into market-friendly frameworks.Footnote ⁴⁴ As Backer warns, the result is ‘a creature stillborn’: a framework that appears legitimate but lacks the normative force needed to drive systemic change.Footnote ⁴⁵

A. From Consensus Goals to Agonistic Pluralism Goals

If we shift consensus-seeking tendencies towards a more agonistic approach that acknowledges the inevitability of dissent and conflict, we can build structures and processes that enable us to work within those contexts without silencing voices to claim we have reached ‘consensus’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Developing these frameworks will not be a straightforward process. However, engaging different rightsholders as well as agonistic frameworks such as the critical dialogic accounting and accountability (CDAA) framework can support this development. Critical accounting scholars developed CDAA to challenge conventional accountability and accounting models that prioritise compliance and standardised metrics.Footnote ⁴⁸ CDAA is grounded in dialogic theory and the tradition of dialogic action, which serves as a tool for transforming reality through dialogic encounters that embrace dissent, confront structural power and foster emancipatory engagement.Footnote ⁴⁹ Instead of reinforcing existing power structures, CDAA promotes accountability as an ongoing participatory process that aims to amplify the voices of marginalised individuals by acknowledging power asymmetries and developing engagement structures accordingly.Footnote ⁵⁰ CDAA democratises accountability by foregrounding the contestable, bringing it into public discourse and constructing systems that enable underrepresented groups to shape the terms of engagement. Rather than building systems around what is easily measured or implemented, CDAA asks whose voices are excluded, whose interests are prioritised, and how accountability structures can be designed to enable rightsholder agency in the contexts of power asymmetries. It does not treat dissent as a barrier to progress but as a condition for meaningful accountability.Footnote ⁵¹

This shift towards more agonistic forms of accountability is not meant to suggest that the UNGPs are inherently incompatible with such forms of accountability. Rather, the UNGPs, by design, prioritise procedural feasibility and consensus at a high level, ‘dominated by top-down approaches’,Footnote ⁵² which tends to constrain what becomes possible or prioritised at more granular levels of implementation. When consensus is a top-level guiding orientation, it can hinder the development of more participatory and dissent-accommodating frameworks, such as CDAA, at the operational level. While the UNGPs promote stakeholder engagement and encourage due diligence processes, they do not provide the concrete structures, guidance, or enforcement mechanisms necessary to ensure that the outcome of these processes reflects the lived realities, power imbalances and priorities of affected rightsholders.Footnote ⁵³ Their emphasis on flexibility and business feasibility often results in procedures that are easily adopted by companies but do not disrupt existing power relations or enable space for more bottom-up, participatory accountability models. As a result, the framework remains largely procedural and business-centric, offering little in the way of structural support to foster truly participatory, power-sensitive approaches to corporate accountability.Footnote ⁵⁴

A relevant idea from the CDAA scholarship is the shift from accounting-based accountability to accountability-based accounting. In the former, systems of accountability are dictated by existing accounting standards, privileging quantitative metrics and corporate interests. On the other hand, accountability-based accounting develops systems that prioritise marginalised voices and contextual realities, acknowledging unavoidable power asymmetries and embedding human rights concerns and participatory approaches at their core.Footnote ⁵⁵ This shift is political because it challenges whose knowledge is valued and whose interests shape the rules.Footnote ⁵⁶ For example, in a CDAA-based intervention in Bangladesh, researchers worked with a microfinance NGO and women borrowers to redesign accountability practices. Through a series of participatory sessions, women collectively produced counter-narratives and employed storytelling to expose how existing microfinance systems overlooked their lived experiences and perpetuated patriarchal structures. They demanded more inclusive decision-making, such as requiring urban board members to visit rural communities and engage with their realities, and called for training programs aligned with their economic and social needs, rather than loan disbursement metrics. Their sessions did not aim for consensus, but legitimised disagreement and created dialogic spaces where women could redefine accountability on their own terms.Footnote ⁵⁷

Rightsholder-driven approaches grounded in CDAA principles should enable more authentic dialogue, localised accountability structures and a deeper conception of corporate responsibility that engages with pluralism and conflict.Footnote ⁵⁸ This approach does not aim to eliminate power asymmetries, as it acknowledges their entrenched and structural nature. Instead, it seeks to build systems and processes that enable inclusive operations and engagement in contexts of power imbalance. The next section will explore one such agonistic system and begin to extrapolate from its principles a broader normative and organisational shift for BHR.

B. Worker-Driven Social Responsibility

Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) is an alternative model of labour governance that shifts power dynamics within supply chains by centring on workers’ monitoring and enforcement of their own rights. Rather than relying on top-down audits and external standard-setting bodies, WSR relies on worker-driven audits as part of a larger remedial system to monitor and enforce rights grounded in education and enforcement.Footnote ⁵⁹ WSR is based on legally binding agreements between worker organisations and corporate buyers at the top of supply chains. These agreements establish enforceable labour standards, grievance mechanisms and monitoring protocols that are all grounded in worker input, oversight and enforcement. They typically require participating buyers who have signed the agreement to purchase only from suppliers that comply with the agreed standards and agree to independent monitoring. If suppliers violate the standards, brands are obligated to suspend or terminate their business relationships, resulting in significant market consequences for non-compliance.Footnote ⁶⁰ In this way, the agreements bind both brands and suppliers to worker-driven standards, giving workers meaningful control over monitoring and enforcement.

Another strength of WSR, which makes it a suitable framework for reimagining BHR, is its adaptability. The first operational WSR program is the Fair Food Program (FFP); however, there are now WSR programs in various industries and geographies around the globe, including dairy, apparel, fishing, construction and flowers, spanning four continents. It is continuing to attract interest from other sectors around the globe.Footnote ⁶¹ There are core WSR principles rooted in Freirien critical dialogic approaches and ‘outlined by the WSR Network, a collaboration between worker organizations (including the CIW), allies and technical advisors’, but there are no universal standards and monitoring processes as for other labour governance initiatives.Footnote ⁶² The WSR principles are: ‘Labor rights must be worker driven, obligations for global corporations must be binding and enforceable, buyers must afford suppliers the financial incentive and capacity to comply, consequences for non-compliant suppliers must be mandatory, gains for workers must be measurable and timely, verification of workplace compliance must be rigorous and independent’.Footnote ⁶³

Each WSR initiative is developed differently depending on the particular context. When developing a WSR initiative, the process focuses on investigating who has power and how that power can be somewhat harnessed, whose voice is not being heard, and how power can be redirected to ensure their voices are heard. The process focuses on empowering workers to understand their critical role in a supply chain and using their voice to create the standards necessary for dignified work.Footnote ⁶⁴

WSR offers an example of how agonistic pluralism can be operationalised in labour rights governance. It institutionalises power struggles by embedding worker-driven mechanisms into corporate accountability structures.Footnote ⁶⁵ CDAA scholarship helps to clarify this point: WSR is an example of an agonistic system of engagement that does not presume shared interests or parity of power, but instead constructs mechanisms through which actors with less power can contest and meaningfully shape the terms of accountability.Footnote ⁶⁶ WSR programs involve dialogic negotiation processes, such as regular obligatory meetings with workers, supervisors and employers. Compromise is a part of the engagements in these meetings, but it is not consensus-oriented; rather, it aims towards a mutual understanding of differing needs and desires.Footnote ⁶⁷ WSR programs leverage enforceable agreements and market consequences to restructure how decisions are made and whose interests define standards, shape oversight and drive accountability responses.

WSR programs also resonate with critical accounting scholars’ call for ‘pragmatic goals for the present need to be accompanied by revolutionary programs for the future’.Footnote ⁶⁸ WSR programs operate pragmatically within a neoliberal context, yet they are transformative in their redistribution of power from corporations to workers and in their capacity to protect and remediate rights along the supply chain.Footnote ⁶⁹ In other words, WSR is not only an example of an agonistic approach, but also a prefigurative one. It does not wait for ideal conditions to redistribute power or defer justice to some future horizon. It acts now, using the tools of the present, such as brands’ massive buying power, to build the futures it envisions, in which workers have the power to define, protect and remediate their own rights.Footnote ⁷⁰

While this may seem to reflect the ‘principled pragmatism’ of the UNGPs, WSR’s approach is grounded in a different conception of pragmatism. Rather than reining in ambition in order to achieve consensus, WSR uses pragmatic tools as a means to advance transformative ends.Footnote ⁷¹ Its pragmatism is a strategy to embed transformative goals within existing power structures by radically redistributing who sets standards and who holds power.Footnote ⁷² This approach reframes pragmatism as an opportunity to experiment with new models that reflect rightsholder-driven commitments. In the next section, we extrapolate from the principles and practices of WSR to outline a broader normative and organisational shift, prefigurative BHR, which aims to reclaim the field’s transformative aspirations.

C. Prefigurative Business and Human Rights

Emerging from social movement and governance literatures, prefigurative politics refers to practices that aim to align present actions with future aspirations.Footnote ⁷³ Prefigurative approaches refuse to defer justice to some future ideal and instead insist on enacting alternative ways of being, relating and organising in the here and now.Footnote ⁷⁴ In other words, prefigurative politics refuse to allow present constraints to define the terms of justice. Instead, it aligns both the means and the ends of political and institutional change, grounding long-term aspirational visions of the future in immediately implementable structures. It refuses to allow the pragmatic to displace the possible. Where the UNGPs’ ‘principled pragmatism’ often prioritises consensus and feasibility within existing power structures, prefigurative approaches begin from a different starting point: not by asking what is possible within the current system, but by asking what structures are needed to realise a more just future and begin to build them now.Footnote ⁷⁵ This approach does not reject pragmatism but reframes it: not as a reason to narrow ambition, but as an opportunity to experiment with new models that reflect transformative commitments from the outset.

By integrating these insights, the proposed prefigurative BHR provides an alternate vision of the BHR agenda that is not structured or limited by the UNGPs but addresses fundamental critiques identified earlier in this paper:

1. 1. Abandoning the valorisation of consensus and consensus-seeking tendencies—Prefigurative BHR rejects consensus as the normative ideal and instead embraces conflict and contestation as generative forces for institutional and normative change. It builds upon frameworks like CDAA and WSR, which institutionalise struggle through participatory processes that surface disagreement and power imbalances rather than suppress them. Agonistic pluralism helps illuminate this shift by acknowledging that actors do not share interests or equal power.Footnote ⁷⁶ It opens up the possibility for governance models that do not presume alignment but instead build space for negotiation and contestation, foregrounding unequal power and centring those most affected. Prefigurative BHR does not seek to manage disagreement. Instead, it acknowledges conflict as foundational and builds institutional mechanisms that allow those most affected, who have historically had little power, to challenge dominant interests and reshape the terms of engagement.Footnote ⁷⁷

2. 2. The return of aspirational and transformative normativity—Prefigurative BHR re-centres normativity on the aspirational and transformative dimensions by restoring the alignment between means and ends. Rather than diluting long-term goals to fit short-term feasibility, it insists that today’s strategies must reflect the just futures we aim to build. It does not accept the premise that pragmatism requires the abandonment of ambition. Instead, it leverages existing instruments such as binding agreements, participatory governance structures and market pressure to build structures that reflect the field’s foundational commitment to dignity, equity, accountability and justice.

Prefigurative BHR puts forward a renewed normative foundation for the field. Unlike the UNGPs’ due diligence approach, which aims to minimise disruption to business operations,Footnote ⁷⁸ a prefigurative approach would deliberately surface conflict and refigure whose interests define what counts as harm, compliance, or remedy. If we take our thought experiment seriously and take a break from the UNGPs, prefigurative approaches open up new spaces for experimentation, where the future of BHR is both imagined and actively built in the present.