Digital capitalism is characterized by the rise of a unique business model: the platform firm, which leverages the combined force of internet connectivity and algorithmic intelligence to build a new infrastructural basis for production, market exchange, and a host of socio-economic interactions. The rise of this ‘intelligent corporation’, which has displaced the transnational industrial corporation, opens up new risks concerning malpractices and rights violations in global business operations.
With no global consensus on regulating the activities of the digital transnational corporations regarding human rights and the environment yet, the digital MNEs continue to circumvent national laws with impunity-profiteering from virtualization and regulatory obsolescence. Do the OECD Guidelines (2011) address the emerging forms of abuse of data power for anti-competitive and unethical labor practices globally?
In this article, Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami examine how inadequate the guidelines are in the context of 21st Century digital capitalism.
Read the complete article here.
This is the pre-final version. The article is originally published by Centre tricontinental (CETRI) in their new issue of Alternatives Sud—Multinationales: en finir avec l’impunité?, where they brought out a collection of articles on the power of transnational corporations to join forces with critical voices in Belgium (and Europe) about 'due diligence' legislations.