Reactivity to Benchmarking Corporate Human Rights: A configurational perspective

Abstract

Corporate sustainability rankings have become integral to global governance but their growing influence contrasts sharply with limited progress on urgent societal challenges. This raises critical questions about the value of rankings and the conditions under which rankings may drive substantive adoption of corporate social practices. In the context of the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB), we find that (non)reactivity to rankings emerges under different combinations of commitment alignment, pressure and capacity for organizational transparency. Specifically, we find that societal pressure amplifies commensuration, capacity enables self-disciplining, while rankings can be ignored or avoided when commitment or pressure are absent. Furthermore, we find that lacking capacity leads to superficial or symbolic compliance depending on the pressure faced by ranked organizations. Our study advances research on rankings by reframing reactivity through a configurational lens, demonstrates how external–internal alignment fosters substantive implementation of social practices, and identifies the conditions under which rankings contribute to pluralistic governance in business and human rights.