I'm not sure what "economic, social and cultural rights" are, and as "rights" are a social construct and are assigned by particular societies, they will generally be dependent on local situations rather than being universal. The companies you cite all, in my view, have a positive impact on the world at large. You can't charge them with putting right the many abuses of the Chinese government, and while the compromises they've had to make to operate in a country with one-fifth of the world's people are regrettable, the net impact of their operations in China is likely to be positive and a force for change.

(And at least most of those cartoons could not be considered "offensive" by a reasonable person.)

Faustino,

As 'Rights' are subjective, so is "reasonable person", what is reasonable to one is abhorant to another.
ie Clearing ones nose in the gutter in China, or filling up a piece of material with snot and putting it in your pocket.

So, once the huffing and puffing and harrumphing about human rights, triple bottom lines and that wonderful PR furphy, CSR, have settled down, what are the real issues here?

Should a multinational company be allowed to adapt its product to meet local requirements?

Of course they should.

Should a mulitnational company be expected to assume the role of international diplomat, and promote the agenda of its home government in matters of human rights?

Of course they should not.

The reason that the UN waffle about economic, social and cultural rights did not, and will not, become binding, is because we are still centuries away from determining and agreeing what those rights should be. To attempt to force responsibility for determining this upon a commercial enterprise that has a purely commercial agenda is simply passing the buck.

CSR may well be "new mantra attracting the attention of almost everyone", but it is largely the construct of a bunch of consultants who will spend a ton of your money explaining to you why it is important that you spend a ton of money on consultants to tell you about CSR. An artcle in The Economist last year pretty well skewered the idea for its lack of consistency, practicality and credibility.

And while on the subject, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has no connection with Microsoft at all, although the company happily rides on the back of the philanthropy of its founder. As you have amply proved by contending that "the commendable initiatives taken by the Gates Foundation should not be forgotten."

There is no "complicity in undermining freedom of speech in China", as the tag line of this article would claim, simply a degree of conformance to local norms.

Free speech is a Myth all over the world, china at least doesn't pretend it does not allow free speech

examples
Danish cartoon
Salmon Rushdie
USA's palestinian policy (you can vote however you like, but if you vote for someone we do not like, we won't give you any money)

I disagree with the previous authors, the first two in particular. It is not quite that simple.

Faustino appears to claim that "rights" are not universal. This is partly true. In fact, the most commonly discussed rights in the west are relatively unclear cases (the right to an abortion say, the right to wear what we want, the right to receive welfare). However there are accepted absolutes. Genocide is universally condemned. Slavery is universally condomned. And until recently, most of us believed in the right to a trial for accused criminals.

So clearly, some rights are generally considered to be absolute.

Coyote helpfully mentions that blowing your nose into the gutter is acceptable in China but not elsewhere. This isn't much help really. The fact that there are differences in etiquette are a different kettle of fish entirely. Is the AWB behaviour in Iraq ok. Dunno. One thing I do know is that I wouldn't make up my mind based on whether or not Iraqi's have different table manners (or deal with snot differently). AWB is an Australian company - it is subject to Australian law. I suspect that US citizens similarly have some expectations, when their companies operate overseas.

Pericles makes a better case thankfully. I differ on whether whether reporting people to the police is quite the same as tailoring your product - however in general, while in another country, we have no option but to obey their laws (were they asked for information, or did they volunteer it I wonder). And this is perhaps not his main point. More reasonably he asks whether these companies should be responsible for spreading upholding US principles. I agree with him, it is clearly not their key responsibility.

But then again, is this helping their share price I wonder?

The appearance of this article prompted me to refresh my memory on exactly what level of complicity actually exists.

Concentrating on Google for a moment, as they are by far the most exposed.

Google's move into the Chinese market was the introduction of google.com.cn, the impetus being the complaints of service outages, long response times etc. on google.com

As part of the agreement, they committed to a level of censorship that met the Chinese government's wishes. They did however get an agreement at the same time that they would add a note to the search results to the effect that some sites had been excluded - effectively advising the user that censorship was in place.

However, there is no parallel censorship outside the .com.cn domain - in other words, if you are able to reach the standard google.com domain from your computer, the content will not be censored.

I'm not sure whether they could, or should, have done anything different.

Will it affect their share price? That's up to the shareholders. But my personal view is that they have not crossed any significant ethical boundaries.