Companies need a plan of action if they are to meet their moral and business obligations in the event that their operations intersect with labor abuses or other human rights violations. The article explains different types of abuses and provides a framework for understanding a company's exposure to reputational risk. The authors also map out a decision tree that can help managers work out potential courses of action and their implications.

While Porter and Kramer's Creating Shared Value (CSV) works well as a management framework to address "win-win" business and society issues, it leaves managers ill-equipped to legitimately manage issues where they face the prospect of "win-lose" or "lose-win" social engagements. For legitimacy, managers need to bolster CSV with ethical frameworks-specifically, norm-taking and norm-making frameworks. Managers can be better positioned to create shared value through CSV+, a multipart framework built around CSV and augmented by ethical frameworks.