More than ever, businesses are being asked to demonstrate how they manage the social and environmental impacts of their operations, products and services. The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct (MNE Guidelines) are the leading international standard for how companies and investors should address their impacts on people, the planet and society. They apply to businesses and investors of all sectors, sizes and ownership structures, and cover all key sustainability issues – from climate change to technology, from anti-corruption to human rights and labour standards. The OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct sets out a risk-based due diligence framework for companies to identify, prevent, mitigate and remediate adverse impacts in their operations, supply chains and other business relationships, that governments have committed to actively support and monitor.
The 2026 OECD Responsible Business Outlook provides a global assessment of how companies practice responsible business conduct and how governments promote it through public policies.
This report has been developed by the OECD Centre for Responsible Business Conduct of the Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs. It was prepared by Nicholas Robin, Konstantin Mann, Benjamin Michel, Lena Diesing, Monica Garay, Anita Gholami, Nicolas Hachez, Santhosh Persaud, Sophie Rickard, Daniel Torán and Sarah Reso, with contributions from Tihana Bule, Benjamin Katz, Lauren Shields, Emily Norton and Suban Biixi, under the supervision of Barbara Bijelic, Head of Regulation and Standards and Allan Jørgensen, Head of the OECD Centre for Responsible Business Conduct.
Comments and insights were gratefully received from Hannah Koep-Andrieu, Rashad Abelson, Peter Higgins, Sonja Agustsdottir, Marie Bouchard and Sophie Lavaud, from the OECD Centre for Responsible Business Conduct; Adriana De La Cruz, Caio de Oliveira, Suzannah Hewson, Chung-A Park, Sara Sultan and Francesca Zampa from the Capital Markets Division of the Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs; Fares Al Hussami, Alexandre De Crombrugghe, Helene Francois Georgieff, Fernando Mistura and Martin Wermelinger from the Investment Division of the Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs; Spela Berlizg and Julian Paisey from the Export Credits and Competition Division of the Trade and Agriculture Directorate. Stephanie Walker, Liv Gudmundson, and Edwina Collins also provided invaluable editorial support. The authors would also like to thank Gülgün Arikan, Serdar Çelik and Alejandra Medina for facilitating access to the OECD Capital Market Series dataset.