A/HRC/8/16 page 5 9. This model has helped companies to consider their roles in society beyond the workplace, and what actions to take in order to respect and support human rights. For example, a survey of the Fortune Global 500 firms conducted by the Special Representative showed that respondents appeared to prioritize their obligations to stakeholders in approximately this order; the only significant variation being that firms in the extractive sector placed communities ahead of supply chains.6 B. Limitations of the concept for today’s business and human rights agenda 10. As companies sought to determine more precisely what actions their social responsibilities may require, and to whom they owe specific responsibilities, imprecision and ambiguity in the sphere of influence concept became increasingly apparent. Moreover, the need for heightened clarity escalated severalfold when the United Nations draft norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises sought to employ the concept of sphere of influence to demarcate legal obligations of companies, using the concept as though it were a functional equivalent to a State’s jurisdiction.7 11. Imprecision and ambiguity in the concept stem from a number of sources, above all the fact that the concentric circles model does not differentiate stakeholders whose rights could be affected negatively by a company’s practices, such as communities, from actors over whose actions the company might have some degree of influence, whether suppliers, communities, or Governments. 12. However, this conflates two very different meanings of “influence”. One is “impact”, where the company’s activities or relationships are causing human rights harm. The other is whatever “leverage” a company may have over actors that are causing harm or could prevent harm. Impact falls squarely within the responsibility to respect; leverage may only do so in particular circumstances. 13. Anchoring corporate responsibility in influence defined as leverage is problematic, because it requires assuming, in moral philosophy terms, that “can implies ought”.8 However, companies cannot be held responsible for the human rights impacts of every entity over which they may have some leverage, because this would include cases in which they are not contributing to, nor are a causal agent of the harm in question. Nor is it desirable to require companies to act wherever they have influence, particularly over Governments. Asking companies to support human rights voluntarily where they have leverage is one thing; but attributing responsibility to them on that basis alone is quite another. 6 A/HRC/4/35/Add.3. 7 E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/12. 8 “The sphere of influence concept implies that the more control, authority or influence a business has over a situation giving rise to human rights abuses (or the means to improve respect for human rights), the greater the business responsibility to act.” OHCHR, UN Global Compact, E-Learning, Module 2, http://www.unssc.org/web/hrb/details.asp?mod=2&sec=1&cur=1.