A/HRC/8/5 page 19 needed to create appropriate incentives and disincentives for employees and ensure continuous improvement. Confidential means to report non-compliance, such as hotlines, can also provide useful feedback. 64. As companies adopt and refine due diligence practices, industry and multi-stakeholder initiatives can promote sharing of information, improvement of tools, and standardization of metrics. The Global Compact is well-positioned to play such a role, enjoying a United Nations platform and reaching widely into the corporate community, including in developing countries. C. Sphere of influence 65. The Special Representative’s mandate calls on him to research and clarify the concepts of corporate “sphere of influence” and “complicity”. His detailed analysis is presented in a separate report.44 Here the concepts are addressed specifically in relation to the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. 66. Sphere of influence was introduced into corporate social responsibility discourse by the Global Compact. It was intended as a spatial metaphor: the “sphere” was expressed in concentric circles with company operations at the core, moving outward to suppliers, the community, and beyond, with the assumption that the “influence” - and thus presumably the responsibility - of the company declines from one circle to the next. The draft norms later proposed the concept as a basis for attributing legal obligations to companies, using it as though it were analogous to the jurisdiction of States. 67. Sphere of influence remains a useful metaphor for companies in thinking about their human rights impacts beyond the workplace and in identifying opportunities to support human rights, which is what the Global Compact seeks to achieve.45 But a more rigorous approach is required to define the parameters of the responsibility to respect and its due diligence component. 68. To begin with, sphere of influence 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. The first falls squarely within the responsibility to respect; the second may only do so in particular circumstances. 69. Anchoring corporate responsibility in the second meaning of influence requires assuming, in moral philosophy terms, that “can implies ought”. But companies cannot be held responsible for the human rights impacts of every entity over which they may have some influence, because 44 A/HRC/8/16. 45 See http://www.unglobalcompact.org/AboutTheGC/TheTenPrinciples/index.html.