Angélica Godinho da Costa: From Normative Claim to Institutional Facticity: The ICAF as a Habermasian Architecture for..

Angélica Godinho da Costa

From Normative Claim to Institutional Facticity: The ICAF as a Habermasian Architecture for Global Corporate Ethics

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Abstract

The ethics of globalization is marked by the enduring “paradox of cosmopolitanism”: the tension between universal moral obligations (Validity) and the heterogeneous institutional realities that shape organizational behavior (Facticity). Despite extensive debates across management studies, international law, and political theory, existing frameworks fail to provide a procedural mechanism capable of translating cosmopolitan ideals into enforceable organizational practice. This paper addresses this theoretical deficit by proposing the Institutional Cosmopolitanism Assessment Framework (ICAF), a Habermasian model designed to operationalize cosmopolitan ethics within the semi-globalized world. Drawing on the facticity–validity nexus and the political-ethical demand for The Inclusion of the Other, the ICAF articulates four procedural dimensions—Universality, Inclusiveness/Integration, Transparency/Accountability, and Sustainability/Pluralism—that collectively convert normative claims into institutional fact. Universality provides the legal–procedural basis…