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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Black Book of Corporations

book

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ362196 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Black Book of Corporations (German: Das Schwarzbuch Markenfirmen) is a book by Austrian journalists Klaus-Werner Lobo and Hans Weiss first published in 2001. The publication appeared shortly after large-scale protests against the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Genoa.

Content

The book discusses the activities of a range of multinational corporations linked in the authors’ view to social discrimination, environmental pollution, and alleged violations of labor standards, human rights and consumer protection.

Werner investigated companies accused of purchasing raw materials from suppliers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, raising concerns about child and prison labour and indirect financing of armed groups. Weiss examined allegations regarding the conduct of clinical trials in parts of Eastern Europe. The authors present these case studies in the broader context of globalization, international trade organisations, and the influence of multinational enterprises.

Editions

A second edition, The New Black Book of Corporations (German: Das neue Schwarzbuch Markenfirmen), was released in 2003. A third updated edition appeared in 2006. The book has been translated into several languages, including Dutch, Spanish, Hungarian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, Swedish and Russian.

See also

Anti-globalization movement

Globalization

Corporation

No Logo

Further reading

Klaus Werner-Lobo / Hans Weiss: Schwarzbuch Markenfirmen.

Editorial summary

“The Black Book of Corporations” enters the record as book. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Black, Book and Corporations can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2001, 2003, 2006—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2001-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Black, Book and Corporations.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Black Book of Corporations” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Black, Book and Corporations provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q362196. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001, 2003 and 2006.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Black Book of Corporations”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Black Book of Corporations primary sources, The Black Book of Corporations archive and Black research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Black Book of Corporations”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Black Book of Corporations” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.