To name and shame is to "publicly say that a person, group or business has done something wrong". It is a form of

public shaming Public humiliation or public shaming is a form of punishment whose main feature is dishonoring or disgracing a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of judicially sanctioned puni ...

used to rally popular opinion against and in turn discourage certain kinds of behavior or enterprises. The practice occurs both at the domestic and the international levels where naming and shaming is often used to denounce

unfair business practice Unfair business practices encompass fraud, misrepresentation, and oppressive or unconscionable acts or practices by business, often against consumers, and are prohibited by law in many countries. In the European Union, each member state must regu ...

s or

human rights violation Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hum ...

s. There are some evidences to indicate that naming and shaming can reduce atrocities and make the named and shamed governments to improve their human rights records. Some scholars however question whether naming and shaming actually has the intended effects.

International relations

Naming and shaming is a common strategy to compel and deter changes in state and non-state behavior. It is a particularly common strategy when states engage in human rights abuses. It has also been used to compel improvements in environmental policies, stopping

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industr ...

being one such example..

Public policy usage

Naming offending individuals or businesses (with the implied objective of shaming them) is sometimes used as an instrument of public policy intended to promote compliance with legal obligations or with the obligation to put right the damage caused by non-compliance. Examples are: *The UK government established a scheme in 2010 to "name businesses which have failed to pay the

National Minimum Wage The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 creates a minimum wage across the United Kingdom.. E McGaughey, ''A Casebook on Labour Law'' (Hart 2019) ch 6(1) From 1 April 2022 this was £9.50 for people age 23 and over, £9.18 for 21- to 22-year-olds, £6 ...

to their employees. The policy objective of the naming scheme is "to raise awareness of minimum wage enforcement and deter employers who would otherwise be tempted to break minimum wage law". According to a government policy statement, this practice has been adopted because "the government recognises that some employers are more likely to respond to the social and economic sanctions that may flow from details of their payment practices being made public, than from financial deterrents". *In December 2018 the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy introduced a "naming scheme" to exert reputational pressure on employers who fail to pay

Employment Tribunal Employment tribunals are tribunal public bodies in England and Wales and Scotland which have statutory jurisdiction to hear many kinds of disputes between employers and employees. The most common disputes are concerned with unfair dismissal, red ...

awards, following publication of government research which found that 34% of employment tribunal awards in England and Wales and 46% in Scotland remained unpaid. *In 2013,

Citizens Advice Citizens AdviceCitizens Advice is the operating name of The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux which is the umbrella charity for a wider network of local advice centres. The abbreviation CitA is sometimes used to refer to this nation ...

recommended that the UK's Consumer Bill of Rights should be backed up by action by

trading standards Trading Standards are the local authority departments with the United Kingdom, formerly known as ''Weights and Measures'', that enforce consumer protection legislation. Sometimes, the Trading Standards enforcement functions of a local authority a ...

regulators to "name and shame" businesses which have failed to correct poor practices which affect consumers. * From July 2008, the NSW Food Authority has a public list of businesses which have breached food safety regulations to give "consumers more information to make decisions about where they eat or buy food".NSW Food Authority
NSW Food Authority Name And Shame
accessed 26 February 2021

References

{{reflist Reputation management Figures of speech