Corporate responsibility or core competence?

Although the concept that corporations are responsible not only to their shareholders but also for the social and environmental impacts of their activities has now entered the mainstream, pressure is still required to ensure that companies honour their public commitments. This article describes the work of the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility in harnessing the power of individual shareholders and ethical investors in order to hold companies to account, with particular reference to the activities of Shell in Nigeria and the Republic of Ireland. It is argued that companies do not exist to carry out community development, and so should be judged not on these grounds but rather on the impact of how they conduct their core business.     

Corporate social responsibility: A challenge for the donor community

As corporate social Responsibility (CSR) increases in large corporate organisations, a genuine approach to sustainable development is often best achieved through the supply chain. This is directly applicable to North–South supply-chain interactions (private-sector organisations, NGOs, and donors). CSR has adopted techniques from their ‘development’ usage, yet a reverse flow is not observed back to the ‘development’ sector. This is unfortunate. Private-sector organisations and NGOs (especially the larger ones) are well placed to take advantage of the increase in CSR relating to developing countries. More importantly, donors of all types would have increased influence if they took up CSR principles. Opportunity costs are not high and the advocacy potential is huge. This paper reviews CSR techniques and argues for donors to accept the challenge of incorporating them into their operations to influence more efficiently the process they seek to change.     

Corporate social responsibility performance in the Niger Delta: beyond two constitutive orthodoxies

Against the background of attempts to explain the poor Corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of transnational oil corporations in the Niger Delta in the context of flawed approaches, processes and inadequate CSR packages, this paper contests not only the explanations for the failure of CSR, but the core idea that CSR is capable of engendering sustainable community development at all. Given the enormity of the development challenge in the region, corporations cannot, even with the best of intentions, make meaningful impact on host communities, mainly because of the structural constraints arising from the profit-seeking ethos which drives corporate behaviour.     

Corporate responsibility and the US–Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA): Are they compatible?

The global garment-manufacturing industry will confront significant changes from 2005, when the system of quotas established under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement comes to an end. These changes pose serious threats to jobs in the Central American assembly plants, or maquila industry. One possibility, however, is that ‘politically correct’ consumption could provide a niche market for firms that are committed to corporate social responsibility and the respect for human rights, and that this might even be a way to improve working conditions in the region. In this sense, notwithstanding the grave risks it represents for the very poorest, the market could serve to bring about changes favourable to working people.     

The web of responsibility in and for the Arctic

What does it mean to be responsible in and for the Arctic? This article addresses this question, noting that responsibility has become a core policy norm in different governance areas in recent decades. The article contributes to the current debate on responsibility in global politics, arguing that one should consider not only who is responsible (and what for) but also the capability foundations upon which responsibility is exercised, as well as the underlying normativity of this practice. Instead of only focusing on capabilities as first principles from which responsibilities arise, this article suggests approaching responsibility as a web of relations. On the basis of this theoretical discussion the article turns to two cases of contemporary Arctic policy where we can observe responsibility ‘at work’. The fields of search and rescue and sustainable development are both marked by a cooperative approach among (state and non-state) parties, whose interactions centre on a particular ethical understanding of responsibility rather than on power-oriented politics. Yet each policy field contains specific dilemmas, as Arctic governance is characterised by a web of responsibility that comprises multiple subjects in charge and/or objects for which they are responsible.     

Risk,responsibility and roles redefined: is counterterrorism a corporate responsibility?

This article discusses the role of the private company in the fight against terrorism. It argues that the private company has become politically important to counterterrorism efforts, but the economic logic guiding the risk thinking of private companies is hardly compatible with the aim of providing national security. By examining whether and in what manner the risk of terrorism is considered a corporate responsibility, the article seeks to answer whether and how the political role ascribed to the company finds any resonance in the risk practice of private companies. The article approaches this question by examining how Danish food and infrastructural companies conceptualize the relationship between terrorism risks and corporate responsibility. It demonstrates that a distinction between safety and security discursively facilitates an exclusion of national security concerns from the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and thereby works to deresponsibilitize the company in the fight against terrorism.     

Islamic business and business as usual: A study of firms in Egypt

Fifteen Egyptian firms producing goods and services were classified into two sets by method of finance, i.e. profit sharing for the seven Islamic versus debt-at-interest for the eight non-Islamic firms. Interviewed in 1993 and 1994, the two groups were found to be similar in customer relations and market behaviour and in paternalism towards employees. However, the non-Islamic firms had a significantly higher average profit rate, while the Islamic firms paid a significantly higher average wage, suggesting that cultural institutions shape economic behaviour even in a well-established market economy.     

韩国企业集团公司治理结构特征分析及启迪

韩国具有垄断资本特征的、依仗政府的扶植政策人为地制造出来的企业集团的产生及成长过程决定着其公司治理结构的特征:家族控制与家族经营、过度依赖政府、资本结构中负债率过高等。在企业集团治理机制方面,企业控制权通常掌握在某一个仅持有少量股份的家族所有者———管理者手中,政府对商业银行的控制使得银行总是在扮演着“提款机”的角色。探讨韩国企业集团公司治理结构特征,对我国企业内外部治理结构的改革具有重要的借鉴意义。     

公司治理的现实选择

公司治理无论从理论上还是实践上都已成为最重要的管理课题之一。主流的研究目标是通过科学合理的公司治理结构保护小股东的权益,而实践中并非只有大股东侵害小股东,中小股东通过内部人控制同样可以严重侵害大股东的利益。通过对治理结构的国际化比较,公司治理的现实选择应为:没有固定的模式;大股东有利益才能最终保护小股东;非经济因素对公司治理具有制约和促进的作用。     

Taming mammon: corporate social responsibility and the global regulation of conflict trade

Unethical business practices, the conduct of corrupt rulers and conflict entrepreneurs in conflict-prone societies have provoked genuine humanitarian concern from NGOs and activists who constitute the main driving force behind calls for ethical markets. However, powerful players, such as western multinational corporations and OECD governments, have been able to undercut campaigns for compulsory legal regulatory codes by promoting industry self-regulation and voluntary codes of conduct. This article assesses a number of these initiatives to control the trade in conflict goods and promote good resource governance. It concludes that current mechanisms constitute a weak attempt to control the negative impacts of the market and, by failing to tackle the real causes of instability, are inadequate for building a political economy of peace.     

Walking together: the journey of the Non-Aligned Movement and the women's movement

The story of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the way in which women engaged with it, gaining from its overall liberatory calls, as well as its political independence from the UN and other multilateral agencies, is relatively unknown in the world of development and women; and yet it is an important example of multilateral space. This article argues that the NAM, and its engagement with women, has the historical and strategic potential to be the platform from which to launch an inclusive growth paradigm.     

Gold mining and corporate social responsibility in the Wassa West district,Ghana

Despite a boom in gold mining in Ghana's Wassa West district (WWD), unemployment and poverty have deepened, partly due to loss of farmland to surface mining but more so because of the limited opportunities for wage employment in the district's ‘revived’ gold-mining industry. However, the large-scale mining companies are implementing some alternative livelihood programmes (ALPs) as part of their corporate social-responsibility (CSR) agenda. While the ALPs have provided some employment and income-earning opportunities and skills training, the prospects for their sustainability depend on how the challenges confronting the various programmes are addressed. This will require a well-coordinated approach involving all the key stakeholders.