Water stewardship and corporate sustainability: a case study of reputation management in the food and drinks industry

The aim of this paper is to provide an exploratory review of the extent to which some of the leading companies in the food and drinks industry are publicly addressing water stewardship as part of their corporate sustainability strategies. The paper begins with an introductory outline of the growing importance of water stewardship and a brief discussion of corporate sustainability. The paper draws its empirical material from the most recent information on water stewardship posted by the leading companies in the food and drinks industry's corporate websites. The findings reveal that the vast majority of the selected companies address a number of elements concerning water stewardship as part of their more general approach to corporate sustainability. However, corporate commitments to water stewardship can be interpreted as being driven as much by business imperatives as by any specific concerns for environmental sustainability or a genuine desire to maintain the viability and integrity of natural ecosystems. More critically, the authors suggest that the selected companies' commitments to water stewardship are framed within existing business models focused on technological improvements in eco‐efficiency and continuing economic growth. The paper provides an accessible review of the water stewardship issues being pursued by the leading players in the food and drinks industry, and as such, it will interest academics, students, political commentators and business managers interested in water stewardship and corporate sustainability. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sustainability and the world's leading ocean cruising companies

The aim of this research note paper is to offer an exploratory review of the extent to which the leading ocean cruise companies are publicly addressing and reporting on their sustainability strategies and achievements and to offer some reflections on sustainability within the cruise industry. The paper begins with an outline of cruising and the cruising industry and a short commentary on the sustainability challenges the industry faces. The information on which the paper is based is drawn from the leading cruise companies' corporate web sites. The findings of the paper reveal a marked variation in the extent to which the leading cruise companies publicly report on their sustainability strategies and achievements. While the two leading cruise companies, namely the Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean Cruises, published extensive sustainability reports which covered a number of environmental social and economic issues, the other leading cruise companies published very limited information on sustainability. More critically the authors argued that the cruise companies' commitments to sustainability are driven by the search for efficiency gains and are couched within existing business models centred on continuing growth than on maintaining the viability of natural ecosystems and communities. As such the leading UK retailers are, at best, currently pursuing a ‘weak’ rather than a ‘strong’ model of sustainability. The paper provides an accessible exploratory review of sustainability reporting in the cruise industry, and it will interest professional working in the cruise industry and more generally in the hospitality industry as well as academics and students interested in public relations, business studies and hospitality management. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Materiality in corporate sustainability reporting within UK retailing

The concept of materiality is attracting increasing attention in corporate sustainability reporting. This paper offers a preliminary examination of the extent to which the UK's leading retailers are currently addressing materiality in their sustainability reports and offers some wider reflections on the ways retailers are embracing materiality. The paper begins with a short discussion of the concept of materiality and on its determination and the paper draws its empirical material from the most recent sustainability reports posted on the Internet by the UK's top ten retailers. The findings reveal that there are significant variations in the extent to which the UK's leading retailers are embracing materiality and that there is no evidence of a sector specific approach to materiality within the UK retail community. More generally the authors argue that the methods currently being used to determine materiality are flawed and that retailers seem likely to continue to face challenges in looking to reconcile the relationships between executive management teams, investors and a wide range of stakeholders in operationalising the concept of materiality. The paper provides an accessible review of the extent to which the UK's leading retailers are currently embracing materiality as part of the sustainability reporting process and as such it will interest academics, students and practitioners interested in retailing and corporate sustainability. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Benchmarking sustainability performance: the next step in building sustainable business models

Developing sustainable business models incorporating effects on people, profit, and planet is becoming an increasingly important strategic issue. Benchmarking with peer companies can assist a company in setting goals of improving its performance. As such, developing a methodology for effectively benchmarking sustainable business practices is an important step in the evolution of sustainability management. However, a company's sustainability performance is composed of many elements that may involve difficult tradeoffs, and its performance may vary over time. In this paper, we propose a data-driven approach of innovatively adapting statistical process control charts, conventionally used in quality control, to simultaneously compare multiple performance measures and analyze variation in both trend and performance among companies in a given industry. We apply this approach to benchmarking the sustainability performance of companies in the US utility industry and demonstrate it is robust and reliable for benchmarking the performance of companies in virtually all industries. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business,social responsibility,and corruption

This paper explores the role of corporate social responsibility and the reporting thereof in the fight against corruption. A special focus is laid on the international endeavors to improve transparency through reporting, and the paper elaborates extensively on the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. Voluntary initiatives, such as the UNGC, the OECD guidelines, and the GRI guidelines, are considered to play an important role in providing the trust‐based informal social norms, without which markets and societies cannot function. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Common Ground: the sustainable development goals and the marketing and advertising industry

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed at a United Nations General Assembly in 2015, embrace an ambitious and wide-ranging set of global environmental, social, and economic issues designed to effect a transition to a more sustainable future. The United Nations called on all governments to not only pursue these ambitious goals but also acknowledged the important role of the business community in addressing the SDGs. The high profile launch in June 2016 of the ‘Common Ground’ initiative to support the SDGs by Ban Ki-moon, United Nations General Secretary, and six of the world's leading marketing and advertising companies, namely, Dentsu, Havas, IPG, Omnicom group, Publicis Group, and WPP might be seen to herald a new era in the transition to a more sustainable future. This paper outlines the SDGs and business engagement with them, reviews the sustainably strategies and achievements currently being publicly reported by the six leading advertising and marketing companies, and offers some reflections on a number of the challenges these companies will face in contributing to the SDGs.     

Playing the game: corporate social responsibility and the games industry

This paper provides an exploratory review of both the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agendas and achievements being publicly addressed by the world's leading games companies, and offers some wider reflections on the ways these companies are constructing and pursuing CSR strategies. The paper begins with a short discussion of the origins and characteristics of CSR and a thumbnail sketch of games and the games industry. The empirical material for the paper is drawn from the CSR material posted on the Internet by the world's top 10 games companies. The findings reveal that although the majority of the top 10 games companies provide some information on their approach to CSR, only a minority claim to be integrating CSR into their core business activities. Although the companies emphasize their commitment to promoting responsible gaming, they offer little if any commentary on what many critics see as the potentially damaging human consequences of the irresponsible development and playing of games. The majority of the top 10 games companies also address a wide range of impacts within the marketplace, the workplace, the environment and communities in which they operate. Although the leading games companies generally adopt a positive stance towards CSR, the independent external assessment of the reporting process is limited. More generally, the paper offers some critical reflections on the CSR agenda currently being pursued by the games industry. The paper provides an overview and some reflections on the CSR agenda being pursued by some of the world's leading games companies, and as such, it will interest academics in business and management, and information systems and media departments, a range of people working in management positions within the games industry and those professionals who work with the industry. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pacifying uncooperative carbon: examining the materiality of the carbon market

This paper scrutinizes how greenhouse gases are ‘pacified’ so that they can become tradable in the carbon markets. To advance the economization programme and other materialist frameworks, I argue that the existing literature does not pay enough attention to the diverse modes of carbon accounting and, in particular, carbon measurement – the most basic step – is overlooked and undertheorized. Drawing from the ‘critical metrology’ approach, I suggest that we need to take carbon’s diverse materialities seriously in the study of marketization processes. Some carbons are more cooperative than others. I, therefore, argue that it is important to conceptualize ‘pacification’ as a dynamic process that is mediated through materials of varying capacities as well as standards and technologies. The empirical case examined here concerns carbon measurement standards at coal-fired power plants – an ‘extreme case’ in the sense that coal is well-understood and relatively easy to measure. My findings indicate that, even for one of the most ‘cooperative’ carbons, measurement uncertainties are significant and pose challenges for the marketization of carbon emissions. While human actors work to cope with these uncertainties, the contours of the market are ultimately constrained by carbon’s materiality.     

Why brands should foster political sustainability

Sustainability figures prominently in the rhetoric around the nonfinancial responsibilities of business, as is manifest in the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Often, however, sustainability assumes a narrow social and ecological meaning. A more comprehensive and apt concept would instead focus on the political dimension of sustainability. The long-term success of business depends primarily on sound institutions as embodied in the liberal democratic state. Therefore, companies should invest politically in strengthening the public realm—to their own benefit. CSR misses this strategic nexus; rather, the business case lies in the adoption of a corporate political responsibility (CPR). Advocating for a broad definition of what is political, the paper lays out concrete CPR fields of action that allow companies to become political brands. As a holistic concept to conceive of the interface between business and politics, CPR does not only help to secure a company's longevity, but also reorients our understanding and practice of public affairs.     

Blending issues and stakeholders: in pursuit of the elusive synergy

Two separate frameworks have existed for the analysis of social predicaments in which businesses play a role: issues management and stakeholder management. In this paper, we argue that the chasm dividing these two literatures is artificial, and potentially obstructive to the advancement of our knowledge of the position of business in contemporary societies. The position we take in the present paper is that all social predicaments have an issues side as well as a stakeholder side and that a dual focus on both issues and stakeholders is therefore essential to understanding the evolution of these predicaments and crucial to managerial dealings with these issues. We present an integrative co-evolutionary framework, explaining the dynamics between issues and stakeholders in all consecutive stages of a predicament's evolution. The framework proposes a new way of thinking about issues and stakeholders, as such facilitates a deeper understanding of how the social environment of business is constituted, and offers new insights for the practical management of issues and stakeholders.     

Bouncing back: A commentary on resilience in sustainability narratives

Resilience is an increasingly common element in the sustainability and sustainable growth narratives of a growing number of companies and organisations. At the same time, a number of meanings are claimed for resilience and the relationship between resilience and sustainability has been depicted in a number of ways. With these thoughts in mind, this short commentary paper outlines the characteristic features of the concept of resilience, provides some illustrations of how a number of companies and organisations are harnessing the concept as an integral part of their sustainability strategies and policies, offers some general reflections on the application of the concept, and concludes with some thoughts on how public relations and communications professionals can contribute to resilience planning.     

In the Public Eye: Sustainability and the UK's Leading Retailers

This paper aims to provide an exploratory case study of the sustainability agendas being publicly reported by the UK's leading retailers and to offer some wider reflections on the ways these retailers are currently addressing and pursuing sustainability agendas. The paper begins with a short discussion of the characteristics of sustainability. The paper draws its empirical material from the most recent information on sustainability posted on the UK's top 10 retailers' corporate web sites. The findings reveal that all the UK's top 10 retailers provide information on a wide range of environmental, social and economic sustainability agendas and that the majority of them essentially argue that by integrating sustainability into their businesses, they are better placed to provide long term growth. More critically, the authors argue that the UK's leading retailers are, at best, adopting a ‘weak’ model of sustainability and that in pursuing continuing growth, they are ignoring the basic fact that present patterns of consumption are unsustainable in the long term. The paper provides an accessible review of, and some reflections on, the sustainability agendas being pursued by the UK's leading retailers and as such it will interest academics and those working in management positions within the retail and the retail supply industries. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business conflict and international law: The political economy of copyright in the United States

The internet industry has emerged as an important economic and political actor, both within the United States and internationally. Internet companies depend on exceptions from copyright law in order to operate. As a result, internet companies have considerable incentive to try and influence international copyright law. However, the current literature has neglected the role of the internet industry, instead focusing on the influence of copyright owning media companies. This has largely homogenized the concerns of business interests, neglecting the interests of business actors which do not favor stricter copyright protection. By examining business conflict over recent copyright initiatives by the United States, this article criticizes the literature. It illustrates that the internet industry has been able to alter the negotiating preferences of the United States against the wishes of copyright owners. This argues against the homogenization of business interests regarding copyright while illustrating the importance of material over discursive factors in determining political outcomes.     

Economic discourse and the capitalist order

This paper uses the concepts of business model and financial ecosystem to analyse the relation between the US capital market and corporate business. Under a capital market double standard, from 1995 to 2000, new companies with digital prospects could recover their costs from the capital market; but, after the tech stock crash in 2000, all companies were required to generate profits from the product market. This encourages a blurring of old and new firm identities, because sectoral power is increasingly necessary to secure cost recovery. But this does not imply any return to business as usual when the financial ecosystem for new technology survives the crash and large-scale venture capital investment continues. From this point of view,the new economy illustrated, concretely, the determining role of finance in the broader processes of financialization.     

Developments in public affairs in Australia

• This paper discusses the integrated public affairs model most common in Australian companies, and its rationale. It describes some key characteristics of the function, drawing on a comprehensive survey of public affairs departments in late 2003. The function has become more senior and strategic, more closely aligned to business imperatives and with stable or growing budgets. It identifies areas of increased attention for practitioners, including support for organization transformation and culture change, stakeholder relations as a line, as well as staff function, reputation management and sustainability reporting.

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Epistemology of the human sciences

The entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley and Route 128 - America’s leading centers of technological innovation - organized politically in the late 1970s. This paper seeks to explain why high tech business associations in these two regions have adopted widely divergent political stances and behavior. It argues that business interests are defined through the process of organization, and that the attitudes of these groups of industrialists were shaped by distinctive political environments, in turn a result of the different industrial and social histories of the two regions. While much scholarly interest has been devoted to the ways in which business affects political outcomes, the paper suggests that the reciprocal causation is equally important: the political environment is an important determinant of business interests.     

Failure of auditors: The lack of compliance for business combinations in China

This empirical study investigates the compliance of 344 Chinese listed companies with the Accounting Standard for Enterprises No. 20‐Business Combination, a mandatory reporting standard applicable to companies involved in business combinations. China has recently reformed its auditing sector, enabling private firms to provide auditing services. The results of the study show a low level of compliance by Chinese listed companies. While companies audited by Chinese domestic auditors have significantly lower compliance than companies audited by Big Four auditors on supplementary disclosure that is mandatory under the Chinese accounting standards, compliance remains low even after companies receive unqualified reports from these international auditors. There appears to be a lack of commitment, and possibly expertise, among Big Four auditors, in fully applying the reporting requirements of the business combination standard in a Chinese setting. This raises concerns about the independence of Chinese auditing in disclosing reliable information about business combinations. Broader theoretical contributions of the paper go beyond the Chinese context by problematizing whether well‐resourced international auditors uphold internationally expected standards or succumb to local non‐compliant practices.     

The restructuring process in central and Eastern Europe: Business strategies for EC companies

The completion of the EC Single Market and the opening of Central and Eastern Europe constitute major changes in the European business environment which challenge companies to develop new business strategies. The Single Market will be one marketplace, but Central and Eastern Europe has to be treated completely differently, in some respects on a country‐by‐country basis. Based on personal interviews with Eastern European business people, this article describes and analyses the opportunities for EC companies. On the basis of this analysis a business strategy for Central and Eastern Europe is outlined.     

Managing Change: Focus on Improving Service Quality and Information Management

Then there are the organisations that want to shape the future. These companies learn to anticipate the possible directions the future may take and begin to blaze the new path without hesitation. The leaders of these companies encourage their people to challenge conventional thinking, to change the business dramatically, and to create continuous renewal and progress. These companies don't just want to survive — they want to lead. They want to write the rules that others will follow.     

The Spaces of Democracy and the Democracy of Space: A New Network Exploring the Disciplinary Effects of the Spatial Turn

There is much concern in the social sciences and humanities today about how people are connected with and responsible to those who live in distant places. Recent examples are abundant: from climate change to the cyclone that hit Burma in 2008. At the same time, new forces and personalities in the social sciences and humanities are seeking to ‘open out’ understandings of ‘the spatial’ as a concept. There is a movement to view ‘space’ as something which is more than a pre-defined container of territorial politics; instead, as often the sphere of multiplicity, difference, affect and/or post-territorial interconnections. This brief paper talks about the “Space of Democracy and the Democracy of Space” global network, which seeks to explore how these new forces of interrogation into the spatial, materiality, political and ethical connectivity are having an influence upon how people perceive of and constitute new spaces of politics and democracy today.