Last week I published a profile at Triple Pundit on the Portland based, boundary expanding, successful despite the given wisdom/state of the economy company called Bamboo Revolution. Growing 40% in an industry that's shrunk 50%, they clearly are on to something. I took a lot of photos in their space, which serves as a demonstration of bamboo's versatility, and a sketch pad of sorts for new ideas they're working on. A few made it to the Triple Pundit piece, but all had an interesting story. So rather than keep them to myself, here's what I saw: 

 

Before Bamboo Revolution transformed it, this was the bunker, er, office of a paint supply store I believe. They set about making use of as much of what was on site. But some things, well, a line had to be drawn!

 

The office as it looks currently, with bamboo used for nearly 100% of the wall you see here.

 

Serving as both an additional stream of income and a demonstration of Bamboo Revolution designer's capabilities is Coava Coffee Roasters. In a city known for its coffee, Coava has quickly developed a reputation for its single source caffeinated alchemy. 

 

I asked what those giant cheese grater/car muffler looking things were on the ends of this table. Bamboo steamers apparently, used to soften bamboo for shaping. Now standing in as cafe decor.

 
 This burly table is made of what's called "strand woven" bamboo, which according to Bamboo Revolution is twice as hard as red oak. How? A giant machine in back, previously employed as a car compactor, presses so hard (1800 metric tons of pressure!) that it must do it upwards rather than down, or would cause structural damage without substantial floor reinforcement. 

An enormous door leads from the showroom to the manufacturing space. Graceful now, putting it up was quite a dance, as you see here.

 
Showing how bamboo can be used as is, in a beautiful way.

Sometimes (pre 4)  iPhone's lackluster low light capabilities can lead to artful photos like this one, a piece of bamboo manufacturing equipment doing double duty as a cafe table.

 

Ill be in Singapore for much of September and October, and participating in 4 events relating to the general theme of social innovation and sustainable enterprise.

Ill be at the “SIX and the City” Social Innovation Summer School from 15th to 17th September, mixing with tomorrows leaders at “Forward Thinking Thursday” on 16th September, then speaking about the future of responsible business at CSR Singapore on 21st September and then keynoting at the Wellness Summit on 14th October.

Yep that was ‘SIX’ in the City, not a typo. I discovered the TV series “Sex and the City” was banned in Singapore! Which highlights something of the evolution the city state is going through. It’s becoming a hub for sharing ideas about business and sustainable development, and is a great place to visit. But a free flow of ideas is important if we are to develop insights for addressing global challenges. Satire is an important way of cutting through our assumptions, so its a pity they banned one of my all time favourite films – The Life of Brian. Hey, even Aberystwyth lifted its thirty-year old ban of the film last year…. so come on Singapore… let’s embrace satire and a bit of craziness in the name of social innovation

If you want to attend any of the events, just click on the links, and I’ll see you there. There will be more than….

Cross-sector partnering for sustainable development has been around a while now.. its 13 years since the first book on this came out, that I co-wrote with David Murphy, and 10 years since the first edited collection on the topic, which I rather artistically but confusingly titled “Terms for Endearment”.

To mark the 10 years, but also to kick start some reflection, I asked some of the contributors to Terms to provide reflections 10 years on. They all talk about how partnering became a key part of the landscape of civil society, of corporate responsibility and of sustainable development policy, but how its not achieving enough, and not as much as what we felt it could when we got excited enough to focus our time on it, as either practitioners or analysts.

That’s not to knock cross-sector partnering and the work we have done in the past or what partnerships are achieving today.. for instance, helping create the Marine Stewardship Council remains one of my career achievements, even though it was still my first year after Uni (not sure what that says about the subsequent years!) The MSC, a sustainable fishery accreditation council, is doing well, but it wont save the world’s fisheries, and so we have to reflect on what these partnerships can achieve in future to meet the scale and urgency of the challenges we face. We will be hampered in those reflections if we fall into a trap of what I call “partnerism” in a special issue of “Business Strategy and the Environment”. By “partnerism” I mean a belief, a mood even, that partnering with others is good in and of itself, so people favour being convivial and forever hopeful to keep the partnership going, rather than critically reflecting on whether it is delivering sufficient change on the ground (or in the water).

To help with that, and call for more ambitious partnering, later this year my 3rd book on the cross-sector partnering topic comes out. It seemed about time, 10 years after the last, as teaming up on the world’s problems still seems to make sense to me, and many other people, but now we really have to team up to change the rules of the game, and level the playing field…. excuse the metaphors… I borrow them from one chapter in Terms for Endearment, by Uwe Schneidewind. Back then he was writing about the need for partnerships to create coalitions for re-structuring economy and society, rather than seeing these are entirely voluntary initiatives that wouldnt impact on regulations.

Uwe is now President of the Wuppertal Institute. Indeed, the contents of Terms for Endeaarment reads like a Who’s Who of innovative thinkers in the sustainable business space, with Georg Kell now Head of the UN Global Compact, Kumi Naidoo now head of Greenpeace International, and Professors Crane, Newell and Ali all leading analysts in their field. These 3 academics, along with the world’s leading advisor on social change networks, Steve Waddell, have all provided reflections on partnering to mark the anniversary. You can read them on my consulting site:
Critical thinking on partnership: Free chapters mark ten years and
Reflections on 10 years of cross sector partnership/

You can also get a copy of the book for half price until the end of the year, as well as accessing a number of the chapters for free.

Unfortunately the first book on the topic is now something of a collectors item, if the prices on Amazon are anything to go by… Ill see if I can put in online by the end of the year.

My new book wont go over old ground, so read up on this older stuff first! Sean Ansett, who was CSR boss at Gap at the time and now has gone upmarket, with a British Luxury brand, thinks that Terms is still very relevant today…

“Ten years after Terms for Endearment was published it continues to be groundbreaking, as it provides a more nuanced analysis of cross-sectoral partnering than many studies on the subject, and maps out an agenda for corporate citizenship that continues to inspire us today. A decade ago Terms for Endearment was critical in helping me to realize the power of partnerships and that in order for sustainable development to be effective collaboration by stakeholders from distinct sectors sharing their respective experience, expertise and resources was the only way forward and that we could no longer go it alone. The partnership examples where invaluable to formulating our approach.”
- Sean Ansett

Jessica Webb is Manager: Development & Tourism Communications for the Rainforest Alliance in Costa Rica. In this interview with Dr Wayne Visser, Director of CSR International, she talks about trends in sustainability certification in forestry, agriculture and tourism. The interview took place on 20 August 2010 in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Details

• Place: London, United Kingdom
• Date: 6 October 2010
• Host: Business in the Community (BITC)
• Time: 9.30 – 16.30
• Cost: 350+VAT (BITC Members) / 490+VAT (Non-BITC Members)
• RSVP contact: Esther Toth esther.toth@bitc.org.uk
• More information or registration

Description

The One Day Introduction to CR course will provide shortcuts through the plethora of Corporate Responsibility (CR) advice available and give you a chance to reflect on what is important for your company. This specialized workshop has been designed and facilitated by Business in the Community’s most experienced staff, including Stephen Farrell, Training & Development Associate. On the day, Stephen will be joined by expert company speakers who will showcase their experiences in integrating their CSR strategies.

Our friend, colleague, and fellow blogger over at the University of Western Ontario, Mike Valente, has just posted a very informed and thought-provoking response to last week's rather incendiary article in the Wall Street Journal about why CSR is misguided. As you'll see from the 200 or so comments on the WSJ comments page, the original piece did not pose a particularly convincing argument, and as far as we're concerned, nor was it a very insightful one either. Over on his Business and Sustainability blog, Mike helpfully provides some good clear analysis of why the author is wrong, some of which we've re-posted  below. Mike also says where he agrees with the article too, but you'll have to go to Mike's original post to read that. We just like the argumentative bits.

It's great that Mike took the time to write this reply. When we first read the WSJ piece, Andy's deeply thought through response was, "this is suspiciously crtpyo-Friedmanite - he seems to think the world hasn't changed in the last 40 years". Dirk's was: "this guy is in cloud cuckoo land regarding the role of government". We didn't get much further than that.

So here's a extract from Mike's post:

Where I Disagree

1) Business as Passive Recipient: My greatest concern with this article is the author’s presumption that business merely represents a passive recipient to market and regulatory trends as reflected in his examples of the auto sector and health food sector. We’ve known for quite some time though that companies have played a proactive role in shaping the market and regulation for food, vehicles, and many other products and services. General Motors played a very influential role in curbing government imposition of taxes on gasoline so that larger gas-guzzling vehicles would still be attractive to the market. The private sector’s role in ‘killing’ the electric car was, according to many, not a result of any lack of market demand but the preservation of corporate interests, suggesting that business exercises the power to build and dismantle markets. So while I agree that companies will respond when the market demands change, I disagree that companies sit by idly in response with no influence on this market through political lobbying or strong marketing.

While it is true that companies have adapted to the changing demands of consumers in, for example, healthier food, this was not without strong corporate interest in preventing such trends through strong lobbying for regulation that supports practices that undermine the health of consumers. Examples here include the subsidization of corn and soy to support the processed food industry and the strong lobbying for the allowance of trans fat in food. And as an aside, the author’s argument that social activists have had little impact on changing company ways is unfounded. Many would argue that civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, and activists play an important role in shaping market demand and consumer behaviour in spite of corporate efforts to preserve the status quo. Consider Greenpeace’s ability to catalyze a massive boycott of Shell in 1995 or the Asian-American Free Labor Association’s ability to boycott Nike products in early 1990s. More recently, the New York Times reported that banks are becoming more wary about lending to mining companies in light of growing criticism by environmental advocates such as the Rainforest Action Network and Sierra Club.

2) Business as a Political Actor: I would argue that there are indeed situations when firms are best positioned to respond to social and ecological issues regardless of the relevance to business operations. This is especially the case in the global south where substantial public service gaps exist and companies have stepped in to fill governmental roles like, for example, the efforts of several multinational corporations in Kenya to address public service gaps after the post-election conflict in 2008. While I agree that in an ideal world, government or other public bodies may be best positioned, in reality these actors are not always available and it is instead business that finds itself better positioned (see Private, but Public WSJ, 2009). Regardless of the reality of the situation, the article implies that companies should stand by and do the responsible thing which is to continue with daily operations that maximizes profitability when its surrounding communities don’t, for example, have access to food and water.

But governmental gaps exist as a consequence of an increasingly complex socio-economic environment rather than because government has lost its capacity. Similar to the economic models that are built upon a ‘theoretical’ assumption of perfect competition, the ideal scenario of which the author speaks may not exist, however logical his argument might be. So while it is true that, in theory, “governments are a far more effective protector of the public good”, the reality is that their ability to do this is waning when we consider the rather pervasive loss of power of government to regulate and provide public services, the ability of corporations to transcend state level regulation, and the growing privatization of public services. We can either keep beating a dead horse and try to revert back to a simplistic design that relies on the separation of the public and private sectors or we can begin to adapt to the reality that these lines are blurred and business might have to be involved in the solution to these problems. This is a frightening thought of course because it suggests that a profit-making entity is influencing public discourse. The truth is that this has been happening for quite some time. Perhaps our efforts should be directed to understanding this growing phenomenon, building theories to guide it, and advising managers and policy makers how to use it to align corporate and public interests.

3) Managerial Choice to be Part of the Solution: Even when activists, NGOs, and civil society groups do exist to address some of these issues, we find that business is typically brought in as part of the solution. Many unique business models of the global south represent innovative responses, suggesting that business is not merely a passive recipient to market trends but an active player in the solution to these issues. The point is that firms represent architects in finding ways to align profit with social goals. This gets to an important presumption that the author makes regarding the view that managers do not have control over the alignment of profit with public goals and that factors beyond its control determine this alignment.

Exemplary scholars like Ed Freeman argue that it is the responsibility of business to migrate to areas that ultimately maximize value for multiple stakeholders, including shareholders, concurrently. Put another way, managerial options may not be limited to being responsible on the one hand and sacrificing profits on the other OR vice versa. A manager’s job is to think outside of the box to understand how profit maximization can take place in conjunction with the maximization of value for different stakeholders; stakeholders who represent social interests. So, for example, let’s say an automotive manufacturer is pondering their next line of vehicles to be designed and manufactured. The author’s view is that the firm can do one of two things – either ‘responsibly’ make a green car at the expense of profits because no market yet exists or maximize profitability and make an SUV where the market currently resides. As already mentioned, companies have a very strong ability to create new markets and influence public policy in a way that shapes society’s behaviours. To Freeman and others, the challenge of business is to find a way to make responsibility (or ethical behaviour) and profitability commensurable. So being responsible here may involve pushing for regulation that supports sustainable vehicles and building marketing campaigns that educate the market about such products and thus make such strategies profitable.

In sum, the views put forward in the WSJ article, while relevant at a time when public and private roles were distinct and clearly defined, are quite outdated. It may be time to let go of the theoretical niceties associated with pigeonholing roles and responsibilities to different actors and recognize that the blurring lines between them may represent a future reality that requires the attention of managers, business scholars, and policy makers. Enough said.

Photo by Adran MB. Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence

Some multi-stakeholder processes lose energy when they over-emphasize the importance of agreement.  A lethargy takes over and participants drift away because they believe these processes to be unproductive.  Others fall apart because people hold tightly onto their own perspectives and goals, allowing no room for integrating and transcending—and so participants leave believing that they are right and others wrong.  For Adam Kahane of Reos Partners, the first exemplifies a degenerative form of love, the second one of power.

Adam Kahane is a globally pre-eminent large and complex systems change practitioner.  He’s worked on such multi-stakeholder issues as climate change in Canada, civil discord in Guatemala and Colombia, child nutrition in India, and sustainable food globally.  Knowing him for a decade, one of the qualities I’ve always appreciated is his reflectiveness about his own work.  In his new book, Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change, he speaks of stumbling and falling…as well as walking.  And thereby reveals valuable insight for change networks.

Why focus on power and love?  “I’m trying to reclaim them as useful words,” he explains. “In most real settings, both of these drives are present. They are present at all scales – individuals, teams, organizations, sectors, societies.  By naming them I’m trying to make them more visible and discussable so people can work with them…and move back and forth between them fluidly.”

Power is about distinctness, individuality and action from that perspective.  Love is about union and joining together.   Adam cites Martin Luther King Jr.’s insight that  “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”  Power associated with an individual or stakeholder group often is power “over” as in controlling and limiting, but it can also be power “to” as with self-realization and action.  Love is associated with the greater good;   it is generative when it nurtures and supports us to grow, and degenerative when it suffocates power and action.

Leadership, power and love

“In working with diverse groups,” says Adam, “it’s helpful to think of leadership as holding activity moving back and forth between power and love.  In most settings the starting point is power dominating love…people are doing their own thing without a sense of connection of understanding wholeness.  So the first moves must be love moves: moves to overcome separation.  Most multi-stakeholder practitioners know about the love moves…sitting in a circle, having people engage personally with one another, having people put forward and find connections between their different perspectives…these are all love moves that reunite the separated…as are integrative activities such as systems mapping, learning journeys, team-building and other unity-revealing activities.

“Look at a typical repertoire of a facilitator, and it’s dominated by love moves.  The danger and common stumbling point, is that we move from power dominating love to the opposite extreme of love dominating power, which is harder to see as a problem.  It shows up as togetherness stifling action…sentimental and anemic.  Such as when people say ‘its lovely meeting you, but we’re not getting anywhere and we’re not able to deal with our differences.’  At that point the leader must be as comfortable with power moves as with love moves.

“I’m amazed at how many groups say they can’t deal with difference…it is seen as threatening.   One of the crucial neglected competencies is to make power moves.  Two of the most well-known group processes superficially look similar…but world café (a conversation process) is a love move to integrate and create common thinking; (whereas) open space (a process of a group dividing into particular interests) is a power move.  Whenever anyone says ‘Actually I don’t see it that way, I want to go in a different direction.’ – that’s a power move.  Power moves articulate difference, and have it discussable and permissible and actionable.

“Love dominating power shows up as rejecting and ignoring difference…saying ‘you have to leave your own agenda at the door’  This is a terrible and fatal misunderstanding.  In the climate change work in Canada…we were not talking about non-partisan, but multi-partisan activity…not asking people to put aside their interests, but to bring their interests and see how to move together,” he recalls.

This fluidity must be integrated into the core logic of change networks by creating rhythms and cycles moving between love and power.  Power actions of division are exemplified with stakeholder groups meeting on their own to identify their needs, and with individual local teams taking local action.  The love actions of union involve bringing the diverse groups together to transcend their individual needs (incorporating them into something bigger), and project teams sharing their experiences and making themselves accountable to the community-wide perspectives.

“The mental model,” says Adam, “is that we’re dealing with problems that can be solved by thinking through, finding the answer, and moving into mechanical implementation…(that approach) is widespread and appropriate in some situations, but not in most complex, problematic social situations.  We need to keep shifting between power and love.”

You can also see and hear Adam

Title: World Inc.

Author:  Bruce Piasecki

Publisher:  Sourcebooks, Inc.

Publication Date: 2007

Pages: 304

Bruce Piasecki has subtitled this book “How the growing power of business is revolutionising profits, people and the future of both” and the statistics he provides in the beginning truly suggest a revolution.  The author puts forward these numbers – 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world are now corporations, not nations; the top 300 multinational corporations control 25 percent of total global assets; only 21 nations have gross domestic products larger than the annual sales revenue of each of the six largest multinational corporations.  Impressed? It seems only natural that in this changed world, it is the multinational corporations that hold the key to solving global problems, and not just governments or states.

The author goes through three parts in his book, where he first speaks of ‘the quiet revolution’ and focuses on the idea of social response capitalism and social response product development.  He then talks about ‘redefining leadership’ and features case studies from Toyota and GE, among others.  The third and final part is called ‘People, Inc’ where HP is used as a good example and other issues are explored, such as the market at the bottom of the pyramid.

In World Inc, Bruce Piasecki explores issues of responsibility and talks about how ‘following the money’ can lead to solutions.  While the book is not a gripping page-turner in the way it’s written, the author occasionally throws out ideas and numbers that make the reader sit up and think.  The book is also supported by a useful website, which features additional material on some of the issues explored in the book.  Piasecki offers his readers a lot of food for thought and seems to predict a new future, where businesses will begin to provide products and services that embody social values, simply because this is where the profits will lie.  Are you ready for a glimpse into the revolutionised business world of the future?

Reviewed by Nazareth Seferian, CSR International

Title: Primal Management

Author:  Paul Herr

Publisher: AMACOM

Publication Date: 2009

Pages:  288

The view—not to mention the location—was totally and completely mind boggling.

A full-page advertisement in, of all places, that refuge and champion of free-market capitalism—none other than The Wall Street Journal—and paid for by the paper’s corporate parent, Dow Jones. An oversized, two-colour headline proclaimed “MEET THE NEW BOSS”, followed by a striking portrait of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary thought and author of The Origin of Species. The ad told readers, “In today’s environment, only the fittest sales organizations survive. Ensure your survival.”

Huh? What’s going on here? After 150 years of Darwinian thought, has the Capitalist Establishment finally gotten natural selection’s message?

Paul Herr, corporate consultant, seems at first to be another unlikely source of Darwinian wisdom. He’s been advising business for three decades, focusing mainly on employee engagement. Ah, but there’s the clue—how to get employees deeply engaged in their work and committed to their company’s goals. And why is that a tell-tale clue?

Because Herr believes he has found the secret, one buried discreetly but actually in plain view if you know where and especially how to look for it.

Darwin himself might have written Primal Management for it charts a behavioural and organizational pathway laid down by long-term evolutionary forces at the very core of management decision making. Herr’s unique contribution is to update Darwin’s own views of emotions’ importance by constructing a neurogenetic emotion-based toolkit for managers who are looking for ways to enhance the productivity of their companies. Feed the five key socio-emotional appetites he identifies; heed the emotional physics driving a company’s workforce; let emotional intelligence share organisational space with pragmatic rationality – then stand back and watch your company soar far beyond its competitors.

Primal Management is without doubt the best extant example of Natural Corporate Management in action – a practical, usable, workable guide for managers who want to harness the power of human emotions to enhance their firms’ market success while simultaneously serving society’s broader needs – all of this in the name of Darwin himself. The Wall Street Journal seems to have gotten it right after all: Meet the New Boss!

Adapted from a review by William C. Frederick

(Full version available at http://www.williamcfrederick.com/articles%20archive/Herr+Review.pdf)

Title: The World Guide to CSR

Edited by: Wayne Visser and Nick Tolhurst

Publisher: Greenleaf Publishing

Publication Date: 2010

Pages: 512

Planning your vacation to Finland? You might like to know that Fortum, Kesko, Neste Oil and Nokia are leading-light corporates practicing CSR in that country. Want to keep up with the CSR news whilst travelling in Austria? The Glocalist offers a daily online newspaper, weekly digital magazine and monthly print magazine. Taking a business trip to Tanzania? You might find it worth consideration that Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world and faces a mature, generalized HIV pandemic. Looking for a milk supplier in Pakistan? Try The Dairy Project. This is the fifth largest producer of milk in the world, with 1,066 trained rural women (as at end 2008) in 594 villages trained as lady livestock workers. The point is that wherever you are in the world, the World Guide to CSR will prime you on what is most important to know about CSR. 58 countries are profiled in detailed analyses which contain a contextual country background, priority issues, trends, legislation and codes, organizations promoting CSR, key company case studies and educational establishments and programs. The book is headed up by 5 regional profiles of Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East which draw out the regional key themes according to the same structure used for the local profiles. What more could you want?

The impressive list of contributors to this volume, 87 in all, are the crème de la crème of CSR knowledge and include leading academics, business people and practitioners from all over the global village. The country profiles are of a exceedingly high quality, offering a local flavor and sometimes even a little local language (tzedakah, the Hebrew word for charity; “sanpo yoshi” – “three-way good” in Japan; choregia, the ancient form of sponsorship in Greece; “ubuntu” in Southern Africa, which relates to community culture, to name but a few examples). The profiles are superbly edited to give consistency of scope and depth, country by country.

Why is this book useful? It serves as a start-point for any study of CSR anywhere in the world, as each profile contains an impressive list of links and references. It is a learning aid because the local case studies provide outlines of the key CSR activities by key corporates – the leading edge of CSR around the world. It serves as a guide for those wanting to develop their own CSR programs.

The only thing missing in this book? A list of socially responsible ice-cream parlors in each country.

Review by Elaine Cohen, Beyond Business Ltd.

Originally published on CSRwire.com on 13th August 2010

Date

August 2010

Contents

• The World Guide to CSR edited by Wayne Visser and Nick Tolhurst (Review by Elaine Cohen)
• Primal Management by Paul Herr (Review by William C. Frederick)
• World Inc. by Bruce Piasecki (Review by Nazareth Seferian)

About CSRI Research Digests

This Digest is prepared by CSR International as a free service to its subscribed members. The views expressed in this Digest in no way reflect those of CSR International, nor does CSR International endorse or vouch for the quality or accuracy of any third party research included. For more information on CSR International, membership or the Digests, please go to www.csrinternational.org or email info@csrinternational.org.

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CSRI Book Review Digest (August 2010)

This is an interview by Alda Marina Campos, Director of Pares in Brazil, in which she asks Dr Wayne Visser, Director of CSR International, various questions about insights from his CSR Quest world tour and trends in CSR. The interview took place on 6 August 2010 in Rio de Janeiro.

Part 1

Part 2

CSR International Top 100 Leaders: Ranked 94 in 2009

Professor Michael Hopkins is CEO and Chairman of MHC International Ltd., a research and service company that specializes in social development issues for the public and private sector. The company works in three major areas: Labor markets, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and macro-economic advice.

Michael Hopkins is a noted CSR practitioner who has worked and advised on CSR with various international organizations, NGOs and multinational companies, inter alia, United Nations Development Program, the International Labour Organization, the World Bank, British Telecom, BP, Nestle, Manpower and the Egyptian Government on CSR strategies. He has also worked on human resources and labor market issues in over 120countries around the world, inter alia, Colombia, Brazil, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Dubai, South Africa, Malaysia, China, Philippines.

Hopkins has published extensively on macro economic and social development issues numerous articles and ninebooks. His most recent book is Corporate Social Responsibility and International Development: Is Business the Solution (Earthscan, London, 2006; Stylus, New York, 2007).

Michael is Professor of Corporate Responsibility and Business Performance (CRBP) at Middlesex University Business School and Visiting Professor at Brunel and Geneva Universities.

Previously appointments include Senior Economist for 11 years with the ILO in Geneva, where he helped developed the ILO’s research programme on social development, software scientist with IBM, operational researcher with ITT, Research Fellow at IDS, University of Sussex, UK, Lecturer in Economics at University of Valle in Colombia

Hopkins is a keynote speaker at large international conferences and holds Masters degrees in Mathematics and Statistics and a Doctoral Degree in Labor Economics from the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

 We've just posted online our introduction to CSR from our 2008 text co-written with Laura Spence, Corporate Social Responsibility: Readings and Cases in a Global Context. It's available for free download here at  the Social Science Research Network, albeit only in the pre-typeset version.  In the paper we examine the nature and definition of CSR, and its emergence in different national and organizational contexts. It should be a good basic CSR 101 for anyone trying to get their head's around the subject.

Of course, the question of what corporate social responsibility (CSR) is should be pretty straighforward. It is obvious that CSR is about the stuff that companies do to improve society, right? Or at least what they do to make it less worse. Or perhaps its what they tell us they're doing to make things better, but in reality they're not really doing much of because its expensive, uncompetitive, and difficult. Or maybe its what they should be doing, or doing more of, if only they were a little more, well.... responsible.

So 'what is CSR' is a deceptively difficult question to answer. It almost immediately brings up questions of whether firms have particular types of responsibilities, what those repsonsibilities are, how much firms should be doing, for who, and why. In fact it is easier to come up with a list of questions rather than a simple short definition that pleases everyone.

Still, that's no excuse for ducking the question. Our approach in the CSR introduction paper is not to get too caught up in definitions, but to explore what unites the different definitions that are out there and use that to identify the core characteristics of CSR. In all, we identify six of these components, as shown in the figure below. To find out more, just take a read of the paper....

 
This figure is not actually in the chapter, but feel free to use and reproduce under a non-commercial creative commons licence, giving appropriate citation to the original source of the idea.

I’ve lived in quite a few different places over the years (Switzerland, NY, Arizona, multiple locations in Germany, etc.) and everywhere I’ve been, I’ve had some pretty interesting neighbors.  In some places, it was really easy to meet people (almost too easy sometimes).  In other places, it was a bit harder.

In today’s increasingly transient world, people don’t stay in 1 place for a very long time and neighborly relationships are getting harder & harder to forge.

A few years ago, Robert Putnam warned in Bowling Alone that our stock of social capital - the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities.   Here are some depressing/interesting factoids from the book:

• Every ten minutes of commuting reduces all forms of social capital by 10%
• Joining and participating in one group cuts in half your odds of dying next year
• Watching commercial entertainment TV is the only leisure activity where doing more of it is associated with lower social capital.

Encouragingly, a new generation of peer to peer online businesses are helping connect “people to neighbors” and reverse the “Bowling Alone” trend.  The NYT recently reported on a couple of interesting new web start-ups that allow people to share/rent their stuff.  NeighborGoods, Snapgoods & sharesomesugar are clawing out niches in the “rent online” world or “access economy.”  Both sites have a very social bent and promote saving $$, resources & rebuilding local community (all good ideas in the current zombieconomy).  Oh, and ladies, please check out this one bagborroworsteal (renting high-end handbags).

I can definitely see these sites working well in college towns and cities.  It will be interesting to see if the e-borrowing concept catches traction beyond the urban areas.  Will Ebay decides to step in and offer a “rent” instead of “buy/sell” section of their site as well?

Having a great reputation helps to sell online & offline.  It always has.  Just being a good neighbor & being a little more social offline can help turn around the very depressing “bowling alone” social capital funk we’ve been in over the past few decades.

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• Neighborly Borrowing, Over the Online Fence (nytimes.com)
• SnapGoods: How Do You Build Trust Into A System? (treehugger.com)
• Micki Krimmel: Why I Stopped Asking You to Vote for NeighborGoods in the Pepsi Refresh Challenge (huffingtonpost.com)
• Why NeighborGoods Matters (mickipedia.com)
• Hyperlocal US news site TBD.com launched (newstatesman.com)

Alvaro Esteves is Director of Ekobe. In this interview with Dr Wayne Visser, Director of CSR International, he talks about his experiences working with companies in sustainability and social innovation working in the favelas. The interview took place on 6 August 2010.

10 years following publication of “Terms for Endearment: Business, NGOs and Sustainable Development” we share reflections from 3 experts in cross-sector partnering, who contributed to the original book. Their chapters are available for free from Greenleaf to mark the anniversary (see the links below). The reflections are from Professor Peter Newell, a leading academic commentator on climate governance Steve Waddell begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting, a leading convening and advisor of global action networks, and Associate Professor Saleem Ali, a leading analyst of responsible mining. All of these engaged and engaging intellectuals call for a serious reflection on what cross-sector partnering is achieving with a view to more ambitious system-change oriented collaborations.

Reflections from Professor Andrew Crane, along with information on a new journal on the pitfalls and future of partnering that is co-edited by Jem Bendell (the editor of Terms for Endearment), is available online. Terms for Endearment is half price until the end of this anniversary year. Bendell’s new book on transformative partnering will be published later this year.

Peter Newell: Reflections on “Globalisation and the new politics of sustainable development”

When I wrote my contribution for the book Terms of Endearment I was working as a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University and interested in how globalisation in all its forms impacted upon our collective ability to meet the challenges of sustainable development. This basic concern continues to underpin my work on the role of business and markets in environmental governance and particularly the ways in which this can be made to work for the benefit of poorer and excluded groups.

For me this book in many ways captured a particular moment around the late 1990s in which NGOs and TNCs were encountering one another in novel and innovative ways through collaboration and engagement as well as conflict and protest around issues of social and environmental responsibility in a global(ising) economy. While the novelty of the encounter is no longer there for many companies or civil society groups, the agenda of civil regulation and corporate social and environmental responsibility has evolved in a series of interesting directions which have brought with them new challenges. Despite the critiques and cynicism regarding the worth or CSR measures, many of them valid, they continue to proliferate and develop in new sectors and areas of the world going well beyond ‘do no harm’ to tackling complex development issues such as corruption and mineral extraction. As they have done so the boundaries between the responsibilities of states and corporations in particular have become very blurred especially in the many parts of the world where state capacity is weak or effectively not existent. Together with other colleagues I have explored the challenges of what CSR can and cannot do for development in special issues of the journal International Affairs (2005) Third World Quarterly (2007) and Development and Change (2008).

The depth and reach of CSR now has to address new geo-political and economic realities to do with the rise of countries with relatively recent or weak traditions of CSR such as China and India, whose firms compete with many European and North American firms that have taken on board the importance of CSR, but where many of the drivers of CSR (threat of regulation, shareholder activism, civil society pressure are less apparent). It also has to deal with the reality that that the very basis on which growth is fuelled (literally) has to change if we are to address climate change effectively. Simply put, business as usual cannot be sustained. Climate change an issue which has shot up the agenda of many companies, initially as threat but increasingly also for many as an opportunity to meet rising demand for low-carbon goods and services. But determining, calculating and allocating responsibility in a highly inter-dependent, yet highly unequal, global economy presents a challenge of staggering proportions. These issues have been explored in recent books on Governing Climate Change and Climate Capitalism.

Since writing my contribution to Terms of Endearment I have looked into the role of businesses as political actors in relation to specific issues such as crop biotechnologies and climate change, looked at their CSR activities in country-settings such as India and Argentina and sought to move the debate from one about discretional responsibility to one about accountability and the nature of the social contract between state, market and civil society. I have worked with many different businesses, NGOs, international institutions and research organisations in relation to specific aspects of these issues. My current job as Professor of International Development at the University of East Anglia and membership of the board of trustees at the One World Trust allows me to work with such an interesting range of actors in this field. But I continue to be driven by an underlying interest in whether, how and when markets can be made to address poverty alleviation and environmental degradation which defines my research, teaching and advocacy. For me this basic concern will determine whether collectively we can respond to ‘wicked’ problems such as hunger, poverty and environmental degradation. Let’s hope that in another ten years we have made more progress than in the last ten years since the book was published.

Read Peter’s chapter for free at: http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/content/pdfs/terms_newell.pdf

Steve Waddell: Reflections on “Complementary resources: the win-win rationale for partnership with NGOs”

The original piece was the product of an intense period of questioning about the legitimacy and value of distinguishing between business, government and civil society. Why three sectors, and not four? Where do they come from? Are they global, or a product of just Western or industrial/post-industrial economies? What opportunities might they present, if their core competencies are truly distinctive and well understood? How can they work together to respond to the deep change challenges represented by sustainability insights? I was fortunate to have received substantial funding to carry out these investigations globally.

The end of this period of work in terms of publishing came in 2005 with my book Societal Learning and Change. The meta-level learning is represented by the Societal Learning and Change matrix. One of its implications is that societal-level change requires engagement across the sectors. And it requires change in individuals, organizations, the sectors themselves and the three key systems of society.

The Societal Learning and Change Matrix

Societal – Political Systems – Economic Systems – Social Systems
Sectoral – The State Sector – The Market Sector – The Social Sector
Organizational – Government agencies – Businesses – Community-based Orgs.
Individual – Mentally centered – Physically centered – Emotionally centered

One key insight came from work by Sandra Seagal (Human Dynamics) and many educators who classify individuals as being dominantly one of three types of learners:
- The mentally-centered learners deal with abstractions and concepts (like the Table!); they tend to dominate government organizations which are charged with developing laws and enforcing them by deciding whether people are acting inside or outside of “the rules”.
- The physically-centered learners (kinesthetic) learn by seeing, touching and feeling – they are the “seeing-is-believing” people who tend to dominate business which focuses on physical, quantifiable outcomes.
- The emotionally-centered learners are those who know reality when they feel it in their hearts, and when they are emotionally moved. These people tend to dominate community-based organizations that work on issues of justice, culture and long-term sustainability.

This means that the differences between business, government and civil society arise from inherent differences in individuals, and the way they make sense of the world and learn. Therefore embracing diversity should include embracing these different ways of making sense of the world. Change strategies must respond to these different ways of making sense.

The end of this period in terms of my work came in 2000, when I made a modest contribution to a report to Kofi Annan titled Critical Choices: The United Nations, networks, and the future of global governance. This led me to the past decade of work with global multi-stakeholder change networks I call Global Action Networks (GANs). This period of work is being summarized in a book coming out the fall of 2010 titled Global Action Networks: Creating our future together. These GANs represent a major organizational innovation, as different from the three sectors as they are from each other. They include the Forest Stewardship Council, Transparency International and the Global Compact. They are forming an increasingly dense network of global, cross-sector and cross-issue connections. This web of business, government and civil society organizations is perhaps our best hope for addressing the profound challenges facing our planet, and creating a wealthy, just and sustainable future.

Read Steve’s chapter for free at: http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/content/pdfs/terms_waddell.pdf

Saleem H Ali: Reflections on Shades of green: mining, NGOs and the pursuit of negotiating power

A decade ago when I wrote my contribution for Jem Bendell’s edited volume “Terms of Endearment,” I was a doctoral student at MIT and just beginning to delve into research on environmental resistance movements to mining development. The tenuous relationships between NGOs, Businesses and Government were beginning to be studied by social scientists and Bendell’s volume was among the earliest to consider the topic from an integrative management perspective. Much has changed since the publication of the book. Large environmental NGOs have become far more willing to embrace corporate partnerships and this has led to some fractures within civil society. Smaller and more politically strident NGOs are critiquing the big players of “selling out” and being accomplices in “greenwash.” Indigenous identity, which was the topic of my chapter in the volume, has acquired greater salience since the establishment of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous People, and national apology resolutions to Aboriginal peoples in Australia and the United States. Indeed, the fracturing of environmental narratives along indigenous rights versus environmental conservation have become more acute.

Reevaluating the partnerships between NGOs and the business community in these troubled times is urgently needed. Businesses and NGOs need to assess their “Terms of Endearment” with a retrospective that considers the shortcomings of the relationship between the private sector and civil society. Moving from positional idealism to principled pragmatism is essential in this regard. Novel transnational accountability systems, such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) are beginning to emerge and deserve our attention for further study and reflection. New forms of civil society organizations such as the Publis What You Pay Coalition and the Revenue Watch Institute are coupling their efforts with such para-governmental and industry-led efforts. The success of such collaborations will depend on going back to some of the fundamental lessons in “Terms of Endearment.”

Read Saleem’s chapter for free at: http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/content/pdfs/terms_ali.pdf

Other Free Sections from the Book:

Foreword, Anita Roddick, then Founder and Co-Chair, The Body Shop International; Founder, New Academy of Business, UK
Foreword, Georg Kell, then Senior Officer, Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General.
Foreword, Kumi Naidoo, then President, CIVICUS
Introduction: Working with stakeholder pressure for sustainable development, Jem Bendell, Director, Lifeworth and Lifeworth Consulting, and Associate Professor, Griffith Business School.

Biographies of the contributors:

Peter Newell, Professor of International Development. Peter is an academic, consultant, teacher and activist working on the politics of environment and development. He has previously worked at Friends of the Earth, Climate Network Europe and for academic institutions in the UK and Argentina including Oxford, Warwick and Sussex universities and FLACSO Argentina. He is currently Professor of International Development at the University of East Anglia and in 2008 was awarded an ESRC Climate Change Leadership Fellow to work on The Governance of Clean Development (www.clean-development.com). His work on CSR and corporate accountability has been published in journals such as Development and Change, Third World Quarterly and International Affairs. On climate change he has conducted research and policy work for the governments of the UK, Sweden and Finland as well as international organisations such as UNDP and GEF. His books include Climate for Change: Non State Actors and the Global Politics of the Greenhouse (CUP, 2000) The Business of Global Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2005) Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability (Zed Books, 2006) Climate Capitalism (CUP, 2010) and Governing Climate Change (Routledge, 2010).

Steve Waddell, Principal, Networking Action. Responding to the 21st century’s enormous global challenges and its unsurpassed opportunities require new ways of acting and organizing. Through NetworkingAction I respond to these opportunities with consulting, education, research, and personal leadership. I focus upon business-government-civil society collaborations to produce innovation, enhance impact, and build new capacity. This may be local, national and/or global; the issue arenas are varied. I have done this for more than 20 years. Two key concepts are associated with my work: “societal learning and change,” which is a deep change strategy to address chronic and complex issues; and Global Action Networks (GANs), which are an emerging form of global governance that addresses issues requiring deep change. I have many publications, including the book Societal Learning and Change: Innovation with Multi-Stakeholder Strategies (2005); another book, Networking Action: Organizing for the 21st Century, is in development. I have a Ph.D. in sociology and an MBA.

Saleem H. Ali is associate professor of environmental planning at the University of Vermont (USA) and the author most recently of “Treasures of the Earth; Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future.” (Yale University Press, 2009). http://www.treasurebook.info

A terrible tale of negligence is emerging from the Chilean mines disaster. The mining company San Esteban Primera says it cannot even pay the wages of the trapped miners, let alone fund their rescue. So the government steps in.

It would have been cheaper for the company to pay for health and safety measures beforehand. But the global price for copper seems not to be able to sustain this. And a better use of government revenues would have been to enforce health and safety monitoring in the first place, rather than pick up the tab for a disaster afterwards.

Aneel Karnani has produced a coherent analysis of the predicament of CSR: if it makes money, business will do it anyway; if it doesn’t, CSR won’t happen. The main solution to ensuring social needs get met is regulation, supported by campaigning. This is another branch of the well-trodden path taken by David Henderson, Milton Friedman and others. It’s depressing, but is it right?

In large part – yes. This position is upsetting to those promoting CSR because it presumes that there is no general purpose business case for CSR, which can always commercially justify an ethical stance. There isn’t: slavery made some people a lot of money.

Yet there are many subtleties around the edges of the dichotomy as the positioning of the market within society changes. Not only do new markets constantly emerge, but market behaviour is permeated and influenced (to some extent) by social values. The function of ‘social enterprise’ is a case in point. What was once entirely innovative and on the leading ethical edge of the market can move into the mainstream. This is happening to fair trade at the moment.

Content

• Group Launched to Put Consumers First (CSRwire)
• EU Quietly Continues Renewables Revolution (BusinessGreen)
• Greenhouse Gas Calculator Connects Farming Practices with Carbon Credits (Environmental Expert)
• Efficient Waste Management Would Reduce Emissions (Environmental Expert)
• FTC’s Green Guides Could Nullify Environmental Seals of Approval (Environmental Leader)
• California Businesses Join Forces to Create Clean Energy Alliance (Environmental Leader)
• Electricity from Water Vapor May Become Viable Power Source (EcoSeed)

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CSRI News Digest (Week 4, August 2010)

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This Digest is prepared by CSR International as a free service to its subscribed members, with articles selected from variety of sources, including CSRwire and SustainabilityForum.com. The Digest should not be reproduced or forwarded without the permission of CSR International. The views expressed in this Digest in no way reflect those of CSR International, nor does CSR International endorse or vouch for the quality or accuracy of any third party research included. For more information on CSR International, membership or the Digests, please go to www.csrinternational.org or email info@csrinternational.org.