Skip to main content

corporate social responsibility

Who cares about Bangladesh? 3. Kevin McKague’s doctoral research on how to make markets work for the poor

Published by

This is a re-post. Kevin will be adding some photos and a short comment. This past term at York, Kevin organized a seminar series about Sustainable Value Creation. If you want to learn more about how to be a responsible, activist consumer, please check out the work of the speakers that Kevin brought to York.

"Congratulations to long-time IRIS Senior Research Fellow, now Dr. Kevin McKague, on a successful defence of his dissertation last week.

Kevin's research has focused on micro finance and farmers in Bangladesh. Some of Kevin's research will be published in the journal, California Management Review (McKague and Oliver, 2012 vol 55 no 1. pp. 98-129. Enhanced Market Practices: Poverty Alleviation for Poor Producers in Developing Countries)

Over the years, Kevin has been active in the IRIS community and has brought in excellent seminar speakers including a wonderful talk on microfinance by speakers from MEDA, the Mennonite Economic Development Association.

Here is his dissertation title and abstract.

Kevin's PhD. is titled, Making Markets Work for the Poor: Market-Based Approaches to Poverty Alleviation as Institutional Leveraging and Redistribution of Social Control

Interest in market-based approaches to reduce poverty has grown substantially in the last decade. To date, however, explanations in the management literature of how this can be achieved have focused on viewing the poor as consumers at the base of the economic pyramid, as microentrepreneurs in need of microfinance loans, and as potential employees of local small and medium-sized enterprises. Missing from the core of the management conversation has been an adequate understanding of the poor as primary producers and an explanation that situates them within their broader market and institutional context. Drawing on an in-depth study of market-based poverty alleviation initiatives for smallholder farmers by a non-governmental organization in a least developed economy, this dissertation offers the first theoretical model to explain the process by which a non-state organization can strategically enhance market practices in ways that reduce poverty for poor producers and improve overall market functioning. Findings suggest that meaningful improvements in income can be explained by the enhancement of market practices that redistribute social control toward poor producers in ways that reduce market and government failures. In addition, data revealed that the effectiveness of market development and poverty alleviation strategies is moderated by the extent of institutional leveraging to incentivize market changes in alignment with existing norms and logics. The model offers an integrated explanation of how market-based approaches can alleviate poverty and grow inclusive markets for poor producers. Findings suggest a number of business implications, including the importance of rebalancing power relations and enhancing productivity throughout an entire value chain. In addition, findings contribute to the literatures on business and poverty alleviation and the literatures on institutional change."

Dawn Bazely

Who cares about Bangladesh? 1. Consumers and human security in the Global South

Published by

The collapse of a poorly-constructed building and the deaths of many garment workers in a textile factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has many Canadians talking, because some of the clothes sold in Canada, by the Joe Fresh brand, of Loblaws, were made in this factory.

The poor working conditions and wages, along with prior indications of cracks in the building, pointing to its instability, has prompted global and Canadian media to ask the question "will this change how you buy your clothes?" and articles with titles like, "Is your wardrobe killing Bangladeshis, or saving them?".

Garment Factory in Bangladesh

Photograph  by Fahad Faisal, via Wikimedia Commons 

I managed to get onto the CBC Noon radio phone in, last Friday (that's me at 17:40 mins into the podcast, What is the cost of a bargain?), to explain that I try to buy Canadian labels and locally manufactured clothes, that I encourage my kids to understand how much work goes into sewing clothes (please bring back Home Economics to schools!), and to ask questions in those mall chain stores, that in my opinion, are full of cheaply manufactured, but expensive goods, about their corporate social responsibility policies and fair-trade practices....  (seriously, I do..!).

The issues of sustainability - economic, social and environmental - are at the heart of this tragedy. This building collapse and high death toll has brought unwelcome publicity for Loblaws, who is sending senior representatives from its supply chain team to the factory, to Dhaka, in an effort to understand what caused the tragedy.  The renewed conversations and debates about the role of the consumer and corporations in affecting the livelihoods and working conditions of people in the Global South, are, in my opinion, most welcome, not least because this disaster highlights the complexity of this issue and the fact that it is a "wicked problem" with no easy solution. We must remember, for example, that Loblaws, is, in many respects an exemplary company, when it comes to leadership on sustainability issues: its Sustainable Seafood Initiative, and the Oceans for Tomorrow campaign, in partnership with the Marine Stewardship Council and World Wildlife Fund Canada, is a marvellous programme, that has resulted in increased consumption of certified sea food in my home - after many years of trying to NOT eat down the food chain.

Bangladesh, its people, its environment, and sustainability, have been in the minds of us at IRIS and the York University community over the years, as highlighted in many events and activities.

This is the first in a series in which I will be updating and re-posting blogs from the past, highlighting the issues faced by Bangladeshis, and the efforts of colleagues, here and abroad to bring attention to these complex challenges and propose solutions.

Dawn Bazely

DISCLAIMER - in the interests of transparency, I should say that my husband, Dr. Peter Ewins, works for WWF Canada. I, myself, undertook my first fundraising campaign for WWF UK when I was 11 years old! BUT, this doesn't mean that I have given WWF a 100% thumbs-up on all of its policies, programmes and actions over the last 40 years - there is always room for improvement.

 

Should a company’s ability to influence enjoyment of human rights give rise to a responsibility to do so?

Published by

Three years ago I was involved as an observer in the drafting of the ISO 26000 guide on Social Responsibility. The guide was prepared by an international working group of 450 representatives of business, labour, government, NGOs and other interests from 99 countries and 42 international organizations.  The early drafts of the guide contained language suggesting that an organization’s responsibility to do something about human rights varies with (among other things) its ability to influence the perpetrators of human rights violations. One passage, for example, stated that

"there will be situations where an organization’s ability to influence others will be accompanied by a responsibility to exercise that influence…. Generally, the responsibility for exercising influence increases with the ability to influence."

This struck me as intuitively right. Companies (and other organizations) often have special relationships either with third parties who are in a position to violate human rights (governments, suppliers, security contractors, etc.), or those whose rights are violated (employees, local community members, etc.). In such circumstances it seemed intuitive that, if companies had leverage over third parties through their webs of relationships, they ought to exercise such leverage to improve the human rights situation even if they, themselves, were not contributing directly to any human rights violations.

UN Special Representative John Ruggie

I was surprised, therefore, when the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative on business and human rights, Professor John Ruggie, objected strenuously to this aspect of the draft ISO 26000 guide.  He argued that a company’s size, resources and power do not determine its human rights responsibilities, otherwise big corporations could be called upon to protect and promote human rights simply because they had the ability to do so despite having no connection to or involvement in the human rights abuses in question. This, he argued, would require assuming, in moral philosophy terms, that “can implies ought.” He also argued that this approach was conceptually vague, difficult to operationalize, and susceptible to strategic gaming by companies and governments alike.

In response to Professor Ruggie’s concerns, the leadership of the ISO 26000 working group rewrote the portions of the guide dealing with influence and leverage. Many references to responsibility arising from and increasing with the ability to influence other actors’ decisions and activities were removed.  The changes were endorsed by the working group at its final meeting in Copenhagen in the Spring of 2010, and later that year the final version of ISO 26000 was published with the approved of a large majority of ISO member bodies.

This was not the end of the story as far as I was concerned. I still found appealing the proposition that corporate leverage—a company’s ability to influence the actions of third parties through its relationships—gives rise to corporate responsibility in certain circumstances. I turned to the business ethics and moral philosophy literature for confirmation of my intuition. To my surprise, no one seemed to have tackled this question head on. Plenty of scholars had touched on aspects of the problem—the general relationship between power and moral responsibility, the concept of “silent complicity,” the idea of corporate “spheres of influence,” and so on—but no one had presented a systematic moral argument for the proposition that leverage, in certain circumstances, gives rise to responsibility.

Corporate "leverage" gives rise to responsibility where there is a morally significant connection between the company and a rights-holder or rights-violator, the company is able to make a difference, it can do so at modest cost, and the threat to human rights is substantial.

So I set out to supply the argument myself. Drawing on venerable moral debates about a bystander’s duty to come to the rescue of someone in distress and on excellent work by contemporary business ethicist Florian Wettstein about positive moral responsibilities to speak out against human rights abuses, I developed a theory of leverage-based corporate human rights responsibility. I argue that leverage gives rise to responsibility where four conditions are satisfied: (1) there is a morally significant connection between the company and a rights-holder or rights-violator, (2) the company is able to make a contribution to ameliorating the situation, (3) it can do so at modest cost, and (4) the threat to human rights is substantial.

While the proposition that leverage equals responsibility remains highly controversial in the global business community and was rejected by Professor Ruggie in his work as UN Special Representative, I believe it is both morally sound and consistent with leading global frameworks for corporate social responsibility, including the UN Global Compact, ISO 26000 and Professor Ruggie’s own Guiding Principles on business and human rights, endorsed this past summer by the UN Human Rights Council.

If you are interested in reading more about my argument, the paper is available from SSRN (click on "One Click Download") and is forthcoming soon in the Business Ethics Quarterly. I welcome your comments.

Sleeping Children Around the World: a sustainable charity

Published by

In a meeting last week, a colleague challenged me that not all academic research is related to sustainability.  "Not so!" I declared. "Sure, you can do very tightly, and narrowly focused research on a very specific topic, that clearly has nothing to do with sustainability. BUT, the minute that you broaden the focus, relate it to the real world and give it an applied aspect, some kind of sustainability facet will, undoubtedly, emerge."  Being me, I then challenged him to name ANY topic of science-based research, and I described the sustainability-aspect of the research.

So - what about SUSTAINABLE charities?  Well, yesterday, I attended the opening of Parkdale Collegiate Institute's 120th Anniversary celebrations.  Parkdale CI is the second oldest high school in Toronto.  After rushing back to Toronto from field work, measuring trees, to make hummus for the school's International Buffet, I checked out various classroom displays.  I was delighted to learn that the school fundraises for the charity, Sleeping Children Around the World.  I had heard about this charity, but did not know anything about them.  The first thing that caught my eye, is that they have zero overhead.  The first question that we have trained our kids to ask of charities, is: "what's your administrative overhead" (my husband works for a charity).  For $35, children are provided with a bed kit - pillow, blanket, malaria netting, if needed, some basic utensils and school supplies, all locally-sourced.  It's all volunteer-driven - no big corporate structure, and is my kind of low-tech, low-budget enterprise that has proven staying power - or sustainability!

That's not to say that the goals of some charities require what may amount to a relatively large and expensive infrastructure to meet their goals.  This is especially true if the goal of their charities is to call for change on a very large scale that requires them to engage with the top levels of well-funded government bureaucrats and international corporations.  It's really important for everyone to understand what kind of activities in this regard, the organizations that they might be supporting, are engaging in.

But, what SCAW mainly demonstrates is how much can be achieved with a little and just how sustainable an idea like this can be.

Dawn R. Bazely

Earth Hour has Come and Gone

Published by

Well Earth Hour is over and there has been no shortage of opinions on the effectiveness of the event in various media sources. The point was awareness and stemming from that, hopefully, an understanding of ways individuals and groups can make a difference. In the Excalibur it was stated that York would not participate in the event, citing security concerns. These concerns are legitimate, but perhaps the University could look more deeply into unnecessary lighting on campus and dimming the lighting in certain areas. Other, Ontario universities participated to varying degrees. In light of the recent carbon offsetting inititative at York, which has involved administrative recognition of the need for university practices to reduce their ecological footprint, it is not unrealistic to think the university could explore options to reduce its energy consumption. In the Toronto Star on Saturday, there was a feature page on what HBC has been doing to reduce its carbon footprint. In addition to participating in Earth Hour, the company has made extensive strides into other environmentally sustainable intiatives. They are continuing to retrofit stores and distribution centres with T8 lighting (highly efficient) and Building Automation Systems (BAS). BAS are store level central tracking systems that monitor daily consumption and minimize energy use by controlling lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation. Through these and other initiatives, HBC has reduced its emission intensity by 20.5%, which is an emission reduction of 146,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Before thinking that this might be corporate greenwashing, HBC's efforts have been commended by National Resources Canada and BC Hydro, which has designated HBC as one of only nine companies to be a Power Smart Certified Energy Efficiency Leader. Check out www.hbc.com/globalmind to see these intiatives and others underway at HBC to become a socially responsible corporate citizen. Some of these efforts would be worth looking into for an institution like York that desires to become practically engaged in sustainability efforts. Earth hour may be over, but its legacy should involve fundamental and practical changes that are realistic through the increased awareness brought about by these events.

css.php