Corporate Social Responsibility

Forthcoming Meeting - Call for papers

DSA CSR Study Group Meeting

Business and Development: Where have we got to?
17 June 2008 11am - 4.30pm
Cripps Court, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, UK

 This year the DSA is 30 years old.  How have development and its interaction with business changed since then?

In 1978 development policy was largely seen as the remit of governments and international institutions.  Business made profits and generated growth while governments addressed issues of poverty, inequality and security.  Today it seems that business ‘delivers’ whilst governments ‘regulate.’  Thirty years ago many saw an idealised separation of roles between business and government.  Today it seems harder to make such arguments as, for example, the private sector moves into domains previously reserved for the public sector, and as international NGOs increasingly take on a hybrid form between non-profit business and social welfare provider, as well as contribute to governance debates.

This year’s study group meeting will start by looking at trends in business’s engagement with development, including two examples where business has moved into areas that 30 years ago would probably not have been recognised as key roles for business: peace making and community engagement.  

After lunch, there will be a panel looking at how the rising profile of development in business activities is leading to changes in business’s value chains as a result of growing consumer focus on the ethics of business practices in the developing world. Our final panel will explore how the increasing linkage of development finance to global financial markets creates demands for governance and regulation that that may neither be present, nor be development-friendly, at the local level.

We very much hope you can join us in Cambridge on 17^th June for what promises to be an interesting and enjoyable day, Anne and Peter  

Location:

The meeting will take place in central Cambridge at Magdalene College ’s new conference centre ( Cripps Court ) on Chesterton Lane , just round the corner from the main college entrance. See details: http://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/about/travel.html

For those travelling by car, note that parking in Cambridge is limited and can be expensive. There is no parking available at the college. The Madingley Road park-and-ride, just off the M11, is most convenient.

For those who came to last year’s meeting in Cambridge , note the location change due to planned refurbishment in the Judge Business School .

Preliminary Programme  

10.00am          Registration (tea/coffee provided)  

11.00am          Panel 1: Trajectories of engagement                                   

Business and Development: Retrospect and Prospects Peter Edward, Judge Business School , University of Cambridge

Business for peace, or peace for business? The role of corporate peace activism in the rise and fall of Sri Lanka 's peace process Rajesh Venugopal, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford

Significant Changes in Business in the last 30 years due to CSR  Dr R Perumal, Alagappa University , India and Prof R Ramakrishnan, Muthayammal Engineering College , Rasipuram , India  

12.30pm          Lunch  

1.15pm            Panel 2: CSR and value chain trends            

Sustainable value chains in Ghanaian cocoa: what contribution can chocolate manufacturers make? Stephanie Barrientos, University of Manchester

Ethical labelling – "Ethicising" the market, or "marketising" ethics? Juliane Reinecke, Judge Business School , University of Cambridge  

Corporate Social Responsibility as Identity Regulation Linda Harrison Jensen, IKL - Centre for Business and Development, Copenhagen Business School  

2.45pm            Tea/Coffee

3.00pm            Panel 3: Governance and competition                                   

Multidirectional accountability at the site of resource extraction: substantive versus symbolic company-community engagement James Van Alstine, Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science

Corporate Governance in Developing Economies: The case of Banking Institutions Thankom Arun, Lancashire Business School , University of Central Lancashire

Regulation of competition or regulation for competition?  The case of microfinance activity in El Salvador and Honduras Mateo Garcia Cabello, Department of Economics and International Development, University of Bath  

4.30pm            Close

Previous Meeting

CSR, Development and the Bottom of the Pyramid
We’re talking the same language, aren’t we?

Call for presentations/papers

DSA Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Study Group
DSA/EADI Multi-dimensional Poverty Group

Judge Business School, University of Cambridge
18th June 2007

Presentations from the June 2007 session can be found at:  http://www.nri.org/projects/NRET/dsacsr2007.htm'

Theme

Increasingly the business and the development communities are coming together to tackle those persistent developmental concerns: poverty, exclusion and exploitation. This can be a challenging and fraught process with plenty of outspoken critics on both sides. Not only do objectives and measures of success often differ but, more fundamentally, perspectives and world-views can be radically different. Ideas such as development, progress, equity, prosperity and social responsibility can take on very different meanings in such different contexts and cultures. Yet, despite the criticisms and the problems, there is also much common cause – a shared concern that the environmental and social impacts of the spread of global industrialisation require us to find new alliances and new ways of operating.

How do those new ways of operating emerge? What happens when businesses and development organisations work together? How do they find common ground – and what do they learn from each other in the process? What is the value-added of the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ concept? How do the ‘recipient’ communities perceive and contribute to all this? How does this differ when the organisation is a local business in a developing country? In short, are we developing a shared way of thinking about, talking about and doing ‘development’ or do we just ‘talk past’ each other – we use the same words but the meanings and practices remain too different?

Provisional Programme

 10.00am            Registration

 11.00am            Panel 1 – Perspectives on the business case

• The business of business is business. So why should corporations be involved in development? Michael Hopkins. MHC International

• Poverty’s case for business: the evidence, misconceptions, conceits and deceit surrounding the business case. Michael Blowfield. Cambridge Programme for Industry, University of Cambridge

12.30pm            Lunch

 1.30pm            Parallel panels

 Panel 2 – Perspectives from NGOs and Civil Society

• The NGO perspective on the Bottom of the Pyramid. Nicola Day and Robert Bailey. Oxfam

• Why CSR is failing children? Alison Holder. Save the Children UK

• Social Accountability in the extractive industries. James Van Alstine. London School of Economics and Political Science

Panel 3 – Case studies from communities

• The yawning gap between good intentions and socially responsible behaviour: a failure of commitment in India and the UK. Peter Braithwaite. Institute of Development Studies

• A non-traditional public-private sector partnership model and rural poverty reduction in Madhya Pradesh, India. Meera Tiwari. University of East London

• Prospects for corporate sector engagement in pastoral development in Ethiopia. John Morton, Mohammed Mussa, Anne Tallontire. University of Greenwich

3.00pm            Tea

3.20pm            Panel 4 – Solutions or Chimera?

• The Bottom of the Pyramid: the next ‘Big’ Idea? Andrew Crabtree, Andrew Sumner. Institute of Development Studies

• Compacts, corporates and development: dismantling the smokescreen. Catia Gregoratti. University of Manchester, Centre for International Politics

4.30pm            Close

Contacts and queries

This is an open meeting but prior registration is required. To register, or if you have any other queries, please contact the conveners:

Peter Edward, CSR group p.edward@jbs.cam.ac.uk

Andy Sumner, MDP group a.sumner@ids.ac.uk

Meeting 1st June 2004

On 1st June the CSR Study Group had a meeting in London with the theme "CSR: what's it all for?". It was attended by over 20 people from universities, NGOs and CSR consultancies. There were three presentations followed by a lively discussion that covered, amongst other things, the role of government and other key actors in creating an enabling environment for CSR, the drivers for CSR, the short-termism of business models (especially in global sourcing), capacity building, local legislation and local impacts.

The session began with Tom Fox of IIED who discussed how CSR has neglected development and considered how development issues and developing country actors can be introduced more effectively into CSR debate. This was followed by Sumi Dhanarajan from Oxfam who drew on Oxfam's recent policy papers "Trading Away our Rights" and "Fair Play at the Olympics".

Finally Valerie Nelson from NRI's Natural Resources and Ethical Trade programme who dicussed the challenges of assessing the impact of ethical trade, drawing on ongoing research in South Africa and Kenya.

Please contact Anne Tallontire (a.m.tallontire@gre.ac.uk) for copies of Tom or Valerie's presentations. The Oxfam papers are available from the Oxfam website http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/trade/playfair_olympic s_eng.htm
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/trade/trading_rights.htm ] or from Sumi [sdhanaraja@Oxfam.org.uk].

Convenors

Anne Tallontire (Email: a.m.tallontire@leeds.ac.uk)

Peter Edward (Email: p.edward@jbs.cam.ac.uk)

Page last updated: 26 November, 2007