February 10, 2014, by ICCSR

Starting the search for ‘Global Value’ in Vienna

Last week, Sareh Pouryousefi and I attended the kick-off meeting of the new EU FP7 research project – “Global Value.” This is a 2.5 million euro project to develop an innovative framework and tool-kit for assessing the contribution of multi-national corporations (MNCs) towards goals of the millennium declaration – including sustainable development, human rights, transparency, and anti-corruption. Seventeen partners from within the EU, India, Bangladesh, and Tanzania will be working together on this three-year project. As well as the geographical mix, partners come from a range of backgrounds including academia, research institutes, think-tanks, NGOs, and commercial rating agencies. This is the third EU CSR project funded under the FP7 program.  The ICCSR has been involved in two of these three programs.

The ICCSR will be involved in all work-packages, but primarily we will be focusing on how governments, civil society, NGOs, and business interact together in networks to potentially steer and guide behaviours of MNCs towards millennium development goals. These networks are known as “systems of governance for responsible business.” Our work involves developing a conceptual framework and conducting case-studies on existing systems of governance. We will also assess the implications of these systems for competitiveness and complementarity with existing development programs.

This is an exciting time. We have a lot to do in this first year, but we look forward to collaborating with our colleagues. We will be working as a team closely with University of Vienna (Austria), Universitaet Des Saarlandes (Germany), OEKO Institute (Germany), BRAC Society (Bangladesh), Sokoine University of Agriculture (Tanzania), and TATA Institute of Social Sciences (India). The outcome of this project will be a tool and methodology which will enable MNCs to assess their impact in developing countries, along with a theoretical conceptualization of CSR impact and systems of governance.

 

The kick-off meeting was held at the ultra modern campus of Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien), although seminar rooms on the inside (above) were a little more conventional than external appearances (top) might suggest. 

 

By Dr Wendy Chapple (Deputy Director, ICCSR) and Dr Sareh Pouryousefi (Research Fellow, ICCSR) Nottingham University Business School.

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