Government policies for corporate social responsibility in Europe
May 29, 2014
Traditionally, most authorities on corporate social responsibility (CSR) suggested that, by definition, CSR was about the discretion of companies and unrelated to the requirements of the law and public policy. Curiously, one of the main CSR themes over the last decade has been the growth of governmental interest in CSR. My own introduction to CSR …
Unpaid Care Work: The Unmentionable Issue?
April 29, 2014
In February I was invited by Oxfam to speak at a learning event for their Gender and Development Journal. Alongside NGOs and agencies from around the UK and the world, we spent two days discussing women and men’s unpaid care work, why it matters and how it can be made more central to development (and …
Organizing Corporate Social Responsibility
April 22, 2014
The organizing of corporate social responsibility is sometimes rather taken for granted. Greater attention is usually given to the CSR commitments of companies or multi-actor CSR initiatives (e.g. the policies and the principles), to the CSR outputs of companies (e.g. the programmes for community, environmental, workplace or market responsibility), the business benefits of CSR (e.g. …
Responsible Business in 2020 – 10 forecasts for Responsible Business Week
March 31, 2014
After 20 years in the CSR game as a professional and academic, I find myself reflecting on a vexing paradox: we have more CSR than ever before, yet many of the challenges that CSR is supposed to be tackling are still getting worse, not better. Partly, I think this is because we tend to focus …
Making Fair Trade ‘Fair’: Listening to Women in Supply Chains
March 18, 2014
The beginning of March has rolled around once again, and with it, Fairtrade Fortnight, and International Women’s Day. These two events brought together two important questions: how to make trade ‘fair’, and the role of women in getting there. In many supply chains women are working away in taken-for-granted roles, often unremunerated. For a while …
What is fair in the age of Fair Trade?
March 6, 2014
Think back 20 or even 10 years. Did you buy fair trade? Had you even heard about it? It is quite inexplicable how fast it has grown and how pervasive fair trade has become. It has grown to be $7billion market worldwide in 2013. A third of which is the UK alone (~£1.8bn / $2.8bn). …
Letter from a dry country
March 3, 2014
In the last few weeks we have seen exceptional storms and flooding affecting much of southern Britain. It therefore feels almost surreal to read about these events on the other side of the world in drought-wracked Australia. While the weather is getting wetter in the UK, it is getting dryer in Australia. Such extreme weather …
Maid Marian, Banks and Marco Polo
February 25, 2014
Stefan Gold’s first impressions of Nottingham A few months ago, the only things I knew about Nottingham were The University of Nottingham and the adventures of Robin Hood retreating to Sherwood Forest with some like-minded people to oppose the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham. During my first visit, it was Maid Marian that I encountered first, …
On shampooing and beauty: business against gender stereotypes?
February 17, 2014
Of the many big businesses involved in beauty products, I can only count a few who have started, more or less recently, to advertise their products by challenging gender stereotypes. Two companies in particular come to mind for recent campaigns and adverts. Pantene has released an advert in the Philippines for a movement (as named …
Starting the search for ‘Global Value’ in Vienna
February 10, 2014
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, …
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