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 …
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, …
Finding My ‘CSR Family’
January 21, 2014
I recently co-ran a session for the PhD students in the Business School entitled, ‘how to make the most out of conferences.’ As I prepared the slides for this workshop, I began to reflect upon my conference journey, and my elation at finding an academic home for my research at my most recent conference. I …
Corporations, Taxation and Citizenship
September 2, 2013
Revelations of corporate tax minimisation, even of companies thought to be among the most socially responsible, are little short of grotesque. This is especially so as these corporations benefit from the UK’s transport, energy, communications, health and educational infrastructure which still owes so much to public expenditure. The UK government has vowed to get tough …
Beer and Corporate Social Responsibility
August 5, 2013
The occasion of International Beer Day prompts me to think aloud on this one … and thinking aloud is one of the (usually positive) features of English pubs famous for their distinctive bitters, ales and stouts… which may or may not be associated with Pliny the Elder’s motto ‘in vino veritas’. By virtue of the …
Gender and Responsible Business – What’s the link?
June 10, 2013
Like many feminists, I have spent much of my life encouraging, supporting, and pressurizing policy-makers to advance gender equality through legislation, and through gender sensitive budgeting and policy development. To this end I have worked with government representatives in the UK, Australia, and internationally, and with numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In the 1980s and 90s …
Margaret Thatcher, CSR and me…
April 29, 2013
Margaret Thatcher’s death prompted many appraisals of her impact on politics and on people’s lives. I offer my, seemingly unlikely, tale of her impact on CSR and me. Thatcher’s government introduced me to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Whilst researching public policy responses to mass unemployment, we were, first, perplexed, and then intrigued, by the business …
What the Feminists Thought: Taking CSR To New Audiences
March 19, 2013
InterGender.net is a site well worth looking at if you’re ‘into’ gender theories and feminist studies. It was just by chance that I stumbled across a doctoral course they were running called ‘Let’s Get Organised! Gender, Organisations, Policy, Power’ which called for doctoral researchers studying these concepts. A frenzied application later, and I was on …
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