DOWNLOAD PDF SUSTAINABILITY AND ITS PLACE IN CSR RESEARCH KUMBA JALLOW

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1 Chapter 1 : Routledge Handbooks Online Sustainability and its place in CSR research. Jallow, Kumba. Citation: Jallow, K. () Sustainability and its place in CSR research. In: D. Crowther et al, eds. Allowing natural regeneration of resources Environmental sustainability Preservation of systems and processes Sustainable society Setting of ecological boundaries; social justice Sustainable development Source: This was in part deliberate, because the report was designed to promote debate and engagement, and was not intended as a definitive guide to sustainable development. Operationalising sustainable development was considered a matter for negotiation between individuals and institutions; the report was an encouragement for innovation. However, this led to contradictions in practice â whether deliberate or accidental. For instance, technology may be employed to preserve environmental sustainability and provide a sustainable yield, but if environmental assets were removed from a community to provide resources elsewhere, social justice would be challenged. Hence sustainability is, as a concept, difficult to characterise definitively, and in practice is difficult to operationalise in a unified way. Hence it is contestable Jacobs and therefore open to interpretation, abuse and misrepresentation. It is also subject to capture by those who would make it their own. It may even be unacknowledged that there is capture â businesses who, for instance, pursue a reporting regime which itself determines what is or is not acceptable to report are capturing the concept of sustainability to legitimise their activities or to promote partial accountability without realising that there is more to the concept than environmental management or equal opportunities for employees. The ways in which sustainability have been described, discussed and analysed have revealed how difficult it is to reach a definition that encapsulates all of the aspects that is sustainability. It must also incorporate the eco-justice aspects of intra- and intergenerational human equity â fairness across the globe which extends to those humans yet unborn. This is a very difficult idea in terms of balance â how easily can we reconcile the concept of, say, preserving environmental assets for future generations if this means that some humans alive today say those in developing countries are denied access to the same assets in order to preserve them? A further consideration is interspecies equity â fairness towards other species in the way we frame our relationship with them. This would require the conferment of rights and responsibilities to all species. The idea that non-humans should have rights and responsibilities has a long history, emerging from the animal rights campaigns and surfacing in the s argument for gorilla rights akin to human rights. As Eckersley points out, humans understand this concept and display it in their creation of a limited liability company which, although not human, has the legal position of a human with its own legal rights and responsibilities. However, the counter to this is that any rights violations are presently brought through a human system courts, human representatives, legal process, etc. It is difficult but not impossible to imagine how non-humans might develop a means of settling interspecies equity disputes. Sustainability must be derived from a firm ethical position as suggested in the preceding discussion of rights and it must be capable of explaining both what is happening now, and where we would like to be often called the sustainability gap â see Gray and Bebbington, for instance. This may be what could be described as almost a synthesis between a positivist and a normative position in methodological terms. Research which embraces sustainability issues must have a clear approach to these ethical and moral issues and must seek to determine where the interface between all the foregoing issues is situated. No wonder, then, that sustainability means whatever you want it to mean! The role and position of natural capital Early analysis of what sustainability was incorporated ideas from ecology and economics. In ecology, the reduction of stock â say, a reduction in biodiversity â affects the ability of the remaining stock to develop, to reproduce or to survive. In economics, a reduction in capital reduces the amount of wealth that can be created from it. Hence this connection between ecology and economics in terms of the understanding of the need to maintain capital has been a useful way of understanding what sustainability may or may not be. Capital maintenance within sustainability There have been wide-ranging debates as to what sustainability means as a theoretical concept, and what place within a Page 1

2 general ethical position it should take. Non-humans are granted equal consideration as part of the whole of natural capital, and sustainability begins to move away from an anthropocentric human-centred position to one that is more ecocentric although whether a position that is defined by humans can ever be completely free from human bias is debatable. If natural capital is thus comprised, a question is then posed: Do we consider that individuals of a species are granted equity? Does this extend to whole species or should we consider that an ecosystem is the unit of natural capital? If the stock of natural capital is large, presumably there will be more available to occupy by a greater number of species, and the result is biodiversity at its optimum. However, a mature ecosystem may contain only a few dominant species â does this evolutionary process enhance or inhibit interspecies equity? Where such stocks are more limited, environmental pressure may reduce the number of occupying species, and this may result in the need to protect individual species. This protection may actually cause the demise of another species, so equity is not served by such intervention. This is where the position begins to resemble an anthropocentric one, where humans are making the decisions on behalf of other species. The maintenance of such capital, then, in order to preserve a level of equity, itself compromises that equity. Intragenerational equity requires that we take note of the demands of all humans wherever they are, and have regard for the amount and types of capital available. Jacobs would argue that this equity is best served by making the distribution of environmental consumption more equal. Pearce argues that a concern for the environment, and therefore a subsequent attitude towards it, may be determined by where you are and what monetary income you have. There is an elitism among rich environmentalists in the developed world â it may be said that one cannot be concerned about wider environmental issues if one is concerned about day-to-day survival. Similarly if a majority-world dweller is faced with the choice of fuel wood or forest preservation, the survival instinct would make the immediate choice â actions about the future are less important. Here the environmental concern is less global and theoretical than local and actual. There is a conflict between intra- and intergenerational equity, often faced by those who can least afford to delay their environmental concern. Hence the maintenance of capital for the future may be compromised by the needs of today. Jacobs has taken the requirement for intergenerational equity as the basis for sustainability. His basis for this is that sustainability equates with environmental management and protection, which takes place over time, and therefore over generations. He also links sustainability with environmental consumption, and the capacity and availability of natural capital to allow consumption. Hence his analysis relates to the ability of humans to limit their own environmental consumption so that future generations can enjoy the same levels of environmental consumption, as currently enjoyed. Hence the actions of current generations should recognise the debt owed to future generations â not inheriting from the past but borrowing from the future. This view is refuted by Gilpin â an environmental economist â who states that the current generation owes the future nothing. This is because, he argues, the needs of future generations are uncertain and unpredictable and so cannot be appropriately provided for. What future generations do inherit from us are the developments in science and technology which will enable them to apply the solutions generated to live more sustainably. Hence it could be argued that there is no requirement to build up or maintain capital stocks for the future but rather, for the present, to use capital or maintain it for others to use. These are often distinguished by their treatment of the possibility of substitution of capital, and their acceptance or otherwise that some types of capital need to be maintained regardless of other substitutions. The central theme of sustainability addressed in this way is that nature, represented by capital, can be regarded as a commodity and thus traded as such. It will not be argued here that economic pricing and the valuation of nature are, or are not, the same thing, nor that economics is not equipped to deal with all of the effects upon nature. This leads to the concept of offset, so that an aspect of capital, priced or weighted economically, can be substituted for another of similar price or weighting. Hence this allows not only for offsets, but for an amount of depletion in natural capital. Here, critical natural capital that for which there is no human-made substitute â examples may be the ozone layer or an individual species should be maintained regardless of what is happening to other forms of capital. Hence, there may be substitution between, say, a standing forest, felled to provide building materials, and the Page 2

3 subsequent dwellings so constructed, but if this threatened the existence of a species or an ecosystem, then no substitution is allowable. This implies that future generations will determine their own ethical position â the current generation has no place in issuing a moral imperative to the future in regard to the current levels of environmental consumption. This position also implies that if future generations are to inherit the same capacity to consume the environment, then it is the total stock that matters, and therefore substitutability is possible regardless of the types of capital involved. Holland argues that there are flaws in the division between the weak and strong approaches, and that, in effect, they are the same. In the strong form of sustainability, critical capital has to be maintained because there is no human-made form to be substituted. However, if this action were to be contemplated under a weak sustainability paradigm, a decline in any capital would lessen human welfare and would therefore not be tolerated. Hence non-substitutable capital cannot be eroded in either paradigm. These terms reflect the level of environmental capacity passed on to the future. One of the assumptions in all of this is that the substitution is between human-made and natural capital, and if this is the case, it raises other issues: Is there an element of natural capital incorporated at some point within human-made capital, and if so, is all capital not essentially natural? Similarly, taking the prominence of intergenerational equity as our starting point, future generations will require a total stock passed to them which will include human and social capital, some of which â technology, for example â which will help to preserve natural capital as Gilpin proposes. Hence, current generations have a duty to pass on different types of capital, and this again raises the issue of whether there is substitutability between human-made and natural capital: Therefore does it matter whether we can distinguish between human and natural capital, in this type of analysis? Instead of dividing capital between human-made and natural, perhaps the analysis should be between exhaustible and reproducible capital, in which case either of the former can be included in either of the latter. This will then define what can and cannot be substituted, but there still remains the problem that whether we take a strong or a weak position; the decline of exhaustible capital is not allowable in the framework of sustainability. Linking the capitals model with CSR However, natural capital is not the only element of sustainability. Examining the maintenance of natural capital gives it undeserved priority and, although it redresses the balance away from economic prioritising, it implies that nature and economy are our main considerations. But sustainability is more than environment and economy â the social aspects need to be included. At one level it could be felt that nature encompasses social concerns; however, these need to be made explicit rather than being subsumed elsewhere. How may this be done without undoing our understanding of sustainability as developed in the previous section? This may be achieved by extending the concept of capital. Hence, the sustainability of a project or a set of activities can be assessed using the four capitals model developed by Ekins et al. This explains the types of capital available for human activity so that an analysis of capital consumption or preservation can be carried out. The four types of capital are: Ecological or natural capital â the sources and sinks available from the natural world. This would include natural resources in this case water and their availability for and manner of abstraction; the absorption of waste through natural processes and the availability of waste receivers, such as rivers and seas; the services provided by ecology, such as climate regulation; other aspects such as scenery, amenity and aesthetics. Social capital â the organisational and institutional boundaries around human capital, and the collective experiences of society; the relationships formed at home, in the community and at work. Physical and financial capital â the products of human use of other capitals â the physical and financial infrastructure created by humans. This is also known as manufactured capital, and includes technology and research and development. The model allows the constraints of sustainability to be revealed, if we assume constant or increasing stocks. All resources going into the economic process cannot exceed the sum of new environmental resources created by investment both renewable, such as the sun, or non-renewable, such as new discoveries or technologies which act as substitutes for exhaustible resources. Waste emissions cannot exceed the absorption capacities. Waste will include those which impact on the capital stocks which produce environmental services for instance, emissions which cause climate change and those which impact on the environmental services themselves for Page 3

4 instance, the emission of smoke particles affecting air quality. The perceived effect on humans of these two types of waste may be the same, but the effect on capital stocks, although less easily affected, may be more serious. This is because it is likely that fewer emissions are needed to damage the environmental services because these will have a more direct effect on the absorption capacities of such services. However, any model of sustainability has to be examined against current practice. Many large companies are expressing a desire to be more responsible in their operations and to be actors in the debate about sustainability and the sustainability gap. Yet these approaches need to be reviewed in the light of our discussion about what we consider sustainability to be. The approach demands that business examine the environment as it defines it â usually as a loose definition of the natural world as available to be exploited and its appropriation of it. Page 4

5 Chapter 2 : Protect Your Whistleblowers! - CORE Sustainability and its place in CSR research. By Kumba Jallow. Provided by: De Montfort University Open Research Archive. Call for Papers open! The critique will analyse sections of the report by identifying the key messages contained therein and reflect upon these in the light of other evidence and viewpoints. This will give an indication of the potential for the role of CSR in the discussions of poverty alleviation. International and national government activity, alongside civil society, has increased general awareness of these matters. Economically important are the transnational companies TNCs. Many TNCs are examining their corporate social responsibility policies in the light of growing stakeholder awareness of the 1 CRRC These are examined with specific examples from the report, such as: It is hoped that this case will make a contribution to understanding the role of TNCs in poverty reduction and the link between this and corporate citizenship. It produces a range of food products which are available globally. It has operated in Africa since â opening its first factory in South Africa. It therefore has a strong history of economic development in the continent. It has recognised that its reputation needs to be defended and has produced a range of reports attempting to address what it considers to be the core responsibilities of its business. The report As with many reports of this nature, this report is a public document and can be viewed by any interested reader. It has 4 main sections: Catalysing the shift from poverty to prosperity It is written and edited by the public affairs department of the company and can be found online as well as in hard copy. From the report we can tell that its activities in Africa are mature and its involvement in community activities seems well grounded and accepted. It describes how the company has developed partnerships with suppliers, farmers and community groups, and it facilitates community development in the areas of its operations â mainly around food and nutrition. There are several themes running through the report: Ethical leadership is a kind of leadership that allows us to meet the challenge of assuming responsibility for the predicament of the othersâ. The first has been developed by the South African business community to help it to formulate rules and practical guidance on corporate governance. This is in line with the move away from the original view of corporate responsibility â that of maintaining business activities so as to reward owners as proposed by Friedman, - to a broader view encompassing: The second definition has much in common with many provided in the academic literature. It is more demanding, giving the corporation a lead role in delivering corporate citizenship. Rather than working alongside stakeholders, corporations should be prepared to take responsibility for those whom they come into contact with directly or indirectly. This becomes a positive, proactive approach. Corporate citizenship which reflects a holistic approach to corporate behaviour goes beyond the corporation that feels itself to be a partner in society because it delivers sustainable economic development Birch, in Andriof and McIntosh eds, Indeed this suggests that a very rich, powerful firm owes a greater responsibility because of its position, and Birch argues that progressive responsibility is a means of balancing the citizenship responsibilities of major corporations in a society where inequity demands response as well as responsibility. A third model of citizenship may be proposed â based upon the external actions that a company may choose to take. Social development will cover such issues as: These are issues, then, that one would expect to be raised in the report and as such form the focus of the investigation. In West Africa, cassava is a traditional food staple and grows relatively easily, used as a staple vegetable for instance in Nigerian foufou. It is a well-recognised crop throughout the region. It has other potential too â as an animal feed and as an industrial input, and so its development as part of a growth in agricultural systems would take it out of the realm of local food staple to an export possibility. In the report the description of this development links cassava growing to: Nutritional education If the reader took the words in the report at face value, they would assume that Africans have only recently become aware of healthy, balanced eating. Is this really the case? It is not clear how easy it would be for a rural woman or even a man to become a trainer or to have real influence. The statements made by the Page 5

6 company in support of this issue make it appear paternalistic rather than furthering its corporate responsibility. The second paragraph of the introduction gives the economic context â numbers of factories, numbers of workers and the necessity of a long term strategy for sustained economic development if Africa is to deliver stability and growth. The text explains that commodity-based economies i. The analysis provides for the role of the private sector as being vital, as is the integration of African economies into the world economy in other words the multi- nationalisation of Africa. It ignores such current issues such as the withdrawal of Chinese manufacturing from certain southern African countries such as Lesotho in favour of cheaper facilities elsewhere causing damage to its economy and disturbance to its communities. It also ignores the effect of changing patterns of tourism in the region, so that the opening up of South Africa to European tourists has meant that neighbouring countries such as Swaziland and Lesotho alternative destinations to South Africa until the dismantling of apartheid has seen their own tourist industry greatly reduced. This section interprets free trade by ignoring the role of the TNC, but puts the burden on the protectionist practices of the US and EU, and on governments in negotiating trade rules. This is in addition to its existing range of instant coffees. It is unclear what prompted this development, but it sits uneasily wit the arguments put forward in the report. At this point it would be useful to review what this concept means, so that the context for the report can be established. It is widely recognised that globalisation is widespread and affects us all; large TNCs are a main player in this movement. This has led to a greater awareness of the activities of the TNC, and with this an increased demand for transparency and greater corporate social responsibility CSR. Hence a link can be established between the process of globalisation and the role of CSR. It has been the main arm of developed government policy and the driving force behind the growth of the TNC. Much has been written about the concept and the processes involved in globalisation and it has its advocates and its critics. For many involved in international development that is, the development of societies, communities and nations across the world, and in particular in the less-developed parts of the globe it is seen, at the least, as a force which needs to be tempered to enable everyone to benefit from it. It has been considered that development needs growth to take place, and growth here is economic â this is the goal of globalisation. Globalisation has its winners â TNCs able to choose where to set up operations and to benefit from the replacement of wages by profits Ellwood,, Northern consumers able to take advantage of goods produced cheaply, host governments sometimes having TNC co-operation and involvement in infrastructure development, and international institutions such as the IMF and World Bank who can participate in development projects financed by global activities. The World Bank has also stated that globalization empowers the poor to improve their standard of living and therefore it has a positive effect on their lives Ray, Globalisation is seen as a major mechanism in poverty alleviation â bringing income through trade to those who were previously denied access to markets. By allowing free trade that is, by not protecting Northern industry or preventing movement of goods to wherever they are required to be, producers and consumers are united wherever they make, sell or buy their goods, and income generations is stimulated in previously poor economies and communities. TNCs pay wages higher than local businesses, create local jobs, stimulate local consumption and encourage development of labour intensive industry Kiely, in Kiely and Marfleet ed,, All of this increases income generation and so improves living standards locally. People are lifted out of poverty. However, there are also losers. TNCs cause displacement of local industry and may create jobs that are insecure as a TNC can always relocate as labour becomes cheaper elsewhere, as noted above. Higher wages are offered but for higher productivity â this often goes hand in hand with poorer working conditions unsafe, long working hours, and with unprotected rights ibid. Poverty and global inequalities are linked to the processes of globalization of the economy, but the economics are embedded in the social sphere including family and community, space and political systems and so on rather than as a separate system in itself Ray, Hence the social conditions for poverty alleviation need also to be examined and the ways in which companies engage in these will reflect their citizenship approach. It is recognized that Africa, especially sub-saharan Africa, has not developed at the same pace as the rest of the world Christie and Warburton, and that the numbers of people living in absolute poverty is Page 6

7 unacceptable. Most African countries show a low HDI, indicating that economic and social development is hindered. The report explains this by stating that commodities and natural resource exploitation allow for these higher than average growth rates. However this reliance on external factors world market prices of commodities for instance puts the continent at a disadvantage BBC News. It shows how the core business activity - food and nutrition provision â features strongly, with all but goals 2 and 4 having a direct economic link. However, this is also a difficulty with this section â it feels separate from the rest of the report and appears to be an opportunity for good public relations. Accountability and the disclosure of social and environmental information As we have seen, corporate social responsibility can be delivered in many ways. Some companies choose to approach social and economic issues through employment equal opportunities, fair wage structures, training ; other organisations provide infrastructure developments which help with clean water supplies and health initiatives; environmental management programmes deliver stable environmental conditions; and community initiatives in education, health awareness and local economic development involve the TNC as a partner. Approaches to corporate citizenship can therefore take many forms and be expressed in many different ways. One form of communication is the preparation and publication of material for external stakeholders. One mechanism is the Annual Report, produced by companies as a requirement of national law or stock exchange listing rules; another is the range of literature produced voluntarily, such as the CSR report. One way in which companies can communicate their corporate social responsibility is through published reports. Many companies produce environmental reports, and some have taken these further to incorporate social and ethical issues. Some reports are externally verified and others are awarded prizes for their commitment to accountability. Yet there is scepticism about the motivation behind such reporting practice, with many regarding such an activity as one which legitimises the business activity whilst justifying what the organisation must do in order to satisfy its stakeholder largely shareholder demands. Stakeholders therefore need to be able to assess the material in the reports against information obtainable elsewhere to develop for themselves a picture of true corporate social responsibility. As early as Benston argued that equity fairness was at the heart of any accountability relationship. If we assume that business sets out to profit maximise as a sole purpose, then its operations may be challenging to the need for society to protect itself against damaging activities. Society may then attempt to legislate for protection; to forestall this business discloses its positive performance â in other words a form of voluntary accountability. Accountability is the requirement to report the extent to which the business has met its responsibilities. The work of Keasey and Wright provided the framework for corporate accountability. The English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham states that the accountability process has at its centre the principle of publicity, i. Hence the rendering of an account to the public is integral to the discharge of accountability, rendering organisations and activities transparent. Keasey and Wright originally applied this to the publishing of financial information as in the annual report but 10 CRRC The qualitative and non-financial information which an organisation can generate is also relevant to disclosure, and therefore to the accountability discharge, where this concerns the wider social and environmental performance of the organisation. Organisations may attempt to legitimise their activities through disclosure, or may seek to manage risk through providing filtered information. Legitimacy is based upon the notion that organisation operates in society via a social contract Parker, The organisation agrees to perform various socially desired actions in return for approval of its objectives, other rewards and its ultimate survival. In other words, how a firm operates and reports will be influenced by the social values of the community in which it exists. Studies have shown for instance Luft Mobus, that a firm under threat will disclose information to forestall that threat. Thus the position s taken by a reporting organisation will influence the way in which it communicates its corporate responsibilities and the way in which the communication is received. The question must therefore be answered: All the statements are very positive about this, and therefore support the economic messages throughout the report. This view of corporate citizenship is prevalent â many TNCs have made efforts to deliver social programmes in order to demonstrate good CSR. Page 7

8 Chapter 3 : 44 results in SearchWorks catalog Sustainability and its place in CSR research. Kumba Jallow; The aim of this study was to explore the possibility of teaching the subject of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to higher. Chapter 4 : The Ashgate research companion to corporate social responsibility in SearchWorks catalog The Ashgate Research Companion to Corporate Social Responsibility 2 Sustainability and its Place in CSR Research 31 Kumba Jallow Sustainable Development and. Chapter 5 : Holdings : The Ashgate research companion to corporate social York University Libraries Contents: Introduction: an agenda for research, David Crowther and Nicholas Capaldi; Part I Theoretical Developments: The maturing of corporate social responsibility: a developmental process, David Crowther; Sustainability and its place in CSR research, Kumba Jallow; Stakeholder perspectives on social responsibility, David Crowther; Corporate. Chapter 6 : Protect Your Whistleblowers! Radicalism and Corporate Social Responsibility 8 Operationalising sustainable development was considered a matter for negotiation between individuals and institutions; the report was an encouragement for innovation. Chapter 7 : The ashgate research companion to corporate social KsiÄ garnia BookMaster Stanford Libraries' official online search tool for books, media, journals, databases, government documents and more. Chapter 8 : Sustainability and its place in CSR research. - CORE Kumba's research interests have developed out of a combined interest in the natural environment and her experience in management. Kumba has developed a broad approach to examining Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability, examining company disclosure - both words and images - to assess the accountability to these issues of the large multi-nationals. Chapter 9 : Sustainability and its place in CSR research. Offers views of the key issues in corporate social responsibility research. This title shows the diversity of concerns which fall under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility and highlights. Page 8