CULTURE, VALUES, AND ETHICS IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY

As part of my continuing professional development this summer I will be completing 3 online graduate classes - one of which is BU 650 CULTURE, VALUES, AND ETHICS IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY. My first assignment in this class is a summary of Social Responsibility in a Global Economy.

The following sources will be consulted:

The Academy of Management Review (AMR)
	Issue:	Volume 32, Number 3 / 2007
	Pages:	946 - 967

Why Would Corporations Behave in Socially Responsible Ways? An Institutional Theory of Corporate Social Responsibility

John L. Campbell

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~socy/pdfs/Why%20Would%20Corporations%20Behave%20Badly.pdf

Beyond corporate social responsibility:
minnows, mammoths and markets
Deborah Doane*
New Economics Foundation, 3 Jonathan Street, London SE11 5NH, UK
Available online 30 July 2004
Futures
Volume 37, Issues 2-3,Pages 215-229

http://www.corporation2020.org/documents/Resources/Doane_CSR.pdf


Publication: The Journal of Corporate Citizenship
Publication Date: 22-MAR-02
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Ruggie, John Gerard

http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/content/pdfs/jcc05rugg.pdf

Article Excerpt
Under the leadership of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the United Nations has played an active role in promoting corporate social responsibility as one means to respond to the challenges of globalisation. The Global Compact has been Annan's major initiative in this domain. It has explicitly adopted a learning approach to inducing corporate change, as opposed to a regulatory approach; and it comprises a network form of organisation, as opposed to the traditional hierarchic/bureaucratic form. These distinctive (and, for the UN, unusual) features lead the Compact's critics to seriously underestimate its potential, while its supporters may hold excessive expectations of what it can deliver. Because organisational issues of this sort will continue to confront the search for viable global governance mechanisms for many years ahead, this paper spells out both the advantages but also the inherent limitations of the `learning networks' approach.

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UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN, THE UNITED Nations has played an active role in promoting corporate social responsibility as one means to respond to the challenges of globalisation. `You do not need to wait for governments to pass new laws,' Mr Annan has said to business groups. `You can and should act now, in your own self-interest. The sustainability of globalisation is at stake.'

The Global Compact has been Annan's major initiative in this domain. It has attracted considerable acclaim in the world's press. In the United States, it was praised editorially by the venerable Washington Post while the Christian Science Monitor lauded it as Annan's `most creative reinvention' yet of the United Nations. At the same time, the Global Compact has generated suspicion and in some instances sharp criticism in parts of the NGO (non-governmental organisation) community and from various anti-globalisation activists. Part of the difference is explained by differing attitudes towards globalisation. Thus, what the mainstream press views as an innovative practical response to some of its challenges, critics decry as `bluewash': providing an opportunity for the private sector to drape itself in the UN flag without really mending its ways. (1)

But even more fundamental issues are at stake. The Global Compact has explicitly adopted a learning approach to inducing corporate change, as opposed to a regulatory approach; and it comprises a network form of organisation, as opposed to the traditional hierarchic/bureaucratic form. These distinctive (and, for the UN, unusual) features lead the Compact's critics to seriously underestimate its potential, while its supporters may hold excessive expectations of what it can deliver.

Because organisational issues of this sort will continue to confront the search for viable global governance mechanisms for many years ahead, it is worth examining the Global Compact more closely as a case of things to come, spelling out both its advantages and its inherent limitations.

Below, I describe the Compact's organisational forms and the rationale behind them. But, first, I briefly place the current debates in their broader historical context.

Tina redux?

The globalisation mantra in corporate circles, at least until very recently, was the so-called `Tina' hypothesis: `There Is No Alternative'. But there is: Tina may prevail in the long run, but the road from here to there can be unacceptably rough.

History doesn't repeat itself; only historians do. But there is still great merit in the dictum that those who refuse to learn from the past may be condemned to repeat its errors. That is certainly true of globalisation and its consequences. Let us begin with some basic facts.

The speed and costs of global communications are plummeting to a fraction of what they were a decade earlier. The Internet? No, the laying of the transatlantic cables in 1866, which reduced the time it took to communicate between London and New York by 99.9%, from a week to a matter of minutes.

The ease of global transport is increasing by orders of magnitude. The latest Boeing or Airbus? No, the opening of the first Alpine tunnels, the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

Foreign trade accounts for a third or more of national product. Japan in the 1980s? No, Britain a century earlier. Emerging economies booming and global markets integrating, thanks to massive flows of foreign investment? Been there, done that, too, as European capital built railroads in the US, Canada, Australia and Argentina more than a century ago, and as raw materials, beef and agricultural products were shipped back to feed the industrial machines, and the stomachs, of Europe.

The era from 1850 to 1910 was the first `golden age' of globalisation. Travellers required no passports or visas and capital flowed freely. Even more impressive, 60 million people left Europe between 1850 and 1914 to seek new economic opportunities and political...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.