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Early initiatives in responsible capitalism

  • 1.  Early initiatives in responsible capitalism

    Posted 12-13-2005 06:32
    Sorry that the message sent last night was incomplete, as I pressed a wrong key.  It should have read.  For those interested in the early European approaches to corporate responsibility there were examples of model communities in many places in the UK and Europe from 1760 onwards.  Although these did not specifically address eco-industrial principles they were often based on the idea that employees and their families were human beings as well as providers of labour.  Lionel Boxer in his mail brings attention to New Lanark from the 1840s.  But also there were many others.  Saltaire near Bradford from 1851.  Port Sunlight founded 1885-90 by Lord Leverehulme - the basis for Unilever.  New Earswick near York founded by the Rowntree family around 1904 and so on.  These were approaches led by capitalists rather than the endeavours of the Rochadale Pioneers in 1848 to establish a co-operative purchasing and trading society at Toad Lane Rochdale, where the purpose was to provide provisions of known quality and provenance to members.    Saltaire is particularly interesting for its historical context.  For at the time 1851 Marx was writing about surplus value based on his experiences in Bradford woollen mills.  In most of Bradford workers either were asked to work longer hours for the same money, the same hours for less money or even more hours for less money.  Child labour was rife.  Housing conditions appalling, with no sewers, lighting and rampant tuberculosis.  The mill owners also owned the terraced houses in which workers lived and controlled their rents and provided their living environment, which lacked basic amenities.  In the same area Sir Titus Salt built a model village for his workers. This had the highest then standards of sanitation, street lighting and layout and design.  The more senior you were in the company the more substantial your house.  Sir Titus provided an alms house for the old, an infirmary for the sick a mechanics institute for learning and self development and concerts.  There were shops which provided reasonably priced, quality products.  There was a park for leisure and recreation.    Sadly there was no bar of pub but there was a church, which workers were required to attend twice on sundays.  Curiously Marx did not write about Titus Salt and today his form of capitalism would be regarded as paternalistic.  At the time he was totally despised by his fellow mill owners for his approach to capitalism.   New Earswick is also interesting as the Rowtree families model village provide the design standard that was adopted by local government in Britain as it sought to provide public housing for the returning troops in the period after 1914-18 as well as setting standards for the relatively new arena of town planning.     Corporate responsibility then is as old as capitalism and certainly predates anything that might have issued from Milton Friedman's pen, although his ideological position is resoundingly clear.   I raise this issue simply for those that are curious and to develop on Lionel Boxer's comments.  I was also recently struck by the following quote:  'Those that do not know where they come from are likely to remain, forever, children.'  So our history it seems is important if we are to grow into the future.  Nigel Roome             


    roome@FSW.EUR.NL wrote:
    > And, the Owenite movement tinged, for a period of time, development in   
    Eastern Ohio and Wester Pennsylvania. At least one of these sites remains as a tourist attraction (name? hey...30+ years ago). A contemporary example, with its own faults, may be found in the Mondragon Industrial Cooperative System. There is a video/film on the Coop's development(BBC, The Mondragon Experiment) and several books. (see excerpts from Adam Smith's Mistakes, Kenneth Lux). Mondragon, however, has to my best knowledge never been reseached for its eco-orientation. It would be a fascinating study, for Mondragon factories sit sde-by-side with public and private facilities. Bob Hogner     
    From: Lionel Boxer <lionel.boxer@RMIT.EDU.AU> Date: 2005/12/08 Thu PM 06:25:24 EST To: ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU Subject: Robert Owen - New Lanark - 1840s - Re: Implementing Industrial Ecology  Dear Reid Kurt, Joe and Anthony  Are you familiar with Robert Owen's New Lanark, the industrial revolution era social welfare / ecological industrial park?  Owen was a capitalist fabric mill operator, but convinced that social responsibility and econolgical stewardship would be profitable.  In his case he was right, but those who tried to replicate his approach invariably failed.  Many have refered to his approach as an ideal approach, but he was primarily a capitalist.  I toured the extensive museum on the New Lanark, south of Lanark (the birthplace of Braveheart - Wallace McLeod), near Glasgow, Scotland. There are displays of the power generation machinery, the mills, the community space, schools, medical facilities, dormatories, and ecological commitments made by Owen.  This was two centuries ago!  I have several references to Robert Owenism and the Owenites who followed him in my bibliograph: http://intergon.net/phd/phdbib.doc  Even Taylor (aka Mr scientific management) was influenced by social and ecologial responsiblity; it was his followers who created Taylorism. Also from that era was the interesting influence of Prince Albert on Queen Victoria and the alternating influence of Tory and Wigg prime ministers Disraeli and Gladstone.  See discussion of this, Owenism and more grounding of Industrial Ecology in chapt 2: http://intergon.net/phd/phdch2.doc  Lionel Boxer CD PhD MBA BTech(IndEng) - 0411267256 Research Fellow - lionel.boxer@rmit.edu.au Centre for Management Quality Research Read The Sustainable Way - see http://intergon.net/tsw Improvement Implementation: http://intergon.net        
    reid.lifset@YALE.EDU 09/12/2005 9:41 am >>>             
    Dear Kurt, Joe and Anthony,  The question of whether Kalundborg can be replicated and if so how is one of the defining issues in the study of industrial symbiosis -- which is what the Kalundborg phenomenon is now called within industrial ecology.  There are several papers in the pipeline for the Journal of Industrial Ecology that grapple with this, destined, if all goes well, for an issue scheduled in the coming year.  My colleague, Marian Chertow at Yale < http://www.yale.edu/environment/bios/chertow.html>, has been focusing on this question.  See, for example,  Chertow, M. R. 1998. The eco-industrial park model reconsidered. Journal of Industrial Ecology 2(3): 8-10.  but I know she has other analyses of this question in progress.  ~ Reid Lifset   At 01:56 PM 12/7/2005, Kurt Fischer wrote:  Joe,  I don't know of particular evaluations and success rates of these eco-industrial parks.  Another researcher who may have a handle is Ray Côté at Dalhousie.  I will send you and Anthony his abstract from our October conference in Canada.  The comment I heard in a conference presentation was an opinion that Kalundborg was an accident or a natural evolution that may not offer lessons for replication.  The Londonderry NH eco-industrial park, as I recall, suffered when one key facility moved away.  Kurt  -----Original Message-----  Kurt,  In terms of the caveat you mention about transferability and implementation of Eco-Industrial development, I do remember some discussion on this issue.  Part of the debate is whether planning, design and replication can actually occur, or whether it is just a bit of luck that they occur and let them evolve into themselves.  How many attempts, 'successes', and failures have there been? I am not sure of the statistics on this matter.  I remember there was a federally (U.S.) funded program in the mid-1990's for developing a series of demonstration sites.  I wonder what the success rate of these sites were?  A partial listing can be found at: http://www.smartgrowth.org/library/eco_ind_case_intro.html  I have not seen much discussion about them in recent years. Maybe Reid Lifset has more information about this issue?  -Joe S.  ============================================== Joseph Sarkis Professor of Operations and Environmental Management Graduate School of Management Clark University 950 Main Street Worcester, MA  01610-1477  Phone: 508-793-7659 Fax: 508-793-8822 URL: www.clarku.edu/~jsarkis jsarkis@clarku.edu ==============================================  Dear Anthony,  I recommend contacting Peter Lowitt at http://www.devensec.com/sustain.html, right here close to home.  Consider incorporating a field trip into your course.  It's a fascinating story, building a planned community on a de-commissioned Army base.  Maybe you are already familiar with Devens. The web page has a good set of links, too.  I have served on a steering committee for one of programs at Devens. Major reality check for researchers and teachers.  Implementation is not as easy as it looks.  And some involved in eco-industrial development question the transferability of the Kalundborg experience.  Kurt __________________________________________________ Kurt Fischer The Greening of Industry Network tel 781.646.4596   fax 781.646.4189  kurt.fischer@greeningofindustry.org JOIN GIN! http://www.greeningofindustry.org/  Dates to note: February 17-18, 2006: Sustainable Regions and Global Trade, GIN workshop at the School for International Training, Brattleboro, Vermont USA. July 2-5, 2006: GIN2006, The 13th International Conference of the Greening of Industry Network, Cardiff University, UK.        
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