I touched on this in my thesis (http://intergon.net/phd) You can read
most of my thesis in MSWord from the links at my website. See the
excerpt below.
If you are doing a research degree you could extend from my PhD the idea
of 'conceptualised CSR as “mechanism for governing externalities” '.
Happy to discuss this further.
From Page 24 (chapter 2):
"At best, economists consider that environmental and social issues are
captured effectively in externalities. From this neoclassical economic
perspective, pollution is viewed as an external cost of production
(Verhoef 1997, p. 2). This implies pollution results in ‘uncompensated
costs to others’ (Mansfield 1994, p. 327-9) and requires ‘government’ to
‘intervene’ to correct ‘external diseconomies’ (p. 547-9). The ultimate
question posed is whether or not there has been an economic cost imposed
on an uninvolved third party by a negligent business. However, in this
mind-set, if business pollutes and then nullifies the pollution through
some clean-up process there is no harm done from an economic
perspective. So, is this sustainability? Verhoef rejects such use of
externalities, suggesting that an externality might instead be an
‘unpriced effect’. He views this as ‘tension between efficiency and
equity’. Verhoef (1997, p. 15) suggests the practice of requiring
polluters to pay for pollution would enable those with enough money to
continue polluting. This could be viewed as highlighting a need for
achieving a TBL measurement, where more than financial quantitative
measures are relied on.
Yet, Denton (1998) concludes that, rather than containing cost, avoiding
fines and fixing mistakes, the real benefit of cleaner production is the
savings in operations. Similarly, in the quality movement there is
reference to the quality versus cost trade-off (Juran and Gryna 1988,
pp. 4.1-4.30). Boxer (1991 and 1993) and Denton (1999) demonstrate the
benefits of harnessing employees in the pursuit of the resolution of the
causes of pollution, but there is a need to allocate sufficient
resources to such initiatives. They do this for neither ethical reasons
nor marketing reasons. Rather, they recognize anything that maximizes
the output from all their raw material resources, saves money and boosts
competitiveness and profits.
In exploring the value created from corporate image and reputation,
Fombrun (1996) concludes that economic performance tends to be better
for organizations that care about their reputation, and specifically in
terms of communities, employees and the environment (Fombrun and Foss
2001). While Fombrun (1996) speaks in terms of respect, trust and
building a consistent image, he does allude to behaving in accordance
with society’s expectations. Environmental and social stewardship could
be perceived to be of interest to society. Konar and Cohen (1997)
identified a direct correlation between reduction of emissions and
increase in market value.
The sustainability movement appears to dismiss the financial bottom-line
approach to determining the financial cost of quality. For example,
Elkington (1998) and Birch (2002) suggest it may be an error to reduce
everything to financial quantitative terms, when the richness of
qualitative description may better demonstrate real costs. While it has
been argued that they are naïve to suggest that business could be made
to care about anything other than financial costs, it has been suggested
in previous Sub-Sections, environmental and social loss or benefit is
difficult to reduce to a quantitative cost. Roddick (1991, 2000)
describes her unconventional approach to business, focusing on resolving
moral and economic imbalances in a way that treats environmental and
social issues as non-quantitative financial factors. In doing so, she
does not start with an optimised financial cost. Rather, an optimised
holistic view of responsibility to an aggregate bottom line that is
composed of quantitative financial profit and qualit Hostility towards her success (BBC News Online 2000) may be due to an
underlying force that traps business in a paradigm of purely
quantitative financial optimisation. Such a force is considered in
Chapter 7.
‘A kind of “meta-power” which is structured essentially round a certain
number of great prohibition functions; but this meta-power with its
prohibitions can only take hold and secure its footing where it is
rooted in a whole series of multiple and indefinite power relations that
supply the necessary basis for the great negative forms of power’.
(Foucault 1980a, p. 122)
This paradigm might also be conceived to be the force that determines
share price. Those who are able to manipulate markets and do so for
their own benefit might engage the power relations that could affect
share price. A broad array of forces can interrupt the logic of this
economic paradigm, not the least being politics."
Lionel Boxer CD PhD MBA BTech(IndEng) - 0411267256
Associate of RMIT University -
lionel.boxer@rmit.edu.au
Graduate School of Business
What's up?:
http://intergon.net/events.html
The Sustainable Way:
http://intergon.net/tsw
>>> Kenneth Amaeshi <
kenneth_amaeshi@YAHOO.COM> 09/04/08 12:30 AM >>>
I am wondering if there are works out there that have conceptualised CSR
as “mechanism for governing externalities”. Suggestions would be
appreciated.
Best wishes,
Kenneth Amaeshi
Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility
Cranfield School of Management
England
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