Corporate Community Involvement and Local Institutions: Two Case Studies From the Mining Industry in Tanzania

Corporate community involvement contributes capital or resources in various forms to a community. However, such involvement may also influence local institutions that determine how well these resources are used, that is, the extent to which they are used to promote the public good rather than being subject to private capture. For community involvement to have a beneficial effect on local development, corporations need to consider their impact on local institutions. Presented in this article are two case studies from Tanzania that illustrate how community involvement activities of two mining firms have resulted in misappropriation of and conflict over corporate community involvement funds. It is argued that corporations need an analytical approach that integrates a differentiated stakeholder approach with institutional theory to contribute to local development in poor communities.     

Crossing the Boundaries of Obligation: Are Corporate Salaries a Form of Bribery?

Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) pay relatively high salaries to local people in host countries. TNCs assume that such employees will accept an employeeÇôemployer relationship similar to that which exists in North America, but the obligations and personal interests that such a relationship create often directly conflict with systems of obligation already established in the host country. When TNCs do business across the boundaries of systems of obligation, corporate salaries can be seen as a form of unethical bribery. In this paper, the core case of business bribery is described consistent with the usual philosophical analysis of bribery, and the grounds for thinking bribery is unethical are made clear. The amount of a bribe is irrelevant to the ethical analysis. Bribery is distinguished from tips and grease on structural grounds. The concept of a system of obligation is defined, and examples given that show the variability of systems of obligation in host countries. Arguments are given to show that salaries paid by TNCs create obligations and personal interests which sometimes conflict with existing systems of obligation, and that such payments have the same structure as more traditional forms of bribery. The ethical issues of corporations crossing the boundaries of systems of obligations are discussed.     

美在华跨国公司投资与跨文化冲突研究

随着中美之间国际交往的逐渐深入,国际贸易和跨国投资也越来越大,中美文化差异导致的跨文化冲突在跨国公司的运营中也越发突出。深入探究跨文化冲突的根源,有的放矢的提出解决措施和对策,已经成为跨国公司管理不可忽视的一环。本文首先介绍了美在华跨国公司投资发展概况,其次分析了美国在华跨国公司跨文化冲突的各种表现,接着探讨了美国跨国公司在华投资的发展历程和跨文化冲突产生的根本原因,最后提出了相应的建议及对策。     

Corporate Perspectives on the Development and Use of Sustainability Reports

The purpose of this paper is to explore corporate perspectives on the development and use of sustainability reports. Interviews with experts from 35 Canadian corporations were conducted. The research showed that the content of the reports was determined by following standards, conducting an internal evaluation, and other methods. Five corporations were found to develop fully integrated reports, while another 15 included some sustainability aspects in their annual reports. The extent of external stakeholder involvement in the development of the report varied widely, but the majority of the corporations considered stakeholder input. Data collection was handled by a number of different individuals and groups, with sustainability departments often taking a lead role. Twenty-five corporations relied exclusively on internal personnel to write the report, with the remaining corporations using a combination of internal and external writers. A number of key challenges in developing sustainability reports were identified, including timelines, data collection, selecting content, and striking an appropriate balance in reporting. The reports were used internally in a number of different ways, including enhancing employee awareness and engagement and as an internal reference tool. A number of potential future uses of sustainability reports were also mentioned, such as improving the ability to track real-time performance.     

Organizational Moral Learning: What,If Anything,Do Corporations Learn from NGO Critique?

While organizational learning literature has generated significant insight into the effective and efficient achievement of organizational goals as well as to the modus of learning, it is currently unable to describe moral learning processes in organizations consistently. Corporations need to learn morally if they want to deal effectively with stakeholders criticizing their conduct. Nongovernmental organizations do not ask corporations to be more effective or efficient in what they do, but to become more responsible or to learn morally. Current research on the moral aspect of organizational learning has been primarily of a theoretical nature and is in need of empirical verification. Results of a longitudinal case study as Citigroup’s conflict with the Rainforest Action Network show that current organizational moral learning theories do not fit the moral learning path observed at Citigroup. More empirical research is needed to describe organizational moral learning.     

Game theory and open source contribution: Rationale behind corporate participation in open source software development

The rising participation of for-profit corporations in the development of open source software raises the question of why corporations are motivated toward this engagement. The increased participation is an observable phenomenon; many researchers and practitioners assume that the practice of community sharing does not improve the bottom line, but rather believe the practice is altruistic in nature. Our intuition is that participation offers tangible and intangible benefits to corporate participants. We show this by exploring a variety of models in game theory and use game theory as a methodological lens to explain the rationality of corporate participation in open source software development. Since game theory has evolved to include rational- and emotional-based reasons, we explore such lenses as cooperative games, metagames, coopetition, and Drama Theory. Our research question, “Why do for-profit corporations participate in the development of open source software?” was broad enough to adopt several useful perspectives to understand our data. One useful lens was game theory. In this article, we examine interview responses and field study data from corporate members of open source communities to determine how they justify devoting time and effort to community engagement. Our study makes a contribution to open source software literature by revealing that numerous rational and emotional reasons exist for corporate participation in open source software development.     

Protest Campaigns and Corporations: Cooperative Conflicts?

This article analyses and systematises the repertoires of action and reaction within conflicts between corporations and adversarial campaigns. Particular attention is paid to the parameters that turn conflicts between corporations and their critics into productive or destructive exchanges. Are protest campaigns able to fulfil a function that goes beyond serving as a seismograph for civil society’s concern and discontent? Which are the circumstances that enable conflicts between protest campaigns and corporations to unfold their potential for correcting social deficiencies? The analysis starts by outlining several typologies of confrontational and cooperative repertoires of action. Based on this starting point, a comprehensive analysis of more than 100 campaigns is presented, which systematises the dynamics of conflict between protest campaigns and corporations. An exemplary comparison of two particular conflicts completes the article in order to elaborate on the interplay between confrontation and cooperation.     

Do corporations have moral rights?

My aim in this paper is to explore the notion that corporations have moral rights within the context of a constitutive rules model of corporate moral agency. The first part of the paper will briefly introduce the notion of moral rights, identifying the distinctive feature of moral rights, as contrasted with other moral categories, in Vlastos' terms of overridingness. The second part will briefly summarize the constitutive rules approach to the moral agency of corporations (à la French, Smith, Ozar) and pose the question of the paper. The third part will argue that, since the moral agency of corporations is dependent on the choices of those whose acceptence of the relevant rules constitutes the corporation as a moral agent, the rights of corporations are conventional; that is, they exist because they are so created. Thus, as a first answer, corporations do not have moral rights. But this raises a further question which we must explore. Once a corporation has been constituted, by the acceptance of the relevant rules by the relevant persons, does the corporation then have rights which endure? Can those who have constituted a corporation with certain rights morally change or cancel those rights in medias res without doing some sort of moral violence to the corporation? Do corporations at least have a moral right to persist in the conventional rights with which they were constituted? The balance of the paper will explore this question. I shall speak of the overriding character of a corporation's claim that its conventional rights persist, and also the important way in which such a moral claim is non-conventional, if such a claim can be made at all. But I shall argue in conclusion that corporations do not have such a right. But I shall also argue that those persons whose acts have originally constituted the corporation as a moral agent may well have rights which would be violated if the conventional rights of the corporation were changed or terminated without their participation.     

跨国公司进入与中国产业组织结构之动态相互作用

国内产业组织结构是跨国公司、中国政府和企业三者之间的长期相互作用的初始条件,也是其相互作用的结果。本文采用"新产业经济学"的理论范式,并引用多个产业跨国公司进入的实例进行分析,从而表明中国的市场集中度将向着国际化产业集中度的方向收敛,并以市场集中度提高为主;跨国公司之间,以及跨国公司与本土企业之间竞争的气氛将更加浓厚;产业效率将得到提高,但国内产业可能受到压制。本国企业自身的发展以及国家竞争力的提高还需本国政府和企业的共同努力。     

On Explaining Individual and Corporate Culpability in the Global Climate Change Era

Humans are causing global climate change (GCC), and such climate change causes harms. Robin Attfield explained how individuals should be understood to be culpable for these harms. In this paper, I use a critical analysis of Attfield’s explanatory framework to explore further difficulties in accounting for corporate responsibility for these harms. I begin by arguing that there are some problems with his framework as it is applied to individuals that emit greenhouse gases (GHGs). I then show that it will be very difficult to extend this framework to corporations. This is not a criticism of Attfield’s work (as he does not discuss corporate responsibility for those harms associated with GCC), but it will serve to show the difficulty in philosophically explaining corporations’ moral culpability when it comes to these harms. In fact, one positive conclusion of this paper is that it highlights a new area of concern that has been ignored in discussions of corporate responsibilities—that of mediated responsibilities—which is how Attfield understands our responsibilities regarding GCC. The discussion of this concern will draw attention to another positive conclusion of this paper: the harms associated with CO₂ are very unlike the harms associated with other airborne-emitted substances, which will indicate that we will need new ways of understanding how individuals and corporations are philosophically responsible for these harms. The final positive conclusion of this paper will be a discussion of what the constraints should be on new approaches to explaining our culpability.     

Business Under Threat, Technology Under Attack, Ethics Under Fire: The Experience of Google in China

Although not frequently regarded as controversial, digital communications industries continue to be sites of CSR conflicts, particularly internationally. Investigating CSR issues in the digital communications industry is pertinent because in addition to being one of the fastest growing industries, it has created a host of new CSR issues that require further attention. This case study examines an incident in early 2010, when Google Inc. China and the Chinese government reached an impasse that produced a large-scale, transnational conflict that reached a head ostensibly over state-mandated censorship, ultimately prompting Google to withdraw from the mainland Chinese market and redirect its activities to Hong Kong. We track Google’s experience in China, both to explore its strategies and to consider the implications for corporate social responsibility. We situate Google’s drastic decision to withdraw entirely from mainland China in the complex multiplicity of ethical, cultural, and political conflicts that affect this particular case. On a broader level, the incident raises the question of how multinational corporations (MNCs) can achieve corporate growth while negotiating the highly sensitive sociopolitical and institutional environments of foreign nations.     

中印吸引跨国公司R＆D投资特点及优势比较

中国、印度是世界上两个发展中大国，并先后走上改革开放的发展道路，尤其是经济全球化时代以来，两国经济持续十年来都保持了高位增长。通过比较跨国公司在中国与印度的R＆D投资的特点，从跨国公司进行海外R＆D投资的动因方面对两国的优势进行了定性与定量两方面的比较分析，得出中印两国R＆D投资潜力都非常大，但中国的优势条件更能吸引跨国公司R＆D投资的结论。     

Multinational Corporations and Local Communities: A Critical Analysis of Conflict

As conflict between multinational corporations and local communities escalates, scholars, executives, activists, and community leaders are calling for companies to become more accountable for the impact of their activities on external stakeholders. In order for business to do so, managers must first understand the causes of conflict with local communities, and communities must understand what courses of action are available to challenge activities they deem harmful to their interests. In this article, I present a framework for examining the factors that contribute to multinational and community conflict including stakeholder power inequality, stakeholder perception gaps and cultural context. Moreover, I describe some of the ways that communities can increase their leverage in conflict situations.     

Corporate Social Responsibility Theories: Mapping the Territory

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) field presents not only a landscape of theories but also a proliferation of approaches, which are controversial, complex and unclear. This article tries to clarify the situation, “mapping the territory” by classifying the main CSR theories and related approaches in four groups: (1) instrumental theories, in which the corporation is seen as only an instrument for wealth creation, and its social activities are only a means to achieve economic results; (2) political theories, which concern themselves with the power of corporations in society and a responsible use of this power in the political arena; (3) integrative theories, in which the corporation is focused on the satisfaction of social demands; and (4) ethical theories, based on ethical responsibilities of corporations to society. In practice, each CSR theory presents four dimensions related to profits, political performance, social demands and ethical values. The findings suggest the necessity to develop a new theory on the business and society relationship, which should integrate these four dimensions.     

Food or ‘virtual’ food? The construction of children's food in a global economy

This paper explores the pattern of change and development in the marketization and reconstitution of food products for children. It is in the past few decades that global corporations’ search for new markets has come to focus intensely on children. In the eyes of global corporations, children are a huge, multibillion dollar market. Childhood may be understood as a social construction but its form is historically specific. At present, the market is defining and reconstituting cultural meanings of childhood without being contested by other significant groups in society. The paper goes on to explore how transnational corporations have transformed the production and marketing of food. The paper discusses the food risks and the challenges faced by the fast food industry which specifically targets children. The reconstitution and the rebranding of popular children's food is producing ‘virtual’ food rather than real food. We live in an era where childhood offers untold opportunities in the northern hemisphere. However, the global market has come to dominate and define the social construction of childhood. Other cultural forms of identity outside of consumerism are not making the same impression. The food risks associated with the global processing of food and the health risks that have been linked to these new food forms ultimately has consequences not only for children but for society as a whole.     

中小零售企业发展研究

中小零售企业是零售业的主体,具有多种作用。但在内外资大型零售企业快速扩张的背景下,其生存和发展受到的威胁与挑战越来越大。本文在分析中小零售企业优势与劣势的基础上,提出了提高其竞争力的对策思路。     

Theorizing MNE-NGO conflicts in state-capitalist contexts: Insights from the Greenpeace,Gazprom and the Russian state dispute in the Arctic

This paper theorizes development of MNE-NGO-state conflicts in state-capitalist contexts. We draw on longitudinal data from the Arctic oil drilling dispute between environmental NGOs headed by Greenpeace, and Gazprom, the Russian energy giant. We propose a theory that introduces two concepts: shadow-boxing and homeostasis. In shadow-boxing, escalation of visible action by NGOs is met with a seemingly separate but concerted response by the MNE and state bodies. In homeostasis, the contested corporate activity continues undisturbed after the escalated conflict. Beyond state capitalism, these concepts have explanatory power in settings where the corporations and the state are intertwined in various ways.     

World sugar outlook and the European policy

Sugar has always been a highly political and controversial commodity, but never more so than at the present time. The uneasy rivalry between cane and beet sugar, the products of tropical and temperate countries respectively, is giving way to open conflict.     

Cross‐sector alliances in the global refugee crisis: An institutional theory approach

The global refugee crisis has posed severe challenges to social stability and sustainable development around the world. While the business sector is expected to shoulder social responsibility in crisis relief efforts, our initial assessment shows that refugee‐related corporate social responsibility (CSR) significantly diverged across the Global Fortune 500 corporations. To advance scholars and managers' understanding of this complex CSR issue, this study draws upon National Business System Theory to explore how country‐level factors influence the multinational corporations' CSR communication about the refugee issue. Specifically, the study focuses on the strategic cross‐sector alliances between corporations, NGOs, and IGOs. The analysis shows that in this controversial global crisis, the following factors of corporations' countries‐of‐origin can significantly affect the level of cross‐sector CSR alliances: democracy levels, economic inequality levels, and unemployment rates. Findings of this study provide practical guidelines that can help managers to anticipate societal expectations when dealing with controversial social issues in an international setting. Our findings could also assist policymakers, NGOs, and IGOs to better design strategies to mobilize the corporate resources.     

A new approach to multinational social responsibility

Multinational business activity has expanded dramatically since the end of World War II. The increased presence of foreign corporations and the generally strategic significance of such presence for host countries, has increasingly confronted both sides with the need to develop guidelines governing the conduct of such operations.The new voluntary approach to guideline development suggested here is based on the proposition that the fundamental aim of business activity is the satisfaction of socially desirable needs. Under this approach, MNC's should attempt to operate in a socially desirable manner in all countries of operations. Social desirability determination will be made on the basis of whether activities in particular countries will be seen, by majority concensus of all publics on which corporate activity impacts, to bring about welfare improvements in the countries concerned. Periodic public opinion polls, or more informal methods in the less developed countries, are seen to provide the necessary inputs for the development of overall corporate guidelines for action, which in turn will influence strategic corporate decisions. The long run benefits resulting from such conduct are seen to outweigh temporary gains that could accrue to corporations through the pursuit of profitable but socially undesirable activities.