Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Base of the Pyramid: A Recipe for Inclusive Growth or Social Exclusion?

Policy makers often see entrepreneurship as a panacea for inclusive growth in underdeveloped ‘Base of the Pyramid’ (BOP) regions, but it may also lead to unanticipated negative outcomes such as crime and social exclusion. Our objective is to improve the understanding of how entrepreneurship policies can lead to socially inclusive growth at the BOP. Drawing on data collected from Brazilian tourism destinations with varying entrepreneurship, innovation, and social inclusion policies, we argue that weak institutions coupled with alert entrepreneurs encourage destructive outcomes, especially if entrepreneurship policies are based solely on economic indicators. Policies addressing both economic and social perspectives may foster more productive entrepreneurial outcomes, albeit at a more constrained economic pace. The study extends the related BOP, entrepreneurship, global value chain, and sustainable tourism literatures by examining the poor as entrepreneurs, the role of local innovation, and how entrepreneurship policies generate different social impacts within poor communities.     

An Institution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Multi-National Corporations (MNCs): Form and Implications

This article investigates corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an institution within UK multi-national corporations (MNCs). In the context of the literature on the institutionalization of CSR and on critical CSR, it presents two main findings. First, it contributes to the CSR mainstream literature by confirming that CSR has not only become institutionalized in society but that a form of this institution is also present within MNCs. Secondly, it contributes to the critical CSR literature by suggesting that unlike broader notions of CSR shared between multiple stakeholders, MNCs practise a form of CSR that undermines the broader stakeholder concept. By increasingly focusing on strategic forms of CSR activity, MNCs are moving away from a societal understanding of CSR that focuses on redressing the impacts of their operations through stakeholder concerns, back to any activity that supports traditional business imperatives. The implications of this shift are considered using institutional theory to evaluate macro-institutional pressures for CSR activity and the agency of powerful incumbents in the contested field of CSR.