Never seen a 3-legged carrot in real life? You might not be alone, because you can’t find crooked fruit and veggies in Danish supermarkets, where all produce has exactly the same size, shape and colour. Give this a thought or two more and you might ask yourself: what happens to all those cucumbers, potatoes and […]
Business of Society
Challenges & Opportunities in Local Textile Production
Today the progressive digitalization of the economy is shaping the way in which the fashion industry operates. The overarching discourse often highlights new technical concepts and currents trends of automatization and data exchange in manufacturing (the so-called fourth industrial revolution) as the primary sources of product and process innovation. However, while exploring organizational tensions in ‘local’ textile […]
Entrepreneurship: The solution to Africa’s youth unemployment crisis?
Small-scale entrepreneurial activities currently provide livelihoods to a large proportion of the youth population in sub-Saharan Africa. In spite of a promising rise of entrepreneurship, we should be careful not to celebrate youth entrepreneurship uncritically. Africa is teeming with business activity managed by young people. In cities and towns, young traders are touting their goods in […]
Is CSR effectively altruistic?
CSR is the part of a company that focusses on doing good. Interestingly enough, business is all about impact and effectiveness when it comes to the core of the business, but when strategies of doing good are developed and implemented there is often more concern for what sounds good than for the effectiveness and impact […]
Adventures in Materiality. Notes from the first CBS Sustainability Seminar
All we need is materiality? Materiality is arguably gaining significance in corporate approaches to CSR and sustainability. While strong narratives remain important, they do not suffice in a world filled with increasing amounts of data calling for transparency and factual assessment of corporate accomplishments, progress or decline. There can, however, be a price to pay […]
The Sustainable Development Goals: Elite Pluralism, not Democratic Governance
Was the process leading up to the SDGs really an exercise in global democratic policy making? Although broad consultation efforts shaped the process, these alone were not able to alter the power structures undergirding the political economy of aid. In the end, UN members states finalized the agenda behind closed doors and civil society organisations […]
Corporate Criminal Liability in Germany – An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Siemens, Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank … and now Airbus. What is wrong with German companies? It seems that German firms are disproportionally exposed to corporate irresponsibility. Of course, this is more of a subjective assessment than a statistical fact, and to be fair Airbus SE is a European company. Corporate irresponsibility appears in all jurisdictions, for all […]
When Good CSR Intentions With Communities Go Bad
In this post I reflect on the past ten years of working as a practitioner and researcher on the issue of CSR, company – community relations and conflicts. Overall, it is striking to see the gap between the optimism held by practitioners and the pessimism of those affected in communities when it comes to the […]
Business and Open Government / Open Data – An Advocacy Role for Business?
Big excitement in the corporate world about big data is mirrored by big excitement in the NGO world about open data, the nearly worldwide move towards making data held by governments and the public sector more broadly available and usable. Big data is often described as the new oil, an essential commodity powering the economies of the near future. Quite similarly open data / and open government are celebrated as the new oil to lubricate and fuel democratic participation and accountability.
Another Inconvenient Truth: “Win-Win” Only Won’t Transform Our World
A green growth project can contribute to sustainable development, but this is by no means a given.