Peace through Commerce

Description

Peace through Commerce: Responsible Corporate Citizenship and the Ideals of the United Nations Global Compact contains a foreword, introduction, and twenty-one chapters by major business leaders and scholars who discuss the issues set out by the UN Global Compact. The chapters address the purpose of the corporation; the influence of legal and peace studies; the experience of career NGO officials and of business leaders; how commerce can help promote peace; and how we might envision the future. Ten case studies document the efforts of individual businesses, including IBM, Chevron, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, General Electric, Nestle, and Ford, to successfully serve society’s interests as well as their own. Peace through Commerce will lay the groundwork for courses in business schools on corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, and global environment of business.

Contributors: Mark Moody-Stuart, Oliver F. Williams, C.S.C., Marilise Smurthwaite, Timothy L. Fort , Michelle Westermann-Behaylo, Douglass Cassel, Sean O’Brien, John Paul Lederach, Willie Esterhuyse, Mary Anderson, David B. Lowry, Donal A. O’Neill, Klaus M. Leisinger, Ofelia C. Eugenio, Brigitte Hélène Scherrer, Samery Abdelnour, Babiker Badri, Oana Branzei, Susan McGrath, David Wheeler, Gerald F. Cavanagh, S.J., Mary Ann Hazen, Brad Simmons, David Berdish, John Bee, Lisa Newton, Stanley Litow, Marshall Greenhut, Bob Corcoran, Daniel Malan, Alexandra Guáqueta, Thomas Costa, Lee Tavis, and Carolyn Y. Woo.

Sujets

• Sustainable Development
• Business Ethics
• Nestle
• Ford Motor Company
• IBM
• Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Economics
• International Business Machines
• Development
• Business
• Bristol-Myers-Squibb
• Chevron
• General Electric
• Ford

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268096854
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

PEACE through COMMERCE
THE JOHN W. HOUCK Notre Dame Series in Business Ethics
PEACE through COMMERCE

Responsible Corporate Citizenship and the Ideals of the United Nations Global Compact

edited by
OLIVER F. WILLIAMS, C.S.C.
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Copyright 2008 by University of Notre Dame
Reprinted in 2011
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peace through commerce : responsible corporate citizenship and the ideals of the United Nations global compact / edited by Oliver F. Williams.
p. cm. - (John W. Houck Notre Dame series in business ethics)
Includes index.
ISBN -13: 978-0-268-04414-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN -10: 0-268-04414-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Social responsibility of business. 2. International business enterprises-Social aspects. 3. Corporate power. I. Williams, Oliver F.
HD 60. P 35 2008
658.4 08-dc22
2008026864
ISBN 9780268096854
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
Contents
Foreword
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart
Introduction
Oliver F. Williams, C.S.C .
Part I THE EMERGING PURPOSE OF THE CORPORATION
1. The Purpose of the Corporation
Marilise Smurthwaite
2. Moral Maturity, Peace through Commerce, and the Partnership Dimension
Timothy L. Fort and Michelle Westermann-Behaylo
Part II INFLUENCES FROM THE DISCIPLINES OF LAW AND PEACE STUDIES
3. Transnational Corporate Accountability and the Rule of Law
Douglass Cassel and Sean O Brien
4. The Role of Corporate Actors in Peace-Building Processes: Opportunities and Challenges
John Paul Lederach
5. Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment and the Deracialization of the South African Economy
Willie Esterhuyse
Part III SOME LESSONS FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF SEASONED PROFESSIONALS
6. False Promises and Premises? The Challenge of Peace Building for Corporations
Mary Anderson
7. International Concord and Intranational Discord: A Study of Freeport-McMoRan
Reverend David B. Lowry
Part IV ENSURING THE SUCCESS OF PEACE THROUGH COMMERCE
8. Impact Assessment, Transparency, and Accountability: Three Keys to Building Sustainable Partnerships between Business and Its Stakeholders
Donal A. O Neill
9. Stretching the Limits of Corporate Responsibility
Klaus M. Leisinger
Part V SOME CASE STUDIES
10. A Public-Private Partnership for Enterprise Development: The Case of the Angola Enterprise Program
Ofelia C. Eugenio
11. Producing Generic Medicines in Afghanistan: Opportunities and Challenges of a Multistakeholder Partnership
Brigitte H l ne Scherrer
12. Grassroots Enterprise Development in Post-Conflict Southern Sudan and Darfur: Preliminary Observations
Samer Abdelnour, Babiker Badri, Oana Branzei, Susan McGrath, and David Wheeler
13. Ford Motor Company, Human Rights, and Environmental Integrity
Gerald F. Cavanagh, S.J., Mary Ann Hazen, Brad Simmons, and David Berdish
14. Creating Shared Value: Nestl S.A. in Developing Nations
Lisa Newton and John Bee
15. IBM and Corporate Citizenship
Stanley Litow
16. General Electric and Corporate Citizenship: Improving the Health of the Poor in Africa
Marshall Greenhut with Bob Corcoran
17. From Being Apart to Being Partners: The Experience of Barloworld
Daniel Malan
18. Occidental Petroleum, Cerrej n, and NGO Partnerships in Colombia: Lessons Learned
Alexandra Gu queta
19. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company: Secure the Future
Thomas Costa
Part VI SOME CONCLUSIONS AND A VISION FOR THE FUTURE
20. Multinational Enterprises: Interacting with Nongovernmental Organizations
Lee Tavis
21. Responsible Corporate Citizenship and the Ideals of the United Nations Global Compact
Oliver F. Williams, C.S.C .
APPENDICES
The Principles for Responsible Management Education
Developing the Principles for Responsible Investment
Report on the AACSB Task Force on Peace through Commerce
Carolyn Y. Woo
Contributors
Index
Foreword
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart
It is an honor to introduce this volume containing the reflections of distinguished international scholars and renowned business leaders on the theme of corporate citizenship in a global economy. Some thoughts from my long career in business may serve to put some of these ideas in context.
The terms corporate responsibility and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are relatively new, but the concept is not. There were two schools of thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries concerning this concept. One tradition is represented by Rockefeller and Carnegie and perhaps continued by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet: it is essentially philanthropy and not related to the source of the money being spent. The other tradition is that personified in England by the Quaker industrialists Cadbury and Rowntree. This was a concern for the effects of business and is integral to business, dealing, for example, with the improvement of living and working conditions. This was followed in the United States by Henry Ford paying his workers five dollars a day.
I will explore here the second approach-that is, activities integral to the business and not philanthropy alone, however important and beneficial philanthropy may be. If we are dealing with responsibilities that are integral to business, the first question has to be, What is the object of a business?
THE OBJECT OF A BUSINESS
Some time ago I heard a representative of Levi Jeans being interviewed on corporate responsibility. He spoke of the work the company was doing on responsible employment and monitoring in the supply chain and so on, but when pushed by the interviewer he said that, of course, businesses must make money. We agreed that, in fact, the object of Levi s business is to make the best jeans in the world. If they do that, people will flock to their door and they will certainly make money. To succeed and be sustainable, the company has to make money. But profit making should be an enabler, not an end in itself.
I recently spoke about climate change at a conference in Singapore. Someone from Procter and Gamble (P G) was speaking before me on a different subject. The conference was (unusually for Singapore) running seriously behind schedule, so I was listening somewhat impatiently. But I was delighted to here him speak with enthusiasm of the three billion times a day that P G products touch people on this planet, presumably some of them several times, and the benefits of these products. He was clearly passionate about what the products could do for consumers. He then added, as a result of this, but please note that it is as a result, we make money. I recognized a kindred spirit.
In a recent book on the corporation, Joel Bakan puts overwhelming emphasis on his view that a corporation s legal fiduciary duty is to maximize profit and that if directors and management do not do this they can be sued. 1 I believe that this is a distortion of the duties of directors. During my years at Shell I was familiar with the Shell Business Principles, promulgated in the 1970s, which list obligations to what would now be called stakeholders-customers, employees, governments, etc. The responsibility to shareholders, according to these principles, is to provide an acceptable return and to protect the value of their investment. No one has sued us yet, although I suppose in this litigious world it may yet come to that.
One can perhaps draw an analogy with a car or automobile. The objective of a car is personal transportation from point A to point B. To do this you need to put gasoline into it. The gasoline is like the shareholders funds or borrowings of a company, but it is not an end in itself. Of course, that fuel, that enabler, needs to be converted efficiently into forward motion. If the wheels spin and the vehicle does not move, or the engine does not convert the fuel properly, the vehicle is useless-like a business that does not make money. The nonprofitable business is utterly useless-and it will not survive. The fuel, the engine, and the wheels are essential to the vehicle, but they are not the object. The object is to move someone from A to B. Incidentally, that process is not very efficient. Only about 15 percent of energy expended actually moves the vehicle and its passengers-the rest is wasted. Only about 1 percent actually does the job of moving the person, and the remaining 14 percent moves the vehicle, which is not the real object of the exercise. The same lack of concentration on the real objective is true of many corporations.
I might add that of course for some people transport from A to B is not what they use the vehicle for-it is for show, cruising round town, making a lot of noise, beating the next person at the start at traffic signals, sometimes just the sheer pleasure of driving or the thrill of speed. That is similarly true of some people running businesses-they do it for kicks, or for fun, or for show, or to beat the guy next door. But the real objective of a business is to supply goods or services that its customer