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Is Greed Still Good?

Is Greed Still Good?

Blog by Wayne Visser

Part 2 of 13 in the Age of Responsibility Blog Series for CSRwire.

If CSR isn’t working, could it be because it pales into insignificance in the face of a much more pervasive force at work in business and society, namely greed? After all, “greed is good!” So declared the fictional character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film, Wall Street. “Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind.” I wonder if today, nearly 25 years and a 7 trillion dollar global financial meltdown later, we are finally ready to lay this powerful myth to rest?

We have lived through an Age of Greed and come out the other side bruised and battered, disillusioned and angry. But are we any wiser? Ever since the first financial derivatives were traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1972 and the casino economy really got going, it seems like ‘greed is good’ and ‘bigger is better’ became the dual-mottos underpinning (at least one popular version of) the American Dream. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market went largely unquestioned, despite its self-pleasuring habit. Incentives – like Wall Street profits, traders’ bonuses and CEO pay – became perverse, leading not only to unbelievable wealth in the hands of a few, but ultimately to global financial catastrophe.

With the world still reeling from the ensuing global recession, and threatening to slip into the ‘double-dip’ doldrums, I find myself compelled to ask many difficult questions: Was this, as Lehman Brothers trader Larry McDonald suggests in his book of the same name, just ‘a colossal failure of common sense’? Was it the greed of ‘bad apples’ like Lehman’s CEO Dick Fuld, or the banks and their insatiable bonus-driven traders? Or was it the pervasive culture of greed in Wall Street as a whole? What about the greed of politicians and governments who were happy to benefit from growth-on-steroids? And what about Main Street? Wasn’t the public – we, the people – more than happy to greedily lap up those subprime loans?

All this begs the larger question: Is capitalism itself fundamentally flawed? Are we really talking about endemic greed, built into the free-market system – a system which not only allowed, but encouraged the fantasy of double-digit profit growth and an endless bull market? Will capitalism, with its short term, cost-externalization, shareholder-value focus always tend towards greed, at the expense of people and the planet? Will the scenario of ‘overshoot and collapse’ that was computer modelled in the 1972 ‘Limits to Growth’ report (and reaffirmed in revisions 20 and 30 years later) still come to pass? Has Karl Marx been vindicated in his critique (albeit not in his solution) that, by design, capitalism causes wealth and power to accumulate in fewer and fewer hands?

Perhaps the trillion-dollar question for me is not whether capitalism per se acts like a cancer gene of greed in society, but whether there are different types of capitalism, some of which are more benign than others. To date, the world has by and large been following the Western, Anglo-Saxon model of shareholder-driven capitalism, and perhaps this is the version that is morally bankrupt and systemically flawed …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_greed_good_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Is Greed Still Good? (blog)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Link[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

Cite this blog

Visser, W. (2011) Is Greed Still Good? Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 13 October 2011.

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The Death of CSR

The Death of CSR

Blog by Wayne Visser

Part 1 of 13 in the Age of Responsibility Blog Series for CSRwire.

My opening questions to you, dear readers, are: Has CSR failed? And if it has, should we kill it off before it misleads and distracts too many people from the changes we really need business to make? Or can we reinvent the concept and the practice of CSR?

First let me say what I understand by CSR. I take CSR to stand for Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, rather than Corporate Social Responsibility, but feel free use whichever proxy label you are most comfortable with. My definition is as follows:

CSR is the way in which business consistently creates shared value in society through economic development, good governance, stakeholder responsiveness and environmental improvement.

Put another way:

CSR is an integrated, systemic approach by business that builds, rather than erodes or destroys, economic, social, human and natural capital.

Given this understanding, my usual starting point for any discussion on CSR is to argue that it has failed. In my book, The Age of Responsibility, I provide the data and arguments to back up this audacious claim. But the logic is simple and compelling. A doctor judges his/her success by whether the patient is getting better (healthier) or worse (sicker). Similarly, we should judge the success of CSR by whether our communities and ecosystems are getting better or worse. And while at the micro level – in terms of specific CSR projects and practices – we can show many improvements, at the macro level almost every indicator of our social, environmental and ethical health is in decline.

I am not alone in my assessment. Indeed, Paul Hawken stated in The Ecology of Commerce in 1993 that ‘If every company on the planet were to adopt the best environmental practice of the ‘‘leading’’ companies, the world would still be moving toward sure degradation and collapse.’ Unfortunately, this is still true nearly 20 years later. Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, agrees, saying: ‘I believe that the vast majority of companies fail to be ‘‘good’’ corporate citizens, Seventh Generation included. Most sustainability and corporate responsibility programs are about being less bad rather than good. They are about selective and compartmentalized ‘‘programs’’ rather than holistic and systemic change.’

In fact, there is no shortage of critics of CSR. For example, in 2004, Christian Aid issued a report called ‘Behind the Mask: The Real Face of CSR’, in which they argue that ‘CSR is a completely inadequate response to the sometimes devastating impact that multinational companies can have in an ever-more globalized world – and it is actually used to mask that impact.’ A more recent example was an article in the Wall Street Journal (23 August 2010) called ‘The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility’, which claims that ‘the idea that companies have a responsibility to act in the public interest and will profit from doing so is fundamentally flawed’ …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_death_of_csr_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] The Death of CSR (blog)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Link[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

Cite this blog

Visser, W. (2011) The Death of CSR, Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 6 October 2011.

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Galapagos 2011 Notes

02 October 2011

It is 8.30 pm and I am sitting at the ocean front bar of the Sol y Mar hotel in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. My first impression of Galapagos is that the variance of micro climates within a short distance is remarkable, from arid, cactus strewn desert to lush humid forest.

On the way from the airport to the hotel, we stopped to see the giant tortoises. What surprised me the most was their abundance. It was almost like stumbling across a herd of cattle or flock of sheep. Their size and ancient features are incredible. Apparently, they live to 120 years and their shells weigh 250 kgs when full grown.

We also visited a volcanic cave, with a 300 m tunnel where rivers of lava used to flow. The main town hugs the coastline and I spent many pleasurable minutes mesmerized by the frigates and delighted by the occasional pelican gliding by. I already feel very calm and peaceful here, especially now as I listen to the waves lapping against the key.

Even so, I have finished by Pisco Sour and popcorn, and my pickup is as 6 am, so I will head back to my room for an early night.

03 October 2011

Today’s excursion began with a 1 hour bus ride across the island and then a 2.5 hour boat trip out to Bartholomew Island, where we climbed to the top of the volcano and then snorkelled in the bay.

The island is entirely volcanic and one of Galapagos’s newest (approximately 1 million years old, versus 5 million for the rest of the archipelago). It is like peering through a tear in the fabric of time, back to the beginning of creation. There are just a few plant species that have managed to gain a foothold on what is otherwise a barren landscape of contorted lava rock (black and rust-coloured) and lava ash.

The snorkelling was breathtakingly beautiful and I was lucky enough to see a large school of bright yellow-tailed fish, as well as a sting ray (it is so big! Maybe 1.5 metres across). I also saw small iguanas and exquisite bright red crabs. We had occasional company from frigate birds, sea longs and penguins alongside the boat, and were treated to boobies bomb-diving for fish. All in all, an exciting and relaxing day, worth every bit of the sunburn that I am now suffering with.

04 October 2011

Today was perhaps one of the most blissful of my life. In the morning, I went to Tortuga Bay and spent a few hours sitting on the volcanic rocks overlooking the lagoon, flanked on both sides by marine iguanas and blue-footed boobies. My goal was to photograph the boobies in flight, but ‘doing’ soon dissolved into ‘being’ – a feeling of at-one-ness with nature and contentment in the moment.

En route – a 45 minute walk along the beach – I encountered colonies of marine iguanas, and managed to snap a pelican as it launched to capture a fish in the shallows. I also spotted a white finned reef shark gliding past in the turquoise water, and saw (for the first time) crabs scuttling along the surface of the water between rocks about one metre apart.

I wouldn’t have believed it possible for my day to get any better. However, as I took a water taxi to a nearby beach in the afternoon, I chanced to meet Jacqueline de Roy. Since she is 85 and had several heavy bags, I offered to help carry these to her home nearby. She invited me in and we got talking. What a fascinating life she has read.

She arrived in Galapagos from Belgium with her late husband in the 1950s and never left. At the time, there were only about 150 people loving on the islands (today, the population is about 200,000). They did various things to survive, from farming (bananas) to tour operating and selling crafts (ink sketches on wood, pottery, sculptures and silver jewellery). Along the way, they helped scientists to collect snails, butterflies and moths, and even have several species named after them.

Their daughter, Tui de Roy, ended up becoming a renowned wildlife photographer, with books about Galapagos, the Andes, albatrosses and New Zealand (where she now lives). Needless to say, I was easily tempted into buying some of Angelique’s silver jewellery (iguana and penguin pendants and blue footed boobie and tropic bird earrings), as well as one of her daughter’s spectacular books called ‘Galapagos: Islands Born of Fire’.

The whole encounter was one of those rare, random meetings of strangers who open a window on each other’s lives and part mutually enriched in spirit. It reminds me of Indira and my discovery of Kookaburra Cottage in Australia. These are the golden nuggets we are sometimes lucky to find along life’s dusty pathways – the real treasures of existence.

Related Diaries

Ecuador 2011 Notes

Related Poems

Galapagos | Serenity

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Ecuador 2011 Notes

01 October 2011

On my flight to Quito from Guayaquil in Ecuador, I watched a really good movie on the plane – directed by Woody Allen, called Midnight in Paris’. It’s about an aspiring writer who gets in touch with his nostalgia through travelling back in time, finally learning to live in and appreciate his present, albeit one in which he is more true to himself and his muse.

Also, I bought some books at the airport that I’m enjoying – Solar, by Ian McEwan, Slow Love, by Dominique Browing, and Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman. This last one is a story told by a boy who recently arrived in London from Ghana. It has echoes of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The workshop in Quito went well. Then I spent some time with a colleague, Maria Sara, visiting the indigenous market, while my friend Roberto went to the service for his father, who passed away a month ago. I managed to find a beautiful tablecloth and authentically traditional bag.

After Roberto’s service, he took me to a restaurant overlooking the city. The changing light as the sun set was truly magical, especially as there were storm clouds gathering. After coffee at his brother in law’s, we came home and he played some piano and guitar for me. I even had a strum and tried to dredge up my memory of songs I used to play.

I found out a bit about refugees in Ecuador – a few hundred thousand, mainly from Columbia. The law here is very open and welcoming, which also has its own problems. In Columbia, there are apparently about 4 million internally displaced people.

Well, tomorrow I leave at 6.15 am for Galapagos, via Guayaquil. I am looking forward to a few days break, and the wildlife I will hopefully see. I will take lots of photos.

02 October 2011

I’m on the plane at Guayaquil, in transit from Quito to Galapagos. Once again, I am struck by how fortunate I am. This little escapade is being paid for by someone else (CEAL) as an incentive to induce me to stay on to speak at their conference next week, for which I am most grateful.

As much as the chance to see the islands’ exotic creatures, I am looking forward to getting more connected to Darwin’s story, a second link, after his Cambridge history. It is hard not to be swept up by the profound eddies of fate which brought Darwin to these islands and helped to confirm his theory of evolution. In a world of grey ordinariness, we inevitably bask in the reflected colourfulness of great discoverers, wishing that we could be the ones who left a luminous mark on the cave walls of history. I am no different.

Despite this imminent prospect of adventure – or at least new sights – I am reminded of Alain de Botton’s observation in ‘The Art of Travel’ that the only trouble with ‘getaway’ holidays is that we take ourselves along. And so when I read about the tragic fictional character of Nobel Prize winner Prof Beard in McEwan’s ‘Solar’, I am looking for my reflection on the page.

Related Diaries

Galapagos 2011 Notes

Related Poems

Galapagos | Serenity

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Circularity

Circularity:

Towards Sustainable Consumption and Production

Blog by Wayne Visser

Towards the end of the 1980s, a concept called ‘industrial ecology’ emerged. It was popularized in 1989 in a Scientific American article by Robert Frosch and Nicholas E. Gallopoulos, in which they declared: ‘Why would not our industrial system behave like an ecosystem, where the wastes of a species may be resource to another species? Why would not the outputs of an industry be the inputs of another, thus reducing use of raw materials, pollution, and saving on waste treatment?’

Hence, the idea of industrial ecology is that businesses should not only look at the life cycle impacts as individual entities, but rather look for ways in which to link up with other businesses to minimise their impacts. For example, there is a Danish industrial park in the city of Kalundborg where a power plant, oil refinery, pharmaceutical plant, plasterboard factory, enzyme manufacturer, waste management company and the city itself all link together to share and utilise resources, by-products, energy and waste heat.

Another concept that was gaining popularity around the same time was ‘cleaner production’, which resulted in the UNEP Declaration on Cleaner Production in 1998. Later, this evolved into the concept of ‘sustainable consumption and production’, which was defined at the UN’s 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development as an approach ‘to promote social and economic development within the carrying capacity of ecosystems by addressing and, where appropriate, de-linking economic growth and environmental degradation through improving efficiency and sustainability in the use of resources and production processes and reducing resource degradation, pollution and waste.’

The University of Cambridge Business Primer on Sustainable Consumption and Production (2007) gives an example to underscore the importance of creating more sustainable industrial processes. On average, the report says, a gold wedding ring weighs 6,000 kilograms. The enormous discrepancy between the actual retail product and the remaining weight is explained by accounting for all the materials used and the waste created during the production life cycle of the ring. The gap between a gold ring’s actual, physical weight and its ‘resource weight’ highlights the scale of physical and financial impacts that are associated with the creation of apparently simple, everyday products.

The report concludes that ‘the increased cost that results from the difference between sustainable and unsustainable production is not good for anyone. It is not sustainable financially – such low resource efficiency is wasteful and inefficient. And it is not sustainable socially or environmentally – hazardous or damaging waste products are produced systematically, and resources are increasingly depleted.’

Recognising this challenge, the EU government has begun working with business to create ‘product roadmapping’ as a way of systematising what might otherwise be a more organic, haphazard approach to developing products and the policies that support them. ‘Integrated Product Policy’ (IPP) is how government describes conducting life cycle assessments with a view to potential policy interventions. The IPP of the EU, adopted in 2003, aims at reducing the environmental impact of products, instead of specific industries or processes …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blog_circularity_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Circularity: Towards Sustainable Consumption & Production (blog)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Link[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

Cite this blog

Visser, W. (2011) Circularity: Towards Sustainable Consumption & Production, Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 21 September 2011.

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Vietnam 2011 Notes

17 September 2011

I recently returned from a trip to Vietnam, where I was delivering a CSR workshop for the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce. It was my first visit and unfortunately, besides work, I had just a few hours to visit the museum in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) before going to the airport. It struck me as quite a poor and crowded city, very Western in some ways (clothes, etc., after French colonialism of 150 years) and very Eastern in others. Much like Cambodia, it is hot and humid, but a massive and bustling river flows through the city. They are not geared for tourism at all, which is quite refreshing actually (I guess Hanoi, which we looked at, would be different).

The museum was in a zoo garden and only opened at 1.30 pm, so bizarrely I found myself watching a very friendly giraffe, who likes to have his head scratched by visitors, and an orangutan with massive hands who seemed nearly human. The museum was interesting, but all pre-dated the war, which was a pity. My hotel – the beautiful colonial era Hotel Majestic – had a wonderful terrace overlooking the Saigon River (and the mad, hooting traffic alongside), although I did feel uncomfortable with all its opulence in the midst of a country where the average GDP per capita is approximately $1,000.

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South Africa 2011 Notes

28 August 2011

Just back from our Cape holiday in South Africa. The first few days were spent in Swellendam, with visits to the dams (where poor Dusk, now 15 years old, ripped her back claw and needed rushing to the vet) and Barrydale (for the family’s traditional Sunday lunch at the Country Pumpkin). Then we went to Hermanus, where we spotted a single whale and Veneta & Indira swam in the icy water at Grotto Bay, before we headed to Bertie & Magda’s house in Kraaifontein, where we spent two nights.

The next day, I met with Guy Lundy while the girls went to the aquarium at the Waterfront. As it turned out, we had a bird’s eye view of a municipal strikers’ protest down Hertzog Boulevard, during which some of their members callously looted nearby hawkers’ stands. I then picked up Marie Steyn (now 82 and still sweet as ever) and we joined I & V for lunch at the Waterfront. After Marie confessed that she’d never had a ‘sparkler’ at the Spur restaurant, I told the manager that it was her birthday (even though it wasn’t) and she duly received a sparkler in her ice cream desert, complete with a round of happy birthday sung by the waiters.

After dropping off Marie, in the afternoon we headed to Kirstenbosch to meet with Gordon Oliver. There was a stunning exhibition in the Gardens called ‘Untamed’, combining Dylan Lewis’ sculptures, Ian McCallum’s poetry, Enrico Daffonchio’s architecure and David Davison’s conceptual design. In the evening, we had dinner with Karen Weinberg, who is almost fully recovered from the brain virus which wiped out her speech capacity some 18 months ago.

On our second day in Cape Town, we went up Signal Hill and Table Mountain (the weather was windy but clear). We had hoped to take a ferry out to Robben Island, but it was booked up a day in advance. Back in Swellendam, we did excursions to Montagu hot springs, the Duiwelsbos waterfall and Sulina’s Faery Sanctuary, before heading to Oudtshoorn for a visit to the Cango Caves, Cango Ostrich Farm and a Wildlife Sanctuary. I got to ride one ostrich (for about 10 metres) and to ‘kiss’ another (allowing it to peck a pellet from between my lips). The next day we went all the way to Seaview via Mossell Bay, Knysna and Plettenberg Bay (where we swam). A day later, we heard there had been a shark attack at Plett, so I guess we were lucky.

A visit to the Elephant Sanctuary outside Knysna gave us all a chance to feed and touch some tame (but free range) elephants, while Lion Park in Seaview gave Indira & Veneta the chance to handle some 6 week old lion cubs, as well as to spot some giraffe and hartebees. When we finally made it to Addo Elephant Park, the weather was cold, with light showers, so not ideal for game viewing, but we managed to see some kudu and elephant fairly close up.

On our final day, we managed to get the Robben Island ferry and to visit the prison. The prisoner stories, displayed in some of the cells, were most interesting, so it was frustrating not to have much time to look at these (having spent excessively long on the bus driving to less interesting sites around the island). Nevertheless, I was inspired to buy Ahmed Kathrada’s Memoirs, so that should give similar (and much more detailed) insights.

Overall, it was a good holiday and wonderful to spend a bit of time with my parents and see the great progress that has been made on the property. The garden is looking very established and the lodge is three-quarters complete. It was an ideal time of year to visit, with all the early spring flowers and green cultivated fields. The weather was cool most of the time, with some rain, but we had some great sunny days too.

My impressions from talking to friends and family is that poor political leadership is a constant frustration, exacerbated by waves of labour strike action (the media now refers to a ‘strike season’ every year). Indira was clearly shocked by conditions in the squatter camps and townships, as well as the pervasive division of labour along racial lines (virtually all blue-colour jobs are still done by black people). However, I saw positive signs as well, such as solar panels on the roofs of thousands of low cost houses, well maintained roads and other infrastructure and a healthy climate of political debate.

The overwhelming social challenges did make me wonder more deeply about whether I am doing enough; whether my vision is too tame and my actions too pedestrian. I also felt more nostalgia on this trip than previously, so maybe something is shifting in my attitude to both my work and South Africa. Now that I am back in London, there is not much time for reflection, as I head off on my Singapore-Philippines-Vietnam trip in a few days. However, sooner or later, I feel I will need to make a big shift in my work. I sense it is time for another bold career move.

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Glocality

Glocality:

Thinking Global and Acting Local in CSR

Blog by Wayne Visser

The term ‘glocal’ – a portmanteau of global and local – is said to come from the Japanese word dochakuka, which simply means global localization. Originally referring to a way of adapting farming techniques to local conditions, dochakuka evolved into a marketing strategy when Japanese businessmen adopted it in the 1980s.

It is said that the English word ‘glocal’ was first coined by Akio Morita, founder of Sony Corporation. In fact, in 2008, Sony Music Corporation even trademarked the phrase ‘go glocal’. Glocality was subsequently introduced and popularized in the West in the 1990s by sociologists Manfred Lange, Roland Robertson, Keith Hampton, Barry Wellman and Zygmunt Bauman.

The underlying concept of ‘think global, act local’ claims somewhat more varied origins. In a broad, abstract sense, it is captured in the ancient Hermetic idea of ‘as above, so below’ – the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm and vice versa. Or as Goethe put it: ‘If (we) would seek comfort in the whole, (we) must learn to discover the whole in the smallest part.’ More concretely and recently, the Scots town planner and social activist Patrick Geddes applied the concept in his 1915 book Cities in Evolution, saying:

Local character is thus no mere accidental old-world quaintness, as its mimics think and say. It is attained only in course of adequate grasp and treatment of the whole environment, and in active sympathy with the essential and characteristic life of the place concerned.

Sometimes, glocality maintains its geographical rootedness. For example, Neighborhood Knowledge California is a project of the Advanced Policy Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, which serves as a state-wide, interactive website that assembles and maps a variety of databases that can be used in neighbourhood research. Its aim is to promote greater equity in housing and banking policy. In addition, it functions as a geographic repository for users to map their own communities by uploading their own datasets.

When and by whom the phrase ‘think global, act local’ was first applied to environmental issues is a matter of some dispute. It may have been introduced by David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, in 1969, or by Rene Dubos as an advisor to the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment. Also, in 1979, Canadian futurist Frank Feather chaired a conference called ‘Thinking Globally, Acting Locally’. Whatever its origins, the notion of glocality has entered into the popular consciousness.

It was given its most visible and practical expression when the Rio Earth Summit issued Local Agenda 21 in 1992, which was a programme of action for applying the global principles of sustainable development in local contexts. Today, there is also a Glocalist magazine in Austria that offers a daily online newspaper, weekly digital magazine and monthly print magazine …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/blog_glocality_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Glocality: Thinking Global and Acting Local in CSR (blog)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Link[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

Cite this blog

Visser, W. (2011) Glocality: Thinking Global and Acting Local in CSR, Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 11 July 2011.

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The Nature of CSR Leadership

The Nature of CSR Leadership:

Definitions, Characteristics and Paradoxes

Paper by Wayne Visser

In CSR circles, we see the task of creating a more equitable and sustainable world as both a serious challenge and an enormous opportunity. We are convinced that without bold and effective leadership – at a political, institutional and individual level – we will fail to resolve our most serious social and environmental crises. We will also miss out on the vast business opportunities presented by society’s transition to a sustainable economy.

Over the past few years, in response to these global challenges and opportunities, we have seen more and more evidence of CSR leadership emerging, albeit not nearly enough. In order to better understand what makes these leaders effective catalysts for positive change, I have been conducting research with the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL), mainly focused on individual leaders in business. In this short paper, I present some of our initial findings and conclusions.

What is Leadership?

Our first step in understanding CSR leadership was to go back to the basics and ask, What is leadership? There are of course numerous existing definitions (see for example Box 1). However, the definition we developed at CPSL is that a leader:

Someone who can craft a vision and inspire people to act collectively to make it happen, responding to whatever changes and challenges arise along the way.

There are also various theories on leadership and while it is not our intention to provide an exhaustive review of these, they do set a frame for CSR leadership. Hence, we can distinguish three main approaches to understanding leadership:

  1. The Trait/Style school, which focuses on the characteristics or approaches of individual leaders;
  2. The Situational/Context school, which focuses on how the external environment shapes leadership action; and
  3. The Contingency/Interactionist school, which is about the interaction between the individual leader and his/her framing context.

To these can be added the rather more practical tenets of leadership as described by Goffee and Jones (2009):

  1. Leadership is relational.  It is something you do with people, not to people.  Put simply, you cannot be a leader without followers.  Like all relationships, it needs to be monitored and cultivated.
  2. Leadership is non-hierarchical.  Formal authority or a title doesn’t make you a leader.  Leaders can be found at all levels.
  3. Leadership is contextual.  You need to size up and tap into what exists around you and then bring more to the party.

What is CSR Leadership?

These general perspectives on leadership establish the foundation for our more specific enquiry into the nature of CSR leadership. Based on our review of the academic literature, together with CPSL’s experience working with senior leaders over the past 20 years, we distilled the following simple definition: A CSR leader is someone who inspires and supports action towards a better world …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/paper_csr_leadership_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] The Nature of CSR Leadership (paper)

Related pages

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Page[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.cpsl.cam.ac.uk”]Link[/button] Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (website)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (2011) The Nature of CSR Leadership: Definitions, Characteristics and Paradoxes, CSR International Paper Series, No. 4.

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CSR and Pharmaceuticals – Part 2

CSR and Pharmaceuticals:

Big Pharma on Trial – Part 2

Blog by Wayne Visser

It is nearly ten years later and the pharmaceutical companies are still trying to rebuild their reputations. As Mail & Guardian journalist Qudsiya Karrim reported for Inside Story in 2010: The past decade has been a public relations nightmare for big pharmaceutical companies – and deservedly so, their critics say. Activists and nongovernment organizations the world over have slated Big Pharma for putting profits ahead of people and vigorously enforcing their intellectual property rights, preventing many from gaining access to life-saving medication. It’s an ugly story told repeatedly – in the media, over dinner, at AIDS conferences and during university seminars – and it has earned the pharmaceutical industry an unmatched notoriety.

But have they learned their lesson? The latest and possibly most responsive action has been from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Early in 2009, CEO Andrew Witty announced a major reform in their corporate policy on drug affordability and accessibility. In particular, he said GSK will cut its prices for all drugs in the 50 least developed countries to no more than 25% of the levels in the UK and US – and less if possible – and make drugs more affordable in middle-income countries such as Brazil and India. In addition, GSK will reinvest 20% of any profits it makes in the least developed countries in hospitals, clinics and staff and invite scientists from other companies, NGOs or governments to join the hunt for tropical disease treatments at its dedicated institute at Tres Cantos, Spain.

Many NGOs remain sceptical. Michelle Childs, director of policy and advocacy for Medecins Sans Frontieres, says that in China, GSK charges over $3,000 for the antiretroviral Lamivudine in the absence of generic competition, while in Thailand, by comparison, another pharmaceutical company, Abbott, offers the Lopinavir/Ritonavir co-formulation for $500. And as for reinvesting profits, Catherine Tomlinson of the Treatment Action Campaign says, ‘Wouldn’t it simply be better to slash profits and allow for countries themselves to invest in improving health infrastructure? The GSK argument is circular: We charge so much money so that we can give you some of your own money back!’

The most interesting and radical move, however, is that Witty committed GSK to put any chemicals or processes over which it has intellectual property rights that are relevant to finding drugs for neglected diseases into a ‘patent pool’, so they can be explored by other researchers. Explaining this move, Witty said, ‘I think it’s the first time anybody’s really come out and said we’re prepared to start talking to people about pooling our patents to try to facilitate innovation in areas where, so far, there hasn’t been much progress.’ He went on to say …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/blog_pharma2_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] CSR & Pharmaceuticals – Part 2 (blog)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/the-age-of-responsibility”]Link[/button] The Age of Responsibility (book)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

Cite this blog

Visser, W. (2011) CSR & Pharmaceuticals: Big Pharma on Trial – Part 2, Wayne Visser Blog Briefing, 8 June 2011.

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