Dial M for mission.

We often get asked about how we got into this strange academic world, why we do work in responsible business, and, well, isn't it about time we got ourselves a proper job? Sometimes our answers are glib but with a touch of truth about them ... we like getting up late, we can wear what we want, it's cool to be able to do pretty much exactly what you want, whenever you want. Yes, the freedoms are pretty great, we have to say (though not everyone thinks that our sartorial choices should be quite so free).

But truth be told we also have a bit of a mission ... not a big capital M Mission to change the world, to reveal the truth to the great unwashed, or to convert all those immoral business people into saintly Crane and Matten disciples. OK, so we do like to occasionally come over all guru-like, but usually we can;t keep a straight face long enough. Who would believe that we really have all the answers? We have trouble enough just getting the questions right. But perhaps we do have a smaller, more modest mission of a sort. One that's something like making a difference to how people think about responsible business, whether they are students, researchers, practitioners, or just the random people that bump into our blog through the magic of google. Being a university professor gives you lots of opportunity to do this, and it's probably this more than anything that get's us out of bed in the morning. Either that or the thought of breakfast. Or a girlfriend who really does have a proper job. It's certainly not the money.

Anyway, you're probably wondering, why are Crane and Matten getting all existential on us today? Why the sudden need to talk about the ... ahem .... "mission". Is it the end of year reckoning getting the better of them, the need to put things in place, start listing achievements, and work out where it all went right/wrong (delete as appropriate). Maybe. But it's also because we just seem to be getting asked a lot recently. So to put you in the mood too, check out Andy's recent interview by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). He talks about what got him started researching in this field, what students are looking for now, what the big trends are, and what gets him excited about his job (besides getting to wear the funny hat at graduation ceremonies, and the big end of year bonuses of course).

AASHE is an association of colleges and universities that are working to create a sustainable future. Their mission "is to empower higher education to lead the sustainability transformation." It sounds a bit more impressive than ours, so we were happy to chat with them about what we were up to in our research and teaching. We're not sure it's going to empower anyone, at least not without providing a whole lot of other tools and resources that organizations like AASHE typically try and deliver. But it might get them thinking. You can't ask for more than that.

Oh OK, you can. Just don't ask us for more than that. At least not before noon.


Photo by Martin Kingsley. Reproduced under Creative Commons license

Do we need a list of corporate responsibility lists?

As usual the fast approaching end of the year is bringing forward the typical slew of "best of" lists, though with a end-of-decade twist that is pushing the list-maniacs out there into overdrive. Of course there are the usual cultural lists - best album of the decade, best book of the year, best media moments, etc - but even in our own little world of corporate responsibility there has been a growing number of "best of" lists seeking to garner a little attention from the trend spotters out there.

For example, fresh in our inbox today was a notice about "the 100 ethics blogs every business student should read" put together by an outfit called onlinecourses.org. It's an eclectic mix with a tendency towards the more scholarly corners of the blogosphere. Some that it lists, like the "brain ethics" blog, or "mindhacks" sound kind of intriguing, and will take the intrepid business ethics reader quite far away from their usual stamping grounds. They even give us a mention, which I guess is why they told us about the list.

Another list, which came out a little earlier in the year, but is still generating quite a bit of attention is Chris Jarvis's "51 Great Sites for Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability". Chris is a fellow Torontonian who writes his own blog on corporate volunteering called Realizing Your Worth, and also published the top 51 (why 51 Chris?!) with the business magazine Fast Company. It's a great list of blogs, resource pages, and a top 10 'must-have sites on CSR' .

If you're looking for something a little more international (and who isn't?), networked blogs has a list of top blogs on just about everything - and their top 39 blogs in CSR (is there a theme here with random list lengths?) includes CSR blogs in Hungarian, Romanian, Spanish, German, Indonesian, Swedish, Italian, you name it.

Finally, a mention for our two fave CSR magazines, Ethical Corporation and Corporate Knights. Ethical Corporation typically produces a "top 10 ethical leaders of the year" list in its December issue, but by the looks of it, may not be doing so this time round - probably because they are starting an official program of CSR awards in 2010 . Last year, though, in their ethical leaders feature they started the bandwagon for inappropriate awards that the Nobel Prize people jumped on by crowning Barack Obama as the top dog among "individuals we believe have done most to further the cause of responsible business".

Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, Corporate Knights have become a listing powerhouse, providing well researched rankings of all things sustainable business related. Top 100 sustainable companies globally - they rank 'em. Top sustainable cities in Canada - that too. Top MBA programs dealing with responsible business - uh huh. In fact, they rank just about anything you might want ranked. And if they don't? Well, we're sure if it's a good idea, they'll give it a try.

We could go on with the list, but to be honest we don't quite have the stamina to do them all justice. We're not even sure we need a full blown list of lists. In fact, our list doesn't even meet the basic requirements for a good list at all - it isn't even numbered, for a start. So let's just say that we're glad the lists are out there ... but don't go expecting us to turn into fellow listers. Even if it is December.


Photo by anitacanita, reproduced under creative commons license.

Here’s to Communism!

A while ago we blogged about the bizarre usages of the term ‘socialism’ in North America. But in an attempt to be fair, we have to say they are not the only ones. Today’s blog comes from the Indian state of Kerala, where we find an equally fudged notion of, this time, ‘communism’, albeit in a slightly different way.

Kerala, back in 1957, was the first ever state in the world to freely and democratically elect, yes, a communist government. The communists have been in power there for most of the time ever since. On closer examination though, it is not really communist: Kerala, by and large, still is basically part of capitalist and free market system, most notably with private property of the means of production. So this is the slight misnomer then, it’s more a government strongly committed to social-democratic policies.

This said, however, it is fairly impressive to see the track record of those ‘communists’. Kerala is a success story, ‘the most socially advanced state in India’ according to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen. Land reform, infrastructure investment, good health care and education systems have put Kerala at the top of most developing countries globally. Its literacy rate of 91% is the highest in the developing world and its life expectancy (73 years) is 10 years higher than the Indian average. Infant mortality rates are a fifth of the entire Indian subcontinent.

So the Kerala story – labels aside – is a success story. And it shows that it is possible to change social and economic conditions with policies which are geared towards the ‘greatest good of the greatest number’, see Chapter 2 in Crane&Matten. In this context it is also illuminating to see that Kerala boasts a vibrant, powerful and active civil society movement. Our readers will recollect that we have an Ethics in Action box on Coca Cola’s fate in Kerala some years ago in Chapter 11 of our book. It was here, where a global protest movement started. And as we are happy to point out, it was here, where some of the most innovative policies of a multinational company with regard to water management were triggered. In some ways, Coca Cola benefitted from the vibrant civil society and NGO scene in Kerala…


All said then, it is no surprise that the ‘communism’ label has deterred investment by corporations and Kerala suffers from it. The only major source of extra business opportunities then is tourism. Crane&Matten are more than happy to hasten to rescue here…

Oil

While in New York recently, we took in Edward Burtynsky’s latest exhibition, ‘Oil’, at the Hasted Hunt Kreutler Gallery in Chelsea. It’s an impressive collection, put together over more than a decade, and tracing the value chain of oil from extraction to use, and disposal.

Some of the shots are simply stunning, more akin to abstract art than photojournalism. From Australian mines to Azerbaijani wells, and Shanghai car factories to LA freeways the overwhelming scale and embeddedness of oil as a feature of the contemporary global landscape is thrown right in our faces. Burtynsky’s large format pictures are simultaneously shocking and beautiful, prompting for us a strong, but somewhat ambiguous response. Yes, this addiction to oil has got out of hand; yes, our thirst for oil has ravaged the environment; but, wow, isn’t this pinnacle of modernity also in some ways just downright amazing?

Now for those of us interested in issues of corporate responsibility such ambiguity is nothing new. Balancing the good with the bad, the value creation for some with the value destruction for others, is what much of what our field is all about. But Burtynsky takes this a little further. By seeking to absorb us in the global experience of oil, by joining up the dots in ways that make us want to learn more about what we’re looking at, what we are … yes, enjoying, he draws into the debate not just business ethics nerds like Crane and Matten, but also people that might like a good picture but who might never otherwise give much of a second thought to the ‘oil problem’.

Burtynsky’s exhibition, which is showing simultaneously in New York, Toronto and Washington, is also accompanied by a book, also called simply ‘Oil’. As he says in the introduction:

“In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany. It occurred to me that the vast, human-altered landscapes that I pursued and photographed for over twenty years were only made possible by the discovery of oil and the mechanical advantage of the internal combustion engine. It was then that I began the oil project. Over the next ten years I researched and photographed the largest oil fields I could find. I went on to make images of refineries, freeway interchanges, automobile plants and the scrap industry that results from the recycling of cars. Then I began to look at the culture of oil, the motor culture, where masses of people congregate around vehicles, with vehicle events as the main attraction. These images can be seen as notations by one artist contemplating the world as it is made possible through this vital energy resource and the cumulative effects of industrial evolution.”

Growing up in Ontario as the son of a former GM worker, Burtynsky had his initiation into these cumulative effects at first hand. He has described for instance how his father’s death from cancer (and that of many of his co-workers) might be linked to PCBs in oil used in the workplace. The moral ambivalence of flying in a helicopter to take beautiful shots of the substance that likely killed his father injects an urgency into his work that makes it all the more compelling. Of course, as fellow Ontarians now, this has particular resonance for us. It’s perhaps no surprise that a Burtynsky piece hangs in the boardroom on our school … and next week the film based on his work, Manufactured Landscapes, is going to be shown in our Responsible Business Movie Night series. But Burtynsky speaks not just to his neighbours; his captivating depictions of the global culture built around oil have something for everyone. And you don’t even need to grow your carbon footprint flying to New York to see it. Click here for some large format shots at Photo District News and here for some previews from The Guardian newspaper.

‘Responsible Luxury’

If one takes a taxi from the airport in Bangalore, India, into the city, the first billboard you will see boasts the words: ‘Responsible Luxury!’ It's an ad for a hotel chain, presumably one of those that recently opened another 7-star hotel in the business processing outsourcing capital of the world.

Whatever this phrase means - it pretty much uncovers the enormous contrasts and ambiguities of the economic wonder in India, much of which are epitomized in the 8m population of Bangalore. On the one hand there are the shiny, super stylish office buildings – or ‘campuses’ – of many western and Indian MNCs which have made the city the world’s leading place for IT services and software development. Being on the premises of these companies feels a lot like being in an office environment somewhere in North America or Europe.

On the other hand, Bangalore is a typical ‘third world city’ with constantly jammed up streets, poverty, pollution and shanty towns. The difference between the luxuries of the ‘first’ and the plights of the ‘third’ world could be nowhere more visible.

Now, there are two ways of going about this gap. One option would be to just hermetically isolate those two worlds against each other. We mentioned this approach – referred to as ‘brazilianization’ - in another blog. By the looks of it though, this is not the way things are going in India. India is a long standing democracy, has a vibrant media scene and fairly strong civil society organizations. So what we see here is more an ongoing struggle between these two worlds.

It is interesting to see the role of business in this. For sure, there is a long tradition of business engagement for social needs in India. Companies such as Tata and others have a long legacy of philanthropy and many of the new IT ‘stars’ such as Infosys have followed their example. Talking to business people here one can see a sincere commitment to not just indulge in the luxuries brought along by a booming IT industry but rather make it trickle down to wider parts of society. Responsible Luxury, as it were. How good a proposition that is and if it works ... well, we'll just have to keep you posted.