Cruising to the quake?

In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake last week a very interesting discussion on CSR has arisen. While thousands of people are suffering, lacking medical care, let alone shelter or food, cruise ships from all over the (developed world) keep arriving in Haiti, albeit it not in the direct earthquake stricken zone around Port-Au-Prince.
Many newspapers reported about this and the debate whether it is good taste, let alone ethically sensitive, to have people dining and wining in the resort of Labadee while 160 kms to the South people have hardly anything to eat for their naked survival. The case raises a typical dilemma for business ethics which shows how important moral imagination and a sound command of ethical theories can become for a company.
Royal Caribbean International, one of the companies whose ships still dock in Haiti, takes a clear utilitarian stance on this. Their CEO was quoted saying:

"My view is this -- it isn't better to replace a visit to Labadee ... with a visit to another destination for a vacation. Being on the island and generating economic activity for the straw market vendors, the hair-braiders and our 230 employees helps with relief while being somewhere else does not help. People enjoying themselves is what we do. People enjoying themselves in Labadee helps with relief. We support our guests who choose to help in this way, which is consistent with our nearly 30-year history in Haiti."

Indeed, cruise liners bringing business to the island is resulting in the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’, compared to them stopping it or going elsewhere. But it seems to be more a question of fairness and equity, which raises the eyebrows of some commentators. In some ways, the strongest argument comes from what we refer in our book to as the ‘postmodern’ view on ethical questions, as one blogger put it:

"To me it's like going to a funeral and singing and dancing around the casket."

Yesterday in the Canadian News they showed thousands of people sitting in the port of the capital but unable to leave the country because of lack of fuel. Watching a white cruise ship with a nine hole golf course swiftly gliding by is not what these people need right now. Maybe the fact that people ‘enjoy’ themselves in poor countries is a problem in the first place. The earthquake just makes this unfair and unequal distribution of wealth on the globe just that little bit more visible. Even on a normal day in Haiti, there is still this grotesque gap between luxury on the ships versus abject poverty starting meters away from the fence of the resort in Labadee. Why else would one need to guard it by armed security even on a normal day?

For companies such as RCI these are no easy times. But they are in the moral maze of solving this dilemma, as it were by default. And one cannot say they are not trying, having also pledged $1m in food relief which they will deliver with the help of a local NGO. Engaging in blogs, working with local players and to find a pragmatic solution on the ground, reflects some lessons in discourse ethics. At the end of the day, RCI's behavior just reflects the demands of their stakeholders, most notably their customers: only very few of RCI’s customers are reported to have cancelled their cruises...
(We would like to thank our colleague Nancy Sutherland at Schulich for alerting us to this story.)

Avatar – or the perils of stakeholder dialogue

Let’s admit it, Crane and Matten so far haven’t ventured too far into the Science Fiction genre in the movies they picked for the book and their classes. This might change though now with James Cameron’s (the guy who made ‘Titanic’) latest movie ‘Avatar’.

Before we go on, it’s fair to say that it takes the (nerdy?) eyes of a business ethics professor to see all sorts of things in this piece of celluloid which we don’t think has been the prime intention of its creators. In the main, this film (watch it in an IMAX, if at all possible) is a wonderful visual experience, with beautiful 3D-shots of fantastic landscapes, fairytale animals and a really stunning screenplay. No wonder then the film has netted US$1.3bn in the first two weeks at the box office and is already the second highest box office hit in history. It is 225 minutes of forgetting everything and just being swept away in a dream-world – what a fun it would be to ride these magic birds and fly through a universe of translucent flowers, bewitched trees and flying islands of jungle landscape…

This said then there are a number of things worth commenting on from a business ethics perspective. First and foremost, the human invaders of the planet ‘Pandora’, where those native ‘Nav’is’ are living is no one less than an evil mining corporation in its pursuit of the precious, energy yielding mineral ‘Unobtainium’. Unfortunately, the mineral is buried beneath the monstrous tree which is the main living space of the Nav’i tribe. This is funny in itself. No longer governments or galaxies are clashing here – no, it’s a private corporation, helped by a monstrously armored crowd of private security contractors.

But the scientists of the corporation have devised means to communicate with the aliens: they have developed a machine which allows some humans to assume the body of the aliens and enter their territory with the mission of convincing the natives to leave their living space. As things go however, the main hero of the film, after entering the world of the Nav’i, gets to like them just a bit too much, falls in love with one her warrior princesses and ultimately changes sides. In some ways one could say, a botched approach to stakeholder dialogue.

Now this has happened before. Quite a number of CSR activists, NGO leaders and other antagonists of global capitalism had their initial career in business and changed through exposure to its impacts on the environment, indigenous populations etc. It also shows that approaches to stakeholders which just intend some manipulation of those groups, are ultimately doomed to fail. And that’s where the movie goes on to, until the final battle sets the humans back and sends them to where they had come from.

Don’t get us wrong; none of this we think is what the film is really about. And that’s ultimately a weak point of the movie – in our view. The story is just too full of distracting details. That includes the somewhat awkward love story, the references to imperialism, the Iraq war, global terrorism, opaque religious symbolism, or the general anti-technology message – in a film, no less, which delivers this message through the most advantaged technology which cost some $250m to produce.

So its mostly fun to watch, and entertaining is what the film does really well. Or, as David Denby put it in The New Yorker: “The movie’s story might be a little trite, and the big battle at the end between ugly mechanical force and the gorgeous natural world goes on forever, but what a show Cameron puts on!”

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…