Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
you consumed eye surgery or increased the family's earning power? You've done
both. It's two sides to the same coin.
(Prahalad, quoted in Green, 2007)
This market-driven solution to poverty alleviation has been criticized, though
many non-market-driven development policies have themselves failed to completely
meet the needs of the poor. For Jaiswal (2007), BOP investments can only succeed
if there is a significant invent in education, too, for education has a marked impact
on economic development, income generation and quality of life. In a later work,
Prahalad (2009) addresses education and information more directly using another
positive motivational case study as illustration. Harnessing the affordances of digital
technology and the Internet, the e-Choupal system, an initiative of ITC Ltd, a
conglomerate based in Kolkata in India, enables rural farmers to access market prices
in real time, allowing them to make better informed decisions. Thus, as Hahn (2009)
and Payaud and Martinet (2010) have concluded, BOP initiatives can certainly
contribute to alleviating poverty but they need to be inventive and move beyond
conventional CSR goals and perspectives to fashion and enforce, in effect, citizenship
as well as producer and consumer rights.
New media companies can make an important contribution to human and economic
development. People in low- and middle-income countries make up more than 20
per cent of the world's mobile-phone users, with the growth of mobile-phone sub-
scribers in developing countries twice that of developed countries. Research conducted
for Vodaphone in South Africa and Tanzania,
Africa: The Impact of Mobile Phones
(Coyle, 2005), demonstrated that the greatest impact of mobiles has been in reducing
the need for travel. People have saved time and money by avoiding expensive and
unreliable transport, have substantially improved business performance through
providing better access to information and by creating new commercial opportunities,
have helped nurture social capital, and have helped the poor in remote areas find
employment. Mobile phones have provided farmers with weather and market
information, helping them to decide which crops to plant, or when to harvest. Busi-
nesses have reduced costs by using mobiles to search for lower prices or by replacing
more expensive services such as post. Vodafone has also participated in a project in
Kenya and Tanzania (in partnership with Safaricom and Vodacom, and supported
by the UK's Department for International Development) to develop ways in which
mobiles can deliver financial services to 'unbanked' customers. Access to financial
services is crucial to the success of micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses. Although
the links between mobile-phone technology and broad economic performance are
complex, the section authored by Leonard Waverman, Meloria Meschi and Melvyn
Fuss in the report noted that the impact of mobile growth on gross domestic product
(GDP) in thirty-eight low-income and lower-middle income countries between 1996
and 2002 had a strong positive impact on economic development.
CSR needs to accommodate a wide range of stakeholders. Hopkins (1999, 2006)
argues that it is essential for businesses to carefully manage their relations with
society and the natural environment. Collins and Porras (1994) suggest that those
managers who reflect a real concern for their stakeholders produce superior results
for their shareholders. De Gues (1997) goes a little further, arguing that although
the average life expectancy of a company is less than twenty years, those that have
lasted longest, two hundred years or more, share four fundamental characteristics:
