Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
concerned with their own reputations, with the potential damage of public
campaigns directed against them, and, overwhelmingly, with the desire - and
the imperative - to secure ever greater profits. None of this necessarily means
that companies cannot act responsibly if they choose too. But it does mean that
their attempts to do so are likely to be partial, short-term and patchy - leaving
vulnerable poor communities at risk.
(Christian Aid, 2004: 5)
Other critics of CSR suggest that there is no proven link between CSR, economic
growth and poverty reduction, given that CSR's focus is usually on environmental,
labour and human rights issues (Jenkins, 2005). In their controversial book
The End
of Corporate Social Responsibility?
Peter Fleming and Mark Jones (2013) argue that
in many ways both the policy and practice have acted to mask some of the iniquitous
consequences of a deregulated global economy and that in the last twenty years,
a period when CSR has become more prominent publicly, many social and environ-
mental indices of global progress have actually worsened. What it may have done,
however, is help to incorporate workers into the ideology of the commercialism,
particularly when there is likely to be a breach or non-alignment between progressive
personal values and an unsustainable business environment. Similarly, the United
Nations' Global Compact initiative, which is an attempt to motivate big business
to adhere to a range of social, environmental and human rights principles, has also
been criticized as lacking significant achievements. There is also evidence that large
corporations, often with the tacit acceptance of governments, do not always respect
the environmental and other rights of indigenous peoples, or maintain their interest
in the sustainable community development activities over time even though they may
feature prominently in corporate public communications. Kimerling (2001), writing
of Occidental's activities in Ecuador, states that the language of sustainable community
development was basically appropriated by the big corporation to serve its own
economic ends, helping it to reproduce and perpetuate an environmentally dubious
and potentially dangerous model of development. Local people were not informed
or consulted effectively and in many instances were deliberately fed false or misleading
information which, combined with pressure tactics and sheer economic power, simply
wore down the local Qyicha communities. Their consent for Occidental to work in
their localities was tricked out of them. Outside the area of oil exploration, Occidental
used its PR machine to communicate a sound and responsible image to deflect potential
criticism from environmentalists and journalists. In this way, as Doane (2005) warns,
the CSR agenda becomes undermined if it serves corporate interests at the expense
of its stakeholders. This may variously take the form of simplistic cause-related
marketing, or more sophisticated and Machiavellian risk-management actions:
On the former side, we find programmes in the UK like a supermarket's (Tesco)
computers for schools, or a confectionary corporation's (Cadbury) sports
equipment voucher programme, which gets children collecting chocolate wrappers
in return for sports equipment for their schools. Both are aimed at providing
community benefits through increased sales. Neither does anything to tackle the
larger questions that CSR should have been confronting, that is, the very way
that companies directly impact on communities through the ways in which they
do business. What of Tesco's opening of big-box shops on green-field sites, and
