New York
Spirit has entered the corporate world. In New York, corporate executives
from 30 countries and a multitude of faiths have created the Spirit in
Business World Institute. Its aim is to build bridges between business
practices and personal and spiritual values as well as to help companies
find meaning behind the bottom line.
When the business of business was to maximize profits, the World Trade
Center was reaching for the sky, and companies like Enron and Anderson were
powerful and respected. Today, fear of terror, corporate scandals,
anti-globalization sentiments, cutbacks, and layoffs all have lead to
insecurity and fear of the future among employees and management. Nobody has
a secure job any more.
Before creating the Spirit in Business World Institute, 500 corporate
leaders and religious scholars spent three days in New York, exploring how
ethics and spiritual values can help build healthy, meaning-creating,
empowering corporate cultures that permeate the organization and provide the
spiritual contexts for corporate identity strategy and success.
Kirsten Pruzan Mikkelsen
Santa Fe, New
Mexico
True Self-Esteem is the product of Self Realization. It is the
birthright of every human being...each of us is a spark of the divine being
in whom we live and move and have our nature only when the God within is
realized can we as human beings advance to our highest spiritual purpose.
.The nature and meaning of work is undergoing a profound evolution. Two
forces are helping to catalyze the momentum of this evolution—fear as a
motivator and the emergence of both a more personal and widespread
spirituality.
The emergence of spirituality points to the desire that there be more to
work than just survival. It's the yearning for work to be a place in which
we both experience and express our deep soul and spirit. ...
People have genuinely gotten the message, "You don't have a secure job
anymore." And that causes insecurity, it causes anxiety and it causes fear.
It also leads to a sense of "dis-spiritedness" in individuals and in the
overall workplace. The spirit has been shut down. It can't express itself
fully. There is a sense of dis-engagement. It may not be quantifiable, but
people can feel the lack of spirit in a workplace. They do know when it's
diminished. I don't mean to paint a completely bleak landscape here. We can
look at these very same factors from another more useful perspective—the
spiritual. The security we thought we got from the corporation is a myth.
Real security comes from a connection to that which is truly secure—the
spirit. We are in the process of moving from dependent "children" at work,
with the parental company looking after us, to really coming into our full,
responsible Selfhood. From this new reality we will begin exploring and
expressing more of our true spiritual selves.
Martin Rutte
President of Livelihood, A Management Consulting Organization |
New
Academy Review: Volume 1 Number 3
Autumn 2002
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We are all part of a
worldwide experiment in the intimate effects of surveillance technology, one
that can be expected to expand as terrorism concerns increase.
Jo Ann Oravec
A company is a living entity, not a machine.
Mark Goyder
NGAOs are increasingly influential actors on the political-economic
landscape.
Jonathan Doh
Creativity is a cornerstone of business.
Martin Rutte
Not for nothing are the Free Trade Companies called ‘swallows’ in Central
America.
Anita Roddick
In a time more moralistic than ours, the intimate linking of social and
economic interests so valorized by social capital thinking had a special,
albeit now unfashionable name: corruption.
Steve Fuller
Successful CSR chimes in with a company’s overall strategy and reflects its
attitudes and its strengths.
Lucy Neville-Rolfe |
Contents:
A View from the Chair – Anita Roddick
Notes from the Edge - Tom Cannon
Debating Points
Spirituality in the Workplace – Martin Rutte
Spirituality Moves into the Workplace – Kirsten Pruzan Mikkelsen
Perspective on Social Capital
Social Capital: What’s in a Name – Steve Fuller
Nongovernmental Advocacy Organisations and Corporate Social Responsibility:
Ownership Activism and Issues Advocacy – Jonathan P.Doh
Research Insights into Corporate Social Responsibility (Part 2.) - Ken
Peattie, Jill Solomon, Aris Solomon and Jo Hunt
1984 and September 11: Corporate Social Responsibility, Surveillance, and
Response to Terrorism – Jo Ann Oravec
Who Influences debates
in Business Ethics?: An Examination of UK Corporate Governance since 1990 –
Ian W Jones and Michael G Pollitt
The Problem of Agency: Governmental Partnership, Industrial
Self-discipline and Competitive Ideal in the Cluster Economy
– Piero Formica
New Academy of Business
Enhancing Business-Community Relations: Perspectives from an
international action research project – David.F.Murphy & Rupesh A.Shah
Good Corporation
The Business Case for CSR: the angel is in the detail – Michael
Littlechild
Respect Europe
Johannesburg Outcome Demands More from the Business Sector - Mei Li Han
Case Study
Tesco –Social Responsibility: Finding a New Legitimacy – Lucy Neville-Rolfe
Parting Shots
Enron et al: prevention and cure in Anglo-American capitalism -
Mark Goyder
Book Reviews
What’s On
About the Author
Notes for Writers
Technical Information
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Dame Anita Roddick
Life couldn’t be simpler if you’re a free-ranging company looking for a
manufacturing base with no ties or commitments, complete with compliant
workforce. Just click onto ‘Free Trade’ on your computer and up comes a
tempting menu of global fare for the profit-hungry. Nicaragua’s Zona Franca
site offers up some particularly tasty morsels to whet corporate appetites,
* Production costs are the lowest in the region.
* No government income, sales or corporate taxes or fees.
* Unrestricted repatriation of profits and capital at any time.
* Low cost skilled and unskilled labor.
* Ample supply of trainable and productive labor.
Of primary concern to Nicaraguan lawmakers is the 60% rate of unemployment.
Because of this, free zone operators enjoy laws that provide them with maximum
freedom and benefits. For ease of operation and profitability, Nicaragua is
your best alternative.
To some corporates, Nicaragua’s Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone must seem like
heaven on Earth, but when I visited it early one morning in February it looked
more like hell as an amorphous mass of over 20,000 souls (mostly young women)
poured into its featureless, prefabricated factories. 6 days a week, 10
hours a day, the workers of the Free Trade Zone are making jeans, shorts and
shirts in the vast Taiwanese, Korean, and US owned 'Maquilla' (from the
spanish, ‘To assemble’) factories for sale through US retailers like Kohls,
Kmart, Wal-Mart, and J C Penney. The US military also sources jeans from the
Maquillas, sold through its Army and Airforce Exchange Service, one of the
largest retailers in the world. A bizarre thought occurred to me, had
Reagan’s Contra-supplying sidekick Colonel Oliver North ever worn a pair of
Sandinista-sewn jeans?
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1984 and September 11:
Corporate Social Responsibility, Surveillance,
and Response to Terrorism
Abstract
Increased threats of terrorism are triggering the implementation
of new waves of electronic surveillance innovations as well as expanding
old-style security measures on a number of domestic fronts in many Western
nations. Shifts in public policy concerning a number of basic civil liberties
issues have occurred in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 tragedies
(Hope et al., 2002). In particular, the US is providing object examples of how
a society copes with unexpected terrorist incidents and involves technologies
in these efforts. This article addresses the corporate response to these
matters; it analyzes modes through which corporations are infusing
technologically-assisted surveillance practices into many aspects of their
operations, along with the manners in which they have come to defend them,
with an emphasis on post-September 11th activities and rhetoric. It
addresses the broad question of how corporations can relate in less
opportunistic ways to the fear inspired by terrorist attacks, and promotes the
development of approaches to surveillance that more effectively balance
concern for security with civil liberties. The long-term security of a society
is rooted in building relationships and trust, a process that can be
undermined through some varieties of surveillance practices.
Jo
Ann Oravec, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater,
College of Business and Economics |
NONGOVERNMENTAL ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS AND CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY:
OWNERSHIP ACTIVISM AND ISSUES ADVOCACY
Abstract
The emergence of nongovernmental advocacy organizations (NGAOs) has
influenced many aspects of corporate strategy and organization, including
corporate governance. Drawing from stakeholder and agency theory, and research
on corporate public affairs and issues management, I identify characteristics of
the particular policy in question, and the focus of the specific campaign or
program, to suggest when ownership-based initiatives versus broader public
advocacy interventions will be most effective. I conclude that the ability of
NGAOs to leverage their influence as both shareholders and stakeholders makes
them uniquely positioned to influence management toward more socially
responsible practices, even when only a minority of shareholders support their
initiatives. Jonathan P. Doh, Department of Management, College of
Commerce and Finance, Villanova University
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Research Insights into Corporate Social Responsibility (Part
2.)
Abstract.
Interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is increasing among a range
of audiences with an interest in business. It has also been a growing focus
for academic research and writing over recent years. Unfortunately,
interesting knowledge and insight about CSR generated by academic researchers
can often circulate within the academic community, but without getting the
attention from business practitioners and public policy makers that it
deserves. This article is the second in a two-part review, which aims to
encourage some of the most recent academic wisdom about CSR to escape out into
the wider world. This article has a focus on corporate governance and
accountability, socially responsible investment, accountancy and law. It aims
to complement the first article, which looked at general CSR issues; at its
relevance to specific management functions; and at the challenge of
integrating CSR initiatives across a company. Professor Ken Peattie;
Dr. Jill Solmon; Dr. Aris Solomon; Dr. Joanne Hunt
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The Problem of Agency - Government
Partnership industrial self-discipline and Competitive Ideals in the Cluster
Economy
Abstract
Across the world there are local communities that are in better shape today –
economically and socially- than they have been for generations. This
unprecedented economic development has not been inspired by governments, but is
the result of organic growth. Where the state is involved, better corporate
governance of its Agencies is essential to retain the vigour of spontaneous
development while avoiding capture by the bureaucracy, loss of purpose and
corruption of initial aspirations.
Organic growth is the spontaneous, self-organised, self-sustaining and
self-reinforcing formation of interconnected businesses. The seed is a catalyser
without which the ‘business reaction’ would proceed only with great difficulty.
High quality local resources such as skilled individuals and locally-rooted
business heroes usually act as the catalysers. Success comes about almost
by accident. Piero Formica, International
University of Entrepreneurship
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