In a climate in which companies are frequently painted as social outlaws, and where much pressure is exerted on them fundamentally to change their ways, business for the most part takes the line of appeasement and acquiescence. In corporate circles this acquiescence is evident everywhere and has given rise to the burgeoning industry of “corporate social responsibility”. Should business be going along with this?
The current conversation about business and society is dominated by the perspectives and interests of those who live in rich western countries. Activists, analysts and others – however well intentioned – do not grasp the realities of poverty and the hard choices of development outside the rich industrialised world. As a result, the debate about business, “responsibility” and corporate involvement in development is distorted, with few voices from developing countries being heard and the positive legacy of business remaining unacknowledged.
In The Case for Business in Developing Economies, Ann Bernstein argues forcefully and cogently that a new approach and a new discourse are required to cut through an increasingly flawed conversation, one which has potentially dangerous consequences for the poor and for developing countries in particular. Informed by many years of living, working, and championing the role of business in growth and development in a middle-income developing country, Bernstein urges business not to let such attacks stand unchallenged. It must find the confidence and strategic vision to stop apologising, develop its own public agenda, and start propagating the phenomenal benefits of competitive capitalism for the less developed countries of the world.
About the author
Ann Bernstein is the founding director of the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) in Johannesburg. She is acknowledged as one of South Africa’s leading development experts and is a strong proponent of the importance of economic growth in promoting democracy and sustainable development. Well known internationally, she travels extensively, regularly addressing conferences and other meetings both in South Africa and abroad. She is a regular commentator on radio and television and frequently contributes articles to journals and newspapers on a wide variety of issues.
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February 7th, 2010 @09:56 #
In commenting here, I should declare an interest: that I quite often do work for a consultancy which does work in the area broadly described as "corporate social investment", which is a much-abused and often ambiguous term.
CSI is sometimes interpreted to mean "philanthropy". Which can often mean that companies that have a destructive day-to-day modus operandi, ie, through abusive labour relations, pollution, employing militias that rape in the DRC to protect their mining interests, also put money into some schools and sports sponsorships, and call that CSI.
My colleagues in that line of work tend to take the view that there's more value in companies changing the way they do business to behave ethically and creatively in all spheres of operations.
It's interesting to read that Ann is enthusiastic about "economic growth and its importance in promoting democracy and sustainable development". Not having read her book, I can't fairly comment on her arguments, but think it worth making some broad points about the prevailing ideology of economic growth.
Conventional economic growth, which is measured in narrow terms that completely fail to take into account the destruction of social and ecological value, is in fact completely unsustainable. The conventional version of economic growth is driving the wholesale destruction of our global environment.
To put it another way, using GDP as your measure, you can bulldoze forests, destroy mangrove swamps, evict people to build dams, and all that destruction is still measured in the "positive economic growth" column.
There are more and more economists, at least those with some concern about our shared future, who take a rather dim view of the value of "economic growth".
In fact, Simon Kuznels, the economist who originated the concept of GDP which is now accepted as the conventional measure of economic growth, , said himself that “…the welfare of a nation [can] scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income…” and that “goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.”
The alternatives are measures such as the Happy Planet Index, which takes into account not just personal income, but longevity, education and ecological sustainability.
Since "economic growth" is driving the destruction not only of our planet's human friendly climate (through global warming), but also driving us headlong towards a multitude of parallel ecological crises, it's time we all stopped swallowing the line fed us by business and government: that all growth is good.