A lot of the management-oriented literature on CSR that is taught in business schools around the world focuses on the different management strategies that companies use to promote CSR. Much of this literature assumes that CSR policies positively influence economic, social, and environmental conditions in developing countries. However, a number of recent impact studies have shown that the gains accruing to local producers, workers, and communities from the implementation of CSR policies in global production networks can at best be described as limited. Against this background a new CSR paradigm seems to be emerging. This involves a review of buyer purchasing practices, economic, social, and environmental upgrading of supplier factories,  increased use of civil society monitoring and labor agency, joint action CSR approaches implemented in industrial districts and engagement in multi-stakeholder partnerships to enhance the positive impact of CSR policies implemented in global production networks.
 

In this course, we will explore whether this new CSR paradigm really constitutes a new path to sustainable development? Sustainable development is here understood as the integration of economic, social, and environmental concerns in the policy-making in public and private actors in ways that improve the incomes, labor, and living conditions of local producers and workers while reducing environmental pollution from developing country firms. We will be do this by comparing and integrating theories of global economic organization, local economic development strategies, and the adoption of particular CSR approaches in order to explain the income, work, and environmental conditions of local producers and workers in developing country export industries. In practice, we will examine how CSR policies are structured from the top-down in global production networks (using examples from the football, garment, forestry or other industries) and the bottom-up in local economic, social, and cultural contexts in developing countries, primarily in Asia but also in Africa and Latin America.

The course readings amount to around 800 pages, and you will be required to buy two-three course readers from Academic Books, Solbjerg Plads Campus, 2000 Frederiksberg which should be available by early September 2012. Mostly, the course readings consist of very recent literature on CSR as it applies to developing country contexts. We have indicated some of the texts that we intend to include in the course curriculum below.

Posthuma, A. and D. Nathan, 2010. Labor in Global Production Networks in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi
Oxfam, 2010.  Better Jobs in Better Supply Chains, Briefings for Business no. 5, Oxfam, Oxford.
Khan, F. and Lund-Thomsen, P. (2011), “CSR As Imperialism – Towards a Phenomenological Approach to CSR in the Developing World”, Journal of Change Management, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 73-90.
Neilson, J. and B. Pritchard, 2009. ‘Chapter One – Introduction, in Neilson, J. and B. Pritchard, Value Chain Struggles – Institutions and Governance in the Plantation Districts of South India, pp. 1-26
Barrientos, S. et al. 2003. A Gendered Approach to Codes of Conduct in African Horticulture, World Development, vol. 31, no. 9, pp. 1511-1526.
Bolwig, S. et al. 2010. Integrating Poverty and Environmental Concerns into Value-Chain Analysis: A Conceptual Framework, Development Policy Review, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 173-194.                                        
Navas- Alemán, L. 2011. The Impact of Operating in Multiple Value Chains for Upgrading: The Case of the Brazilian Furniture and Footwear Industries, World Development, vol. 39, no. 8, 1386-1397.                   
De Neve, G. 2010a. ‘Contractors Are the Real Bosses Here!’: Trajectories, Roles and Agency of Labour Contractors in the Tiruppur Garment Industry, Paper Presented at Sussex Workshop, University of Sussex, July 2010.                                                                                          
De Neve, G. 2010b. ’There You Are Like a Bird in a Cage!’ – Indian Garment Workers Critiquing Fordism and CSR, Paper Presented at the BASAS Conference, University of Warwick, April 2010.                         
Harney, A. 2008. ‘The Five Star Factory’, Chapter 7 in The China Price – The True Cost of Competitive Advantage, Penguin Press, pp. 33-55.
OECD, 2011. OECD Guidelines for Multinational Corporations, Recommendations for Responsible Business Conduct in a Global Context, OECD, Paris.
International Trade Center, 2010. The Impacts of Private Standards on Global Value Chains – Literature Review Series on Impacts of Private Standards, ITC, Geneva,  pp. ix-29 & 37-41.
Murphy, J.T. and S. Schindler, 2010.  Globalizing Development in Bolivia? Alternative Networks and Value-Capture Challenges in the Wood Products Industry, Journal of Economic Geography, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 61-85.