• Describe theories and concepts covered in the course readings that are relevant to the analysis of CSR in global production networks
• Apply concepts and theories from the course to analyse how CSR in global production networks is embedded in developing country contexts.
• Critically evaluate the theories, their application and limitations in relation to explaining how CSR in global production networks affects and is affected by local producers, workers, and communities in Asia, Africa, or Latin America.
• Demonstrate appropriate academic writing skills, including: correct referencing, clear argumentation and correct usage and definition of key concepts.

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 can use in integrating CSR within the corporation and in its external stakeholder relations. Much of this literature assumes that CSR policies positively influence economic, social, and environmental conditions in developing countries. However, impact assessments have shown in the last decade that the gains accruing to local producers, workers, and communities from the implementation of CSR policies in global production networks are often quite limited. Moreover, factory fires and collapses in countries such as Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan have recently led to the deaths of hundreds of workers, and in some cases, the factories had been CSR audited shortly before these accidents happened.

Against this background European and North America-based retailers and supermarkets are experimenting with both compliance-based and cooperation-based approaches to improving labor and environmental conditions at their supplier factories in developing countries and economies in transition. They are also increasingly engaging in multi-stakeholder initiatives involving brands, NGOs, trade unions, suppliers, and other interested parties with a view to finding common solutions to complex challenges such as child labor, forced labor or unsustainable forms of resource extraction in developing countries. At the same time, the rise of developing country mega-suppliers, retailers, and consumers are beginning to influence CSR in global production networks in new ways.

In this course, we will explore whether CSR really constitutes a path to sustainable development? Sustainable development is here understood as the integration of economic, social, and environmental concerns in the policy-making of 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 doing this by comparing and integrating theories of global production networks/global value chains; economic, social, and environmental upgrading; labor agency; as well as the adoption of particular CSR approaches. We will do this 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, textile, agro-industrial production or other industries) and the bottom-up in local economic, social, and cultural contexts in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

To be announced on Learn