Private Sector Investment and Sustainable Development: The Current and Potential Role of Institutional Investors, Companies, Banks and Foundations in Sustainable Development

This paper seeks to provide the Financing for Development process with a perspective on the role institutional investors, companies, and foundations can play in the design and implementation of a financing strategy for global sustainability. This will help bridge the terminology and investment approaches of institutional investors, companies, foundations, and governments. The paper highlights ongoing efforts among private investors to increase the impact of their investments. It concludes with a set of key actions facing investors, companies and foundations in their transition towards investment practices that contribute to sustainable development

ACCESS: An Inception Report

Imagine a world in which all groups of citizens coming together to realize some public benefit measure and communicate the character and consequences of their work. Imagine further that all those groups have adopted a common reporting system that enables their individual reports to be compared, thus creating powerful descriptions of the relative and collective performance of citizen association for public benefit. Imagine, too, that this common measuring and reporting carries across to all forms of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility. This is the world envisioned by ACCESS.For the past 18 months a growing number of concerned actors have been meeting, studying, and testing opinion around one of the great structural weaknesses in the world's institutional infrastructure -- inefficient and weak social investment markets. This inception report sets out the results of this enquiry in the form of a proposal to establish a reporting standard for nonprofit organizations seeking to produce social, environmental and, increasingly, financial returns. The ACCESS Reporting standard is one important contribution to redressing a major global system weakness, but it is certainly not the only one. Nor is it one that can operate in isolation from other initiatives. Accordingly, the ACCESS proposed plan of work involves convening a global dialogue on NGO transparency, accountability and performance with the objective of promoting ACCESS and other practical solutions to the challenges of social investment and civil society accountability.This report sets out the background and rationale for these proposals. You will meet the ACCESS sponsors and pilot project partners. Parts of the report are descriptive and analytical but other parts are necessarily theoretical and technical in nature. We make no apology for this. Part of the reason that in 2003 the world does not yet have a reporting standard for social actors is that the theory and technique have not been mastered. For those with a strong orientation toward strategy and action, however, these aspects are presented as well

Social Enterprises in Asia: An Introductory Guide

Over the decades, social enterprises (SEs) have gained increased recognition for their ability to bring about fair and equitable social transformations. Their unique models provide an additional mode of engagement for individuals and institutions interested in addressing social issues.Social enterprises (SEs) take the form of a non-profit or for-profit and vary in size and structure but what unites all SEs is their business approach to social change. Instead of maximizing profits, SEs apply market practices to maximizing impact and strive to optimize finances in support of their social or environmental missions. SEs form an integral role in a larger social innovation sector -- they act as on-the-ground implementers of social solutions.Early social entrepreneurs in Asia tended to be foreigners or returning patriates, but homegrown Asian social entrepreneurs are now more common. Some of the world's largest and most well known SEs, like Grameen Bank and BRAC Enterprises, got their start in Asia.It is difficult to state the number of SEs there are in Asia since SEs are so diverse in their nature and scope of activities. Because of the relatively recent introduction of the term, many organizations may not even self-identify as a social enterprise even though they function as one.As Asia continues to undergo drastic social, demographic, and economic changes, SEs can play a role to ensure that future Asian growth is inclusive and sustainable. SEs reach underserved communities, linking them to products and services that enhance their quality of life and income generation ability. However, a number of issues must be addressed before SEs can become a part of mainstream Asian economies and societies

Entrepreneurship as nexus of change: the syncretistic production of the future

This paper deals with the issue of how the future is created and the mechanisms through which it is produced and conceived. Key to this process appears to be social interaction and how it is used to bring about change. Examining the entrepreneurial context by qualitative longitudinal research techniques, the study considers the situations of three entrepreneurs. It demonstrates that the web of relationships in which individuals are engaged provide the opportunity to enact the environment in new ways, thus producing organizations for the future. It further provides empirical evidence for a Heideggerian reading of strategy-as-practice, extending this conceptualization to account for the temporal dimension

Fostering Fair and Sustainable Marketing for Social Entrepreneurs in the Context of Subsistence Marketplaces

In recent years, in-depth, on-the-ground research has generated many insights into the nature and functioning of subsistence marketplaces and the people who operate in them. Such knowledge is bound to be useful to various companies and organisations, as they seek to engage such marketplaces, particularly for marketing managers, who quite likely have not had education or experience in marketing in such impoverished settings. This paper complements these practical insights with a normative ethical framework, presented in the marketing literature and labelled the integrative justice model (IJM) for impoverished markets, so as to synthesise a new framework for fair and sustainable marketing for social entrepreneurs in the context of subsistence marketplaces

Governance: public governance to social innovation?

ArticleThis paper reviews governance and public governance related to an emerging area of policy interest – social innovation. The European Commission’s White Paper on European Governance (2001) focused on openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence in public policy as characteristics of good governance. The EC has prioritised social innovation to address policy problems. Yet, the extant literature and research on social innovation is sparse. The paper questions whether it is a new mode of governance which contributes to good governance or a continuum of neoliberal reforms of the state which alters the relationship between the state, market and civil society

Complex networks analysis in socioeconomic models

This chapter aims at reviewing complex networks models and methods that were either developed for or applied to socioeconomic issues, and pertinent to the theme of New Economic Geography. After an introduction to the foundations of the field of complex networks, the present summary adds insights on the statistical mechanical approach, and on the most relevant computational aspects for the treatment of these systems. As the most frequently used model for interacting agent-based systems, a brief description of the statistical mechanics of the classical Ising model on regular lattices, together with recent extensions of the same model on small-world Watts-Strogatz and scale-free Albert-Barabasi complex networks is included. Other sections of the chapter are devoted to applications of complex networks to economics, finance, spreading of innovations, and regional trade and developments. The chapter also reviews results involving applications of complex networks to other relevant socioeconomic issues, including results for opinion and citation networks. Finally, some avenues for future research are introduced before summarizing the main conclusions of the chapter.Comment: 39 pages, 185 references, (not final version of) a chapter prepared for Complexity and Geographical Economics - Topics and Tools, P. Commendatore, S.S. Kayam and I. Kubin Eds. (Springer, to be published