The caring enterprise: a sociology of corporate social involvement in Britain and Italy

This thesis examines corporate social responsibility initially in Britain, where there has recently been a conspicuous growth of interest in business social involvement, and Italy. Corporate social responsibility is defined here as business engagement in the wider community in order to contribute towards the general well-being of society. Our analysis employs a hybrid methodology: we employ a variety of sources, namely, historical texts, secondary studies and detailed case studies of corporate social programmes based on in-depth interviews of relevant personnel and the study of company documents. Our aim in this study is to provide a general explanation of why companies go beyond their commercial remit to become engaged in communitarian and philanthropic action. A socially and politically informed analysis is furnished: we place this area in its historical and political context, without losing sight of the role played by economic forces. Any explanation of contemporary advances in corporate social responsibility needs to stress the role of the modern state in society, and, more specifically, the development of relations between the state and the business community. It is argued that, in Britain, as a response to the political and economic crisis of the 1970s, the links between the business and state sectors became ever closer. This, as we shall demonstrate, created the institutional opportunities for active business involvement in society in areas such as environmental protection, small firm development and urban regeneration. Italy has seen less political impetus given to active corporate involvement in society. The most significant achievements, though, have come from within the state sector. A final consideration of our social analysis is that we attempt to analyse the contribution of the private sector to wider society. This is especially pertinent because, in Britain, corporate responsibility has come to be seen as a private solution to public problems. We show, using original case study material, that there are limits to what companies can achieve on a social front. We conclude that corporate social responsibility must emphasise the need for companies to observe social and legal restrictions in their pursuit of commercial goals, rather than necessarily engaging actively in social action

Participation as Post-Fordist Politics: Demos, New Labour, and Science Policy

In recent years, British science policy has seen a significant shift ‘from deficit to dialogue’ in conceptualizing the relationship between science and the public. Academics in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have been influential as advocates of the new public engagement agenda. However, this participatory agenda has deeper roots in the political ideology of the Third Way. A framing of participation as a politics suited to post-Fordist conditions was put forward in the magazine Marxism Today in the late 1980s, developed in the Demos thinktank in the 1990s, and influenced policy of the New Labour government. The encouragement of public participation and deliberation in relation to science and technology has been part of a broader implementation of participatory mechanisms under New Labour. This participatory program has been explicitly oriented toward producing forms of social consciousness and activity seen as essential to a viable knowledge economy and consumer society. STS arguments for public engagement in science have gained influence insofar as they have intersected with the Third Way politics of post-Fordism

Powerscapes

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2012.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-151).In 2050, global oil supply will decline to 1/8 of today's. Migrating to the Post-Oil Era, over 10000's km2 of Powerscapes - the solar-collecting infrastructure - will be gradually constructed across the arid desert, for the indispensable production of solar energy to sustain Middle East's economy and global energy supply. The contingency of introducing the Powerscapes is a spatial problem. Unlike a powerplant that burns coal or oil, the scale of the Powerscapes is dramatically extensive. The inserted Powerscapes will interiorize the desert landscape and shelter the ground from the harsh direct sunlight that will be captured for power supply. Transformation in biological development, meteorological activity and geological phenomena will be inevitable, but the change that reduces the heat and evaporation rate will make its climatatic dynamics more habitable for human, animals and plants - an invaluable opportunity for the synthesis of energy production and climate conditioning. This thesis investigates the strategic programming and spatial configuration of such constructed landscape, capitalized by its new temporal characteristics, and sensitively adapting to it. Layers of material will be organized to form "Strata" of temporal conditions to be stretched across the landscape. To forge a symbiotic relationship between Solar Collection, human habitation, agricultural production and wild nature, the layers of material will delineate, push, flip, intersect, puncuate, wrap and merge, responding to programmatic needs and geographical dynamics that the natural geology and the Powerscapes together create. Such adaptive organization also permits certain geometrical and configuration logic to reiterate themselves in multiple scales, formulating a fractalic field with recursive part to whole relationships.by Chun Lun Otto Ng.M.Arch

The caring enterprise A sociology of corporate social involvement in Britain and Italy

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The Historical Development of Business Philanthropy: Social Responsibility in the New Corporate Economy

According to neo-liberal economists such as Friedman and Hayek, the prime function of any business enterprise is to generate profits; its central responsibility is to shareholders. The idea that business owners should also seek to perform social tasks is regarded as completely erroneous. Historical evidence suggests that not all business leaders have been content simply to perform a commercial role in society. Numerous industrialists and entrepreneurs throughout the nineteenth century made significant contributions to their local communities. The early efforts of socially responsible business leaders are well documented. This paper aims to build on existing historical analysis of business philanthropy and social involvement by analysing developments in post-war Britain. Three main historical developments are outlined. Firstly, the early post-war years, despite the formation of the welfare state, witnessed some notable efforts to engage business in society. These were mainly inspired by church-led organisations and Christian entrepreneurs. Second, the expansion of the corporate economy throughout the 1940s and 1950s placed increasing constraints on the social aspirations of businesses. Finally, from the mid-1970s onwards there grew a more general interest in corporate responsibility. This was consolidated in the 1980s. As part of the general redefinition of state functions in this period, the role of business in addressing social problems became more prominent. Such political and policy developments, it is argued, have made a significant contribution towards enhancing the social role of business.

Pessimism of the modernist intellect versus optimism of the democratic will: The interpretive school of governance

There is a tension between pessimism and optimism running through Mark Bevir's thesis in Democratic Governance. The intellectual apprehension on display is directed, in the main, at the state of the modern democratic polity. Indeed, Bevir's Democratic Governance is characterised by, on the one hand, a pessimistic unease about the condition of today's increasingly fragmented and unaccountable polity. This article examines the chief sources of Bevir's pessimism. These concerns over the present state of democracy are informed by Bevir's theoretical approach to modern democratic processes and institutions. In this respect, Democratic Governance draws upon the Anglo-governance school, associated with political scientists such as Rod Rhodes, Martin Smith, as well as Bevir himself. At the same time, he goes beyond Anglo-governance, offering a more philosophical appreciation of governance. In what I term the Interpretive School of Governance, Bevir conducts an historical anthropology of the cultural imperialism of modernist thinking in the public sphere, of which the pursuit of joined-up governance is one such example. The dominance of modernism, with its faith in positivist empiricism and scientific models, has further augmented the fragmentation, cynicism and democratic alienation surrounding the modern polity. On the other hand, Bevir hankers for an optimistic vision of a democratic tomorrow that is better than today's democracy. The alternative is a form of participatory democracy, which is pluralistic both philosophically and in terms of policy practice. For reasons which are considered, this more optimist vision is sketched out rather than outlined in detail