Suchergebnisse

PurposeThis paper seeks to describe a framework used to help MBA students understand and reconcile the different sustainability perspectives.Design/methodology/approachA review of the corporate sustainability literature is undertaken to develop the sustainability framework.FindingsThe sustainability framework relates basic concepts and assumptions within the ecocentric, ecological modernization and neoclassical paradigms to organizational practice and behavior. For the most part, the MBA students have only been exposed to neoclassical economic thinking within the other MBA subjects. The aim of the sustainability framework is to shift the students' thinking by engaging with sustainability from different perspectives, rather than presenting one version of sustainability to them. The framework has proven to be useful in developing critical and reflective thinking and discussion.Originality/valueThe paper provides a summary of sustainability concepts as applied to business practices and describes how this is used in teaching sustainability to business students.

AbstractUsing a case study approach, this article examines how an Australian bank supports and invests in social sustainability using a community development approach. Bendigo Bank's community engagement model (CEM) is consistent with a stakeholder perspective of the firm. The CEM is a hybrid model drawing on commercial principles, such as the for‐profit shareholder‐ownership structure, and community development values, such as trust, loyalty, integrity, volunteerism, cooperation and community spirit. The CEM contributes to community development by retaining local capital through a revenue‐share arrangement, which is used to invest in further community enhancement initiatives. The success of Bendigo Bank's CEM indicates that the 'collaborative commerce' model could be used as a design guideline for other organizations seeking to improve their social sustainability. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Private standards and certification schemes provide an increasingly significant site of study for scholars interested in the restructuring of the agrifood sector. In the last ten years there has been a burgeoning literature on standards and certification schemes, focusing particularly on organic (Guthman, 2004), fair trade (Renard, 2005) and retailer-led schemes (Campbell et al, 2006; Hatanaka et al, 2005). The rise of private standards schemes has tended to be conceptualized as part of a broader global shift from public to private forms of governance as large international supermarket chains in particular, and to a lesser extent actors such as civil society organizations and social activists, exert increasing control over agri-food supply chains (Burch and Lawrence, 2007; Fulponi, 2006; Henson and Reardon, 2005) including the production practices of processors and producer-farmers (Hendrickson and James, 2005). This relates to the more general influence of what Cashore (2002, p. 504) terms 'Non-State Market-Driven' forms of governance that 'derive their policy-making authority not from the state, but from the manipulation of global markets and attention to customer preferences'. While this literature is significant in drawing attention to the shifting power relations within agri-food supply chains from producers and processors to supermarkets, it gives little attention to how standards are implemented and adapted, and the role of state agencies, sub-state or regional authorities and producers in this process. Drawing upon insights from the literature on governmentality, this chapter examines the different ways in which a private standards scheme - environmental management systems (EMS), based on the international standard ISO14001- has been implemented at a national, regional and industry level in Australian agriculture. We argue that the application of EMS has depended on alliances between a diverse range of agencies and actors - both public and private. Moreover, making EMS work at an industry and regional level has involved the adaptation of this standards scheme so that it accords with sectoral and local priorities rather than striving to meet the full requirements of the international ISO14001 standard. Prior to elaborating our argument, it is necessary to explore briefly the merits and limitations of the existing literature on agri-food standards, and the ways in which a governmentality perspective might assist in addressing existing gaps in knowledge.