TITLE: Critical CSR

1. SUMMARY:

Corporates and society have always had and continue to have a financial relationship. Scholars of
corporate social responsibility prioritise profit and law over ethics and generosity. Profit is critical
for powerful companies. Companies who adhere to CSR believe they have permission to be
reckless later. Many people are now weighing in on the social implications of corporate conduct.

2. KEY POINTS: (550 words)

2.1 Disguised corporate social irresponsibility.

Profit comes first for powerful corporations, and their responsibilities to aiding groups come
second (Okolosie, 2016). According to (Ormiston, 2013), corporate social irresponsibility is a
result of corporate social responsibility, with a corporation taking one negative action for every
five positive actions it does for its stakeholders. Organizations that engage in socially responsible
behaviour with their stakeholders are more likely to engage in socially irresponsible behaviour
with those same stakeholders later on. Despite all of his good deeds, Enron was involved in a
covert accounting scheme. By the end of 2001, the stockholders had paid a £6.73 billion penalty.
BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, stated that the company's safety statistics was among the best. It held
safety coaching symposiums to benefit stakeholders such as employees, the environment, and the
community. In 2010, however, the management failed to notice critical safety warning triggers,
which resulted in the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It resulted in the deaths of 11 people, caused
the worst oil disaster in US history, and shattered BP's hitherto unblemished safety record.

2.2 Racism in CSR.

Africans have always been exploited in the sake of European expansion. Dirty fuel, often known
as African grade fuel, is imported diesel with a sulphur content of 3000 parts per million
(Okolosie, 2016). The European limit is 10 parts per million, making African-quality gasoline
unsafe for use by Europeans. Racism has always sanctioned exploitation, which explains why a
superpower is pouring the riches of a remote nation populated with, what it deems, inferior people
who should be serving them properly (Okolosie, 2016). In 2013, Ghana's air pollution claimed the
lives of nearly 20000 people. To shamelessly profit from an organisation that proliferates on
numerous deathbeds, it takes a monumental lack of morals (Okolosie, 2016). Corporations are a
group of people who have been trained to disregard human value in their pursuit of extraordinary
wealth (Okolosie, 2016). According to (Banerjee, 2008), capital capture and indefinite fracturing
of production scope in the colonies were part of the English kingdom's imperialistic colonial
activities in the 1800s. When global industries and capitalists control global trade and
environmental plans for their own gain, it's important considering the excluded percentage
(Banerjee, 2008). The TRIPS agreement was drafted by the World Trade Organization to protect
company rights rather than societal entitlements. It sparked a wave of native and peasant uprisings,
which were backed up by Asian, African, and South American NGOs. Dawkins et al., 1997.
(Okolosie, 2016) discussed that the contest is not between one another but between us and the
giant, international capitalists. Vigorously loathing others grants us no time to insist on equality in
everyone’s living.

2.3 The role of international institutions in CSR

Emerging countries have a larger presence of international organizations. The businesses uphold
democratic values and carry out the responsibilities of governments in these countries. In Nigeria,
Shell makes a lot of money. Shell's CEO views the company to be a local government (Brian
Anderson, Shell senior manager, cited in Hertz, 2001: 173). Bakan describes the ways in which
organization’s unfairly influence elected government through lobbying and how firms disobey
laws if it appears to be the most profitable measure and serves their self-interest in a previous
publication (2004: 102-04). (Franks, 2014). Organizations, their business groups, NGOs, and
aboriginal community leaders clashed over environmental measures at the 1992 Rio Summit. They
talked about putting together a strategy for long-term growth after a democratic process. They, on
the other hand, ignored the NGOs' recommendations and endorsed a voluntary code of behavior
developed by the Business Council for Sustainable Development. Hawken (Hawken, 1995).
(Banerjee, 2008) said that the policies developed at the Rio Earth Summit and the Johannesburg
Earth Summit stressed multinational corporations' silence on corporate trustworthiness and
environmental culpability.

3. QUESTIONS:

3.1 Increased regulation in the areas of social welfare and environmental protection, according to
(Banerjee, 2008), has prompted many firms to analyse the social and environmental implications
of their commercial activities. What criteria do the companies employ to evaluate the effects?
What is the degree of transparency in this assessment?

3.2 Five west African nations, including Nigeria, declared plans to ban the practise of European oil
corporations and dealers selling "African quality" diesel (Okolosie, 2016). What impact would this
have on West African countries? What impact could it have on European oil companies?

3.3 (Ormiston, 2013) stated that it is a reasonable assumption that company activities that help
stakeholders, such as consumers, workers, the community, and the environment, benefit those
stakeholders. Is this correct? Is there any hidden motive that benefits anyone other than the
stakeholders?

4. REFERENCES:

1. Academic Source: Banerjee S. (2008) Corporate Social Responsibility: The good, the bad
& the ugly. Critical Sociology. 34(1): 51-79.

2. Expert News Source: Okolosie L. (2016) Africa is being choked. But corporations leave
their grime on us all. Guardian, 9th December.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/09/africa-dirty-fuel-pollution-
corporate-behaviour

3. Academic Source: Franks B. (2014) Anarchism & business ethics. Ephemera. 14(4): 699-
 724.

4. Expert News Source: Ormiston M. (2013) Companies' CSR policies may be leading to
corporate irresponsibility. Guardian 10th December.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/comapanies-csr-policies-corporate-
irresponsibility-new-study

Academic Debates in Neoliberalism

1. SUMMARY:
A massive tidal wave of institutional reform and discursive adjustment has swept across the world,
destroying not only prior institutional frameworks and powers but also the divisions of labour,
social relations and welfare provisions, technological mixes, ways of life and attachments to the
land as well as the habits of the heart and ways of thinking. Establishing and maintaining an
effective institutional structure is a state responsibility. An important part of such a fight is
dismantling the neoliberal cloak and exposing the alluring language used to explain and legitimise
the return of power. A long period of time was required for neoliberals to establish themselves in
the institutions of contemporary capitalism and to achieve their generally successful march
through them. No matter which way one goes, a conflict may be expected.

2. KEY POINTS:

2.1 There should be no more than a bare minimum of state interference in markets after they have
been established, and this is especially true in democracies since powerful interests will invariably
distort and prejudice governmental interventions for their own gain. Anti-neoliberal movements
have proliferated around the globe. Oppositional movements are more likely to unite if they
acknowledge that their primary goal must be to challenge the neo liberalisation-resurrected class
power. It is more than 25 times more than the wealth of the UK's lowest fifth to have the wealth of
the UK's richest one percent. More than 8 million UK households are currently living in poverty
because their jobs do not pay, and they are essentially a commodity to be abused. Sports Direct
workers don't need an explanation of precarity or job uncertainty because it's part of their daily
routine.

2.2 Individual liberty and self-determination are all hallmarks of Neoliberalism's institutional
framework, which also emphasises private property rights, individual choice, open competition,
and unrestricted global commerce. The 'people as a sovereign body’ act as a safeguard for
individual liberty and tyrannical authority by enacting public laws that are agreed upon by all
citizens. Individuals do not have this protection if there is no common body to whom they may
turn. Individuals are compelled to follow without freedom, while those in authority are able to rule
with impunity. In the view of neoliberal thinkers, individual liberties are weakened by a shared
identity and the public and arbitrary positive and negative limits that go along with it. There are no
public limits on liberty under Neoliberal ideology. Rejecting governmental constraints on liberty
does not advance private liberties, it is contended in opposition to these prevalent neoliberal
presuppositions. To the contrary, it produces conditions in which free individuals become
subservient and political inequality is established, where citizens are split into those who submit
and those who command.

2.3 From the perspective of the wealthy, neoliberalism has been a big success. Even though
governing elites have regained their power, it has provided the circumstances for capitalist class
creation. The illusion that regions failed because they were not competitive enough might be
spread by the media, which is dominated by upper-class interests (thereby setting the stage for
even more neoliberal reforms). In order to foster the kind of entrepreneurial risk-taking and
creative thinking that boosts a country's competitive edge and propels its economic development,
greater social disparity was a must. If conditions in the lower classes worsened, it was largely due
to a failure on the part of individuals and cultures to invest in their own intellectual capital.

3. QUESTIONS:

3.1 Whose interests are being served by the state's neoliberal attitude, and how have these interests
utilised neoliberalism to their advantage, rather than everyone, everywhere, as is claimed?

3.2 For those who think of neoliberalism as redistributive rather than generative, how can it be
used to redistribute the wealth of the population, or to move wealth and income from poorer
nations to wealthier ones?

3.3 For a system of thoughts to be hegemonic, is it necessary to deeply embed the fundamental
concepts which are beyond questioning? Also explain what are the several ways in which one may
say that neo liberalization has solved the challenges of declining capital accumulation.
4. REFERENCES:

Harvey, D., 2006. Neo‐Liberalism as creative destruction. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human

Geography, 88(2), pp.145-158.

Weber, R., 2002. Extracting value from the city: neoliberalism and urban
redevelopment. Antipode, 34(3), pp.519-540.
 Academic Debates in The Commons Workshop

1. SUMMARY:
Organizational theories formerly dominated by altruistic communitarianism and neoliberalism
have been shaken by the rising amount of research that draws on a Polanyian critique of these two
approaches. The social solidarity economy's experiments have been shaped by the interconnections
between voluntary and co-operative activity (SSE) (Gallagher, 2021). Ostrom's first five principles
placed economics back on a road toward the mutual forms of organising, co-operative, and, but
with a fresh realisation that diverse types of users might be joined and composed by polycentric
autonomous organisations that serve their wellbeing and logics of reciprocity. The media tends to
overstate the success of cooperative financial models. By the end of 2014, 955 million individuals
throughout the globe held life and non-life insurance via co-operative and mutual carriers,
according to the ICMIF study. In light of these facts, it's possible to estimate the number of people
now employed (Ridley-Duff and Bull, 2018).
2. KEY POINTS:

2.1 Because of the advent of the SSE, many new institutions have been established to test the
practicality of design principles that support the UN SDGs. Reciprocity and mutuality are central
to Genovese’s vision of an economy based on reciprocity and mutuality that is supported by the
state and the market sector. Our investigation into how businesses emerge from action orientations
supports Genovese’s rather than Le Play's conception of the SSE (Gallagher, 2021). There is no
market-based extension of state institutions to deliver public goods in these emerging models, nor
do they demonstrate private finance exerting increasing control over human labour for the interests
of private accumulation In reality, it's just the opposite. Ostrom's design ideas may be used to drive
social and economic interactions through platforms that allow co-operation and mutual benefit in a
broad-based economy. People's ethics will be used to establish a purpose (rather than profit)-
driven SSE in the future.

2.2 According to Ostrom, ignoring SSEs' alternative economy because of a lack of public policy to
support collective entrepreneurship is no longer an acceptable justification. Changes in how
businesses operate are becoming increasingly apparent. Within the next generation, neither
altruistic communitarianism nor neoliberalism will be the sole choices (in a world of "free"
markets"). New types of unions and organisations, as well as employee-owned enterprises, mutual
financial institutions, and fresh cooperatives, will offer a new option to social liberalism in the
future (Ridley-Duff and Bull, 2018). As a means to fulfil the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals, new kinds of social entrepreneurship are supported via (open source)
platforms that are community- and cooperatively-led.

2.3 In order to achieve the SDGs, the SSE is not only a response to solving issues,' but rather a
proactive effort to build the foundation for an economy that is open, shared, and democratically
organised. Using an alternate axis of thinking proposed in this research, the SSE's age of maturity
is accelerating. In the end, the result is an SSE creating its own infrastructure led by new thinking
processes, new ways to enterprise, changing property relations, and socially entrepreneurial
behaviours (Gallagher, 2021).

3. QUESTIONS:

3.1 How the eligibility of an organisation or a person can be gauged regarding help and what role
the entrepreneurs, infrastructure organisations and consultants can play in this regard?

3.2 What are the advanced and traditional ways in which to cope with the problem of shortage of
funding?

3.3 How the Ostrom's design principles are incorporated to direct social and economic interactions
through platforms that enable cooperation and mutual benefit in a broad-based economy?
4. REFERENCES:

Ridley-Duff, R. and Bull, M., 2018, April. The coming of age of the social solidarity economy.
In paper to Welfare Societies in Transition-3rd EMES-Polanyi International Seminar,
Roskilde, Denmark, April (pp. 16-17).

Gallagher, K., 2021. Elinor Ostrom breaks the Nobel mould | Kevin Gallagher. [online] the
Guardian. Available at:
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/13/elinor-ostrom-
nobel-prize-economics> [Accessed 8 November 2021].

Academic Debates in Critical Management Education

1. SUMMARY:
While recognising the substantial changes in the corporate world, this paradigm shift would also
help students become self-sufficient learners. Organizational and management theories and
practises are examined from a variety of perspectives including those rooted in history, society,
politics, and philosophy. A truly critical education can only be attained by redefining the roles of
teachers, curriculum, and classroom processes in such a way as to promote critical thinking
amongst students. At this point, the classroom becomes less hierarchical, disciplinary boundaries
become more permeable, and difficulties become more challenging. The contradictory effect of
external component groups becoming more invasive is evident. Closer relationships between
universities and their constituents provide management instructors with a better chance to critique
those constituents' policies and practises. Additionally, the internalisation of component agendas
restricts critical thinking to managerialist aims, such as the organization's efficiency, effectiveness,
and control
2. KEY POINTS:

2.1 A deceptive simplicity persists in today's conceptions of organisations, management, and

management learning because of the influence of management orthodoxy's doctrines. An
administrative job is significantly more complex than the conventional paradigm. A paradigm
change in management education necessitates that students' preparation be divergent from old
methods as well (Contu, 2021). An updated and better understanding of management is required in
today's business context, which in turn requires creative pedagogies that can explain these more
advanced management concepts. Complexity, unpredictability, ambiguity, and value conflicts are
some of the challenges management educators confront in preparing future managers. A critical
perspective on material and critical approach are possible when this is done in the classroom. Self-
and world-related features are added to discipline knowledge in democratic classrooms as well as
inquiry processes. This falls under the purview of critical education.

2.2 Reorganising the contributions of professors and learners in order to reverse the trend of
commercialization and managerialism now prevalent in higher education is essential to the
development of a critical pedagogy. A more explicit focus on social transformation is what critical
pedagogy teaches in management education, which aims to empower individuals and infuse
democratic action in social institutions (Dehler, Welsh and Lewis, 2004). In the critical
management education, there is a constant conflict between the emancipatory process of offering
different viewpoints an opportunity and exposing such deviant notions to monitoring and control
Rather than being a reflection of their managerial potential, this emancipates students by helping
them see that their feelings of stress, worry, and uncertainty are a result of the inherent
inconsistencies in contemporary management systems.

2.3 It is possible that critical pedagogy might help students become more skeptical of the context
in which management is practiced and therefore increase their resistance against its mindless
repetition. However, these results are only possible in the future. The development of critical
beings is one of the most direct outcomes of a critical management education. They use their
critical thinking abilities in the knowledge base, themselves and the world (Contu, 2021). While
traditional critical thinking skills provide a limited framework for analyzing management, students
who are trained in critical thinking can move beyond this framework and look at all of the ways
management can be reimagined in light of the infinite possibilities that exist in our cultural
traditions. Students develop a critical sense of self-reflection during this process. When self-
monitoring based on existing standards gives way to critical self-reflection and the reconstruction
of the self, this is known as self-monitoring vs established norms. Projects meant to help students
comprehend the world have been repurposed to help students better understand themselves
(Dehler, Welsh and Lewis, 2004).

3. QUESTIONS:

3.1
How the management education and leaned managerial practices is beneficial for the managers,
and would it really matter if it were abolished?

3.2 What are the advanced and traditional ways in which to cope with the problem of shortage of
funding?

3.3 What are your thoughts on how to implement critical pedagogy, and what is the ultimate
purpose of the educational process in educating the managers and training them?
4. REFERENCES:

Contu, A., 2021. Time to take on greed: why business schools must engage in intellectual activism.
[online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-
network/2017/jan/17/taking-on-greed-business-schools-must-engage-in-intellectual-
activism> [Accessed 8 November 2021].
Dehler, G.E., Welsh, M.A. and Lewis, M.W., 2004. Critical pedagogy in the “New
Paradigm”. Essential readings in management learning, pp.167-186.