A History of Socially Responsible Business, c.1600–1950


Book Description

This book examines the changing reciprocal relationships between corporations and their various social obligations over the very long term - from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Chapters from emerging and established business historians assess the full range of social obligations that corporations held historically. By adopting an innovative methodological approach that is long-term and comparative, this book offers a challenge to the literature on corporate history and will be of interest to researchers and academics in the field of finance and business history.




Responsible Organizations in the Global Context


Book Description

This book aims to spur critical thought on the various dimensions and impacts of “responsibility” for organizations, including companies, institutions, and governments, while considering international differences and similarities, as well as global challenges. It analyzes to what extent responsibility is becoming a crucial issue for all kinds of organizations, examining both the intensifying pressures of international competition and the growing crisis of confidence towards some management concepts and practices. As more and more socio-economic and political systems are suspected of serving selfish interests instead of the public good, more accountable and integrated processes are appropriate in order to deal with the present and future stakes of our society. Further, with the development of digital technology and the use of data mining, new questions regarding responsibility require examination. This edited collection is a culmination of the international scientific conference "Responsible Organizations in the Global Context", co-organized by the CIED of Georgetown University (United States) and the Larequoi Research Center of the University of Versailles St-Quentin (France) in June 2017 in Washington DC. It will contribute to research and actions in the areas of social responsibility, business ethics, organizational excellence, sustainability, and cross-cultural management.




A Cultural History of Disability in the Renaissance


Book Description

In Renaissance humanism, difference was understood through a variety of paradigms that rendered particular kinds of bodies and minds disabled. A Cultural History of Disability in the Renaissance, covering the period from 1450 to 1650, explores evidence of the possibilities for disability that existed in the European Renaissance, observable in the literary and medicinal texts, and the family, corporate, and legal records discussed in the chapters of this volume. These chapters provide an interdisciplinary overview of the configurations of bodies, minds and collectives that have left evidence of some of the ways that normativity and its challengers interacted in the Renaissance. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of history, literature, culture and education, A Cultural History of Disability in the Renaissance explores such themes and topics as: atypical bodies; mobility impairment; chronic pain and illness; blindness; deafness; speech; learning difficulties; and mental health.




Change for Good


Book Description

An action-oriented approach for businesses to solve the world’s most urgent social problems — and benefit from doing so. More than a year into a global pandemic, profit and shareholder value are no longer the primary metric of business success. Customers, shareholders, and communities are demanding that companies do good, do more, and do better. In Change for Good, Paul Klein shows how companies must move beyond what he calls “corporate social responsibility light” and demonstrate how they can help solve social problems that have been defined as UN Sustainable Development Goals. Change for Good is a new system for making social change through business that reflects Paul’s experience over the last 35 years. One of the core principles of Change for Good is including people with lived experience of social problems in identifying promising solutions and collaborating to bring these solutions to life. This methodology can create impactful and sustainable social change in society in ways that aren’t possible when executives make decisions in their boardrooms that are intended to impact the lives of vulnerable people. Through personal experiences, case studies, and practical tools, Change for Good will inspire readers and their organizations to make the shift from a passive social responsibility to taking action to help solve the world’s most pressing social problems.




The Corporation as a Protagonist in Global History, c. 1550-1750


Book Description

William A. Pettigrew and David Veevers put forward a new interpretation of the role Europe’s overseas corporations played in early modern global history, recasting them from vehicles of national expansion to significant forces of global integration. Across the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Pacific, corporations provided a truly global framework for facilitating the circulation, movement and exchange between and amongst European and non-European communities, bringing them directly into dialogue often for the first time. Usually understood as imperial or colonial commercial enterprises, The Corporation as a Protagonist in Global History reveals the unique global sociology of overseas corporations to provide a new global history in which non-Europeans emerged as key stakeholders in European overseas enterprises in the early modern world. Contributors include: Michael D. Bennett, Aske Laursen Brock, Liam D. Haydon, Lisa Hellman, Leonard Hodges, Emily Mann, Simon Mills, Chris Nierstrasz, Edgar Pereira, Edmond Smith, Haig Smith, and Anna Winterbottom.




Human Flourishing


Book Description

Beyond an internal transformation or mere "moment of salvation," how does Christian faith envision the good life? This question demands not only a Christian view of how individuals should live, but of how social institutions are best arranged for human flourishing. In the advanced modern world, our common public life is mainly lived out in the domains of work and commerce, so a Christian view of economic life is essential to a modern Christian view of human flourishing. In this volume, established evangelical scholars in theology, biblical studies, and history explore their disciplines in connection with economic wisdom to yield insights about what it means to live wholly, fruitfully, and well. Faithful and provocative, these essays uncover fresh ground on topics ranging from poverty to work ethic to capitalism/socialism to slavery to non-profit entities to the medieval indulgence industry.




Measuring Good Business


Book Description

What's a good company? Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing is transforming the world of business and finance. Investors are using data on issues like climate and diversity to enhance returns and make an impact. But with scepticism creeping in, how far can we trust the numbers? Is all this data making a difference to people and planet, and have we actually lost sight of what we are measuring and why? Measuring Good Business explains what we can measure – and calls for honesty about what we can't. This is the first book to look at the numbers behind the ESG revolution. It sets out a bold blueprint to revolutionise the data based on bottom-up, inclusive metrics, customised data to meet investor needs and impact measures that put sustainability in context. It is essential reading for anyone creating, using or studying ESG and sustainability data. After unpacking what’s going on today, the book focuses on solutions, providing a how-to guide to improve measurement and make sustainable business more impactful. It shows why measurement matters in a highly accessible way through stories and insights based on practical experience. The book is relevant to a broad readership of data creators (e.g. those working in companies), users (e.g. capital market participants) as well as the large ecosystem of raters, rankers and standard setters across the private, public and non-profit worlds.




The English Chartered Trading Companies, 1688-1763


Book Description

This book provides a collective view of the five major English chartered trading companies which were active during the period 1688-1763: The East India Company, the Royal African Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, The Levant Company, and the Russia Company. Using both archival and secondary sources, this monograph fills in some of the knowledge gaps concerning the less well-studied companies, and examines the interconnections between international rivalry, the financial operations of the companies, and politics which have not featured prominently in the historiography.




Moments, Metaphors, Memories


Book Description

As the most popular mass spectator sport across the world, soccer generates key moments of significance on and off the field, encapsulated in events that create metaphors and memories, with wider social, cultural, psychological, political, commercial and aesthetic implications. Since its inception as a modern game, the history of soccer has been replete with events that have changed the organization, meanings and impact of the sport. The passage from the club to the nation or from the local to the global often opens up transnational spaces that provide a context for studying the events that have ‘defined’ the sport and its followers. Such defining events can include sporting performances, decisions taken by various stakeholders of the game, accidents and violence among players and fans, and invention of supporter cultures, among other things. The present volume attempts to document, identify and analyse some of the defining events in the history of soccer from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. It revisits the discourses of signification and memorialization of such events that have influenced society, culture, politics, religion, and commerce. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Soccer & Society.




The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge


Book Description

The East India Company is remembered as the world's most powerful, not to say notorious, corporation. But for many of its advocates from the 1770s to the 1850s it was also the world's most enlightened one. Joshua Ehrlich reveals that a commitment to knowledge was integral to the Company's ideology. He shows how the Company cited this commitment in defense of its increasingly fraught union of commercial and political power. He moves beyond studies of orientalism, colonial knowledge, and information with a new approach: the history of ideas of knowledge. He recovers a world of debate among the Company's officials and interlocutors, Indian and European, on the political uses of knowledge. Not only were these historical actors highly articulate on the subject but their ideas continue to resonate in the present. Knowledge was a fixture in the politics of the Company – just as it seems to be becoming a fixture in today's politics.