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Prinzipienorientierte Einbettung als Beitrag der Unternehmen zu nachhaltigem und inklusivem Wachstum
Abstract
Multinationale Unternehmen (MNU) sind exponiert. Regelmäßig sorgen sie für Schlagzeilen und werden zu Recht oder zu Unrecht für die Übel in dieser Welt – wie Kinderarbeit, Umweltverschmutzung, Verletzung der Menschenrechte – verantwortlich gemacht. Dabei wird von der Prämisse ausgegangen, dass Unternehmen nur auf den Profit für die Firma und dessen Besitzer (z. B. Aktionäre) aus sind, und dies auf Kosten der Umwelt und der Menschenrechte.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Switzerland are the backbone of the Swiss economy and account for 2/3 of employers in the country. This paper examines decent work and sustainable economic growth as promoted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8. The author focuses on Small and Medium Enterprises and discusses business ethics and human-centred values as drivers of inclusive change. We argue that Swiss Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), in many cases, create a new paradigm of doing business, relying on tradition, innovation and a focus on essential human values. Traditional communitarian values, a vision for innovation, democratic flat decision-making structures and transparency, as well as financial independence, are crucial elements of the SME-strategy, offering decent work and a sustainable long-term prosperity. As an example of a Swiss SME, we examine Wyon AG a small high-end technology firm in the village of Steinegg, District of Rüte, in the Canton Appenzell Innerrhoden. This is a desk research.
This Volume pulls together analyses in relation to efforts to promote the targets of SDG8 on inclusive growth, environmental innovation and improved access to human rights. It covers experiences and studies from the past and present, from large and small companies, from the Global South and North, and from di�erent sectors. Many contributions point out that entrepreneurship and innovation are important drivers of inclusive and sustainable change. In this context, there is a general agreement that business can be part of the solution in e�orts to realize Agenda 2030 in general, and SDG 8 in particular.
Climate change and weather extremes are already impacting millions ofpeople, devastating crops, eroding coastlines, and threatening freshwater reserves.A continued build-up of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is expected to lead towarming, more acidic oceans and a continued rise in the sea level, changed weatherpatterns, and an even more significant threat to supplies of food, water, and fish(IPCC 2014). The food and agriculture sector is particularly vulnerable and will behit in multiple ways (FAO 2016a).
The mobile labour force is benefiting host societies with diverse forms of human capital. The economic value and potential of people migrating for work offer incentives for the development of illicit and abusive practices that take advantage of the vulnerability of the migrants and the lack of institutional attention and experience. This may happen regardless of the skill level of the migrants, but especially those migrants who are new, inexperienced and low skilled may be targeted by actors who wish to exploit their lack of knowledge. These mechanisms may start as early as during recruitment in the home country by transnational criminal networks, but they also emerge organically in the host country if activity- scapes are available for such practices. This new phenomenon of human trafficking, slavery and abuse related to work has entered Finland during recent decades. The actors involved are often of foreign origin or within ethnic enclaves, which creates cultural and language-related divides at an institutional level as well. We found that a host country context that is highly developed may not have the institutional experience, understanding or attention required to combat the phenomenon effectively. We suggest that preventive governance with more targeted collaboration across governance, diaspora organisations and civil society could reduce illicit opportunities and increase awareness of what is appropriate and acceptable, i.e. decent work.
Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme mit Fokus auf KMU
This book examines the impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on local economies, and presents selected case studies of MNEs operating in low income countries. By balancing external social and environmental costs against its corresponding benefits, the book demonstrates that MNEs can have a positive net-impact on local development if they build up social capital by embedding themselves in local economies and engaging responsibly with local stakeholders. By doing so MNEs contribute to inclusive growth, a cental pillar of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In this context, the book challenges popular narratives in civil society and academia that frame foreign direct investment (FDI) merely as a threat to human rights and sustainable development. Moreover, it offers practical guidance for globally operating businesses seeking to establish progressive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies of their own.
The study examines the banana production operations of Chiquita in the remote region of Changuinola in Panama and contrasts it with experiences from Guatemala and Costa Rica. Of particular interest are the local context and the socio-economic framework conditions in which the company is operating. They are essential to assessing the embeddedness of the company in the region. Moreover, they influence the potential of the enterprise to provide positive sustainability effects through its business activities for the local community, the local economy and the local environment. The study analyses how the use of technology, standards and partnerships can help to mitigate the significant social and ecological problems in the indigenous communities in Panama. It also highlights which areas the Chiquita company would need to address to improve its sustainability and further embed the company in Panama. The main recommendations are deduced from interviews with local experts and workers in the banana plantations.
In this review article, the author takes another look at the well-known Carroll's Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In this article, he comments on the framework's popular useage and then presents a summary of the four-part definitional framework upon which the pyramid was created. He then comments on several characteristics of the model that were not emphasized when initially published: ethics permeates the pyramid; tensions and tradeoffs inherent; its' integrated, unified whole; its' sustainable stakeholder framework, and; its' global applicability and use in different contexts. The article concludes by looking to the future.
Corporatism is often seen as the way Swiss stakeholders in business and politics handle industrial challenges in a reasonable and flexible way. The following publication argues, however, that the emergence of corporatist structures in the Swiss watch industry has often encouraged rent-seeking and collusion at the expense of the creation of new markets through innovation. This legacy makes it currently difficult for the industry to effectively respond to new technological challenges and changing societal preferences in the global watch business. The report draws on archival sources, accessible since 2015, that were extensively discussed in the Swiss print media in early 2016. They provide increasing evidence of corporate governance failure in the 1983 merger of SSIH (Société suisse pour l’industrie horlogère) and ASUAG (Allgemeine Schweizerische Uhrenindustrie AG) that led to today’s Swatch Group. The merger, induced by the involved Swiss banks, was portrayed as a necessary step to save the two allegedly bankrupt watch companies. Yet, the archival sources show that ASUAG had already been successfully restructured and was ready to conquer global markets with its new product, the Swatch.
In den laufenden internationalen Bestrebungen der Vereinten Nationen Nachhaltigkeitsziele für die nächsten 15 Jahre zu definieren (Post-2015 Agenda) wird der Förderung von innovativem Unternehmertum nach wie vor kaum Bedeutung zugemessen. Implizit wird nämlich angenommen, dass der Unternehmer in seinem Streben nach Gewinn primär sich selbst bereichert, und das oftmals auf Kosten der Gesellschaft. Nicht nur in der Öffentlichkeit, sondern auch bei vielen Ethikern und Ökonomen herrscht daher die Überzeugung, dass der Unternehmer nicht zugleich gewinnorientiert und ethisch sein kann.
In den laufenden internationalen Bestrebungen der Vereinten Nationen Nachhaltigkeitsziele für die nächsten 15 Jahre zu defnieren (Post-2015 Agenda) wird der Förderung von innovativem Unternehmertum nach wie vor kaum Bedeutung zugemessen. Implizit wird nämlich angenommen, dass der Unternehmer in seinem
Streben nach Gewinn primär sich selbst bereichert, und das oftmals auf Kosten der Gesellscha?. Nicht nur in der Öffentlichkeit, sondern auch bei vielen Ethikern und Ökonomen herrscht daher die Überzeugung, dass der Unternehmer nicht zugleich gewinnorientiert und ethisch sein kann. Unternehmertum muss daher durch Regulierung »gebändigt « und vom Staat wie auch der Zivilgesellscha? streng überwacht werden, um die Gesellscha? auf einen nachhaltigen Pfad zu bringen. In diesem Kapitel soll aufgezeigt werden, dass diese Sichtweise zu einseitig ist. Nebst der Wächtermoral, welche streng auf die Erfüllung von Werten, Normen und Regeln achtet, gibt es gemäss der interdisziplinären Sozialwissenschaftlerin Jane Jacobs nämlich auch eine »Händlermoral «, die sich durch Offenheit, Lernbereitschaft und Kompromiss auszeichnet. Sie wird durch den tugendhaften Unternehmer verkörpert, der im Wandel eine notwendige Kraft der Erneuerung durch Handel und Innovation sieht. Dieser tugendhafte Unternehmer erkennt, dass die Übernahme von moralischer Verantwortung auch im langfristigen Eigeninteresse sein kann. Dabei dienen ihm erfahrungsbasierte moralische Regeln als Stütze und Orientierung. Sie sind das Resultat von affektbasierten zwischenmenschlichen Erfahrungen und haben wenig mit einer rationalen Kosten-Nutzen Abwägung oder der Orientierung an übergeordneten abstrakten ethischen Prinzipien zu tun. Stattdessen handelt es sich um eine Form der naturalisierten Ethik, bei der das »Sollen« dem adäquaten Erkennen des »Seins« folgt, und nicht umgekehrt. Der Bürgerhumanismus im Italien der Renaissance hat bereits erkannt, dass Händlermoral in der Wirtschaft nicht durch Wächtermoral ersetzt werden darf; denn Unternehmer bringen den grössten gesellschaftlichen Nutzen, wenn sie auf neue Risiken und Knappheiten mit neuen
Ideen und Innovation reagieren und nicht bloss in der Öffentlichkeit beteuern, dass man sich an die Gesetze
hält und diese sogar noch mit Selbstregulierung übertreffen will. Nur wer versteht, dass Nachhaltigkeit in Anbetracht des Bevölkerungswachstums und des zunehmenden Wohlstands ein dynamisches Konzept ist, realisiert, warum die Begriffe Unternehmertum und nachhaltige Entwicklung auch heute zusammengehören.
The contemporary human rights debate is mostly concerned with the protection of people affected by change that is beyond their control. But what about those who make use of their basic economic rights to facilitate economic and social change? Do these agents of change need protection and, if so, how do their activities relate to the current debate on human rights?
In this book, the historical importance of innovative entrepreneurs as agents of change who indirectly contribute to a more humane world by enhancing access to basic human rights is illustrated. However, entrepreneurial rights tend to be neglected in economic and legal theory as well as in the global debate on human rights. Philipp Aerni argues that this neglect has its roots in the implicit assumption that entrepreneurs must surely know how to help themselves and therefore do not require special attention from a human rights perpective. The fact ist, however, that those most vulnerable to human rights offences, especially in the developing world, are those who have failed to obtain formal employment ard are therefore self-employed by default.
Reporting biases refer to a truncated pool of published studies with the resulting suppression or omission of some empirical findings. Such biases can occur in positive research paradigms that try to uncover correlations and causal relationships in the social world by using the empirical methods of (natural) science. Furthermore, reporting biases can come about because of authors who do not write papers that report unfavorable results despite strong efforts made to find previously accepted evidence and because of a higher rejection rate of studies documenting contradictory evidence. Reporting biases are a serious concern because the conclusions of systematic reviews and meta-analyses can be misleading. The authors show that published evidence in win-win corporate social responsibility (CSR) research tends to overestimate efficiency. The research field expects to find a positive association between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP), and findings meet that expectation. The authors explain how this pattern may reflect reporting bias. The empirical results show strong tentative evidence for a positive reporting bias in the CSP–CFP literature but only weak tentative evidence for CSP efficiency. The study also examines which factors, such as time trends, publication outlet, and study characteristics, are associated with higher reporting biases within this literature.
In this paper we analyze di ferent aspects of organization and management in multinational subsidiaries, and investigate some organization design premises in these contexts. We develop some theoretical arguments for linkages between strategy, structure, and aspects of human resource management. Data were collected from a sample of 259 multinational subsidiaries, mainly from the Asia-Pacific area. Our findings generally support the association of organizational and human resource contingencies with subsidiary e fectiveness in more localized than in more globalized situations. We conclude by discussing these findings and attempting to further the understanding of the management of multinational subsidiaries in the contemporary competitive environment.
The purpose of this work is to develop a systematic understanding of embeddedness and organization networks. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at 23 entrepreneurial firms, I identify the components of embedded relationships and explicate the devices by which embeddedness shapes organizational and economic outcomes. The findings suggest that embeddedness is a logic of exchange that promotes economies of time, integrative agreements, Pareto improvements in allocative efficiency, and complex adaptation. These positive effects rise up to a threshold, however, after which embeddedness can derail economic performance by making firms vulnerable to exogenous shocks or insulating them from information that exists beyond their network. A framework is proposed that explains how these properties vary with the quality of social ties, the structure of the organization network, and an organization's structural position in the network.
Norms established through the process of socialization, perhaps voluntarily accepted or affirmed, perhaps building on certain genetic predispositions, provide part of the framework within which individuals pursue their self interest. Intellectually defensible microeconomic analysis, in its competitive or game theoretic variant, can be undertaken only if this principle is recognized.
THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM is under siege. In recent years business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader community.
The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, to investigate how multidomestic, multinational corporations (MNCs) can develop business models that are appropriate to "Bottom-of-the-Pyramid" (BOP) settings. Second, to address how they can apply elements of BOP business models across their operations. We use the case of the entry of the Norwegian mobile telecom MNC Telenor into India as the empirical context. Prior to India, Telenor had operated successfully in Asian emerging economies by adapting its business model to local conditions. However, it had only operated in the upper income tiers of these countries. In India, its late entry meant that for the first time in its history it had to move beyond these upper income tiers and develop a business model suited to BOP. We apply an economic model terminology as a means to gauging the degree of business model innovation Telenor undertook. Telenor succeeded in its development of a BOP business model by working in close partnership with local firms. Although Telenor in India was operating at BOP, a number of the resultant innovations were deemed by Telenor to be transferable to top-of-the-pyramid operations across Telenor. In order to succeed in developing BOP business models MNCs must go beyond local responsiveness and engage closely with local partners. However, transference of elements of BOP business models to other parts of the MNC is contingent on there being a centralized integrating capability.
This paper describes seven salient features of trade integration in the 21st century: trade integration has been more rapid than ever (hyperglobalization); it is dematerialized, with the growing importance of services trade; it is democratic, because openness has been embraced widely; it is criss-crossing because similar goods and investment flows now go from South to North as well as the reverse; it has witnessed the emergence of a mega-trader (China), the first since Imperial Britain; it has involved the proliferation of regional and preferential trade agreements and is on the cusp of mega-regionalism as the world's largest traders pursue such agreements with each other; and it is impeded by the continued existence of high barriers to trade in services. Going forward, the trading system will have to tackle three fundamental challenges: in developed countries, the domestic support for globalization needs to be sustained in the face of economic weakness and the reduced ability to maintain social insurance mechanisms. Second, China has become the world's largest trader and a major beneficiary of the current rules of the game. It will be called upon to shoulder more of the responsibilities of maintaining an open system. The third challenge will be to prevent the rise of mega-regionalism from leading to discrimination and becoming a source of trade conflicts. We suggest a way forward -- including new areas of cooperation such as taxes -- to maintain the open multilateral trading system and ensure that it benefits all countries.
Both global and domain-specific attitudinal orientations appear to be a part of the growing worldwide hostility toward MNCs. There seems to be a widespread feeling that the power bases of foreign companies should be closely guarded or regulated by the local governments. This study specifically explores Turkish and American students' perceptions of global (nationalism) and domain-specific attitudinal correlates relative to foreign companies. In addition, socio-economic correlates are included to help differentiate respondents into groups holding similar attitudes.
In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has too often devolved into diatribes against intervention. Peter Evans questions such simplistic views, offering a new vision of why state involvement works in some cases and produces disasters in others. To illustrate, he looks at how state agencies, local entrepreneurs, and transnational corporations shaped the emergence of computer industries in Brazil, India, and Korea during the seventies and eighties. Evans starts with the idea that states vary in the way they are organized and tied to society. In some nations, like Zaire, the state is predatory, ruthlessly extracting and providing nothing of value in return. In others, like Korea, it is developmental, promoting industrial transformation. In still others, like Brazil and India, it is in between, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering. Evans's years of comparative research on the successes and failures of state involvement in the process of industrialization have here been crafted into a persuasive and entertaining work, which demonstrates that successful state action requires an understanding of its own limits, a realistic relationship to the global economy, and the combination of coherent internal organization and close links to society that Evans called "embedded autonomy."
Evolution of the Market PatternThe Self-Regulating Market and the Fictitious Commodities: Labor, Land, and Money
This paper examines the impact of managers' social capital on managerial performance. Two dimensions of social capital are compared—the structural embeddedness (i.e., configuration) of a manager's network of work relations and the relational embeddedness (i.e., quality) of those relations. Based on a sample of 120 product and sales managers in a Fortune 100 pharmaceutical firm, this paper presents evidence indicating that both elements of social capital influence managerial performance, although in distinct ways: structural embeddedness plays a stronger role in explaining more routine, execution-oriented tasks (managerial sales performance), whereas relational embeddedness plays a stronger role in explaining new, innovation-oriented tasks (managerial performance in product and process innovation). This research considers resource exchanges within firms as key to value creating behaviors and contributes a deeper understanding of how social capital influences productive resource exchanges. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Subsidiaries have access to different types of resources and therefore perform differently in their market-place and within a multinational corporation (MNC). Yet, even though subsidiaries are the object of intense interest, remarkably little has been written about the assessment of subsidiary performance. In short, the strategic opportunities of subsidiaries seem to generate more attention in the literature than their results. The two distinctive features of this paper are the development of the concept of subsidiary performance and the exploration of the linkage between subsidiary business context and performance. More specifically, by drawing on the literature about organizational learning, absorptive capacity and embeddedness in business relationships, some hypotheses will be formulated about the causal link between subsidiary environment and subsidiary performance. These hypotheses are then tested in a LISREL model based on data concerning 98 subsidiaries belonging to Swedish MNCs. Our empirical results indicate that technology embeddedness has a positive, direct, impact on subsidiary market performance, and a positive, but indirect, impact on subsidiary organizational performance.
This article deals with the concept of embeddedness and its role in understanding the evolution of business networks. Networks are viewed as structures of inter-firm relationships that emerge and evolve through continuous interactive processes. Embeddedness refers to companies' relations with, and dependence on, various types of network. Six types of embeddedness are distinguished and the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the phenomenon are analysed. The concept of the actor's representational role is introduced to illustrate how embeddedness functions as a force for change in the evolution of networks. Cases from a variety of business contexts are used to describe the aspects of embeddedness, and their impact on the process of network evolution. In conclusion some implications for research and practice are presented.
The concept of embeddedness has general applicability in the study of economic life and can alter theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of economic behaviors. Argues that in modern industrial societies, most economic action is embedded in structures of social relations. The author challenges the traditional economic theories that have both under- and oversocialized views of the conception of economic action and decisions that merge in their conception of economic actors atomized (separated) from their social context. Social relations are assumed to play on frictional and disruptive, not central, roles in market processes. There is, hence, a place and need for sociology in the study of economic life. Productive analysis of human action requires avoiding the atomization in the extremes of the over- and undersocialized concepts. Economic actors are neither atoms outside a social context nor slavish adherents to social scripts. The markets and hierarchies problem of Oliver Williamson (with a focus on the question of trust and malfeasance) is used to illustrate the use of embeddedness in explicating the proximate causes of patterns of macro-level interest. Answers to the problem of how economic life is not riddled with mistrust and malfeasance are linked to over- and undersocialized conceptions of human nature. The embeddedness argument, on the contrary, stresses the role of concrete personal relations and networks (or structures) in generating trust and discouraging malfeasance in economic life. It finds a middle way between the oversocialized (generalized morality) and undersocialized (impersonal institutional arrangements) approaches. The embeddedness approach opens the way for analysis of the influence of social structures on market behavior, specifically showing how business relations are intertwined with social and personal relations and networks. The approach can easily explain what looks otherwise like irrational behavior. (TNM)
The typical economic model implicitly assumes that the set of goods in an economy never changes. As a result, the predicted efficiency loss from a tariff is small, on the order of the square of the tariff rate. If we loosen this assumption and assume that international trade can bring new goods into an economy, the fraction of national income lost when a tariff is imposed can be much larger, as much as two times the tariff rate. Much of this paper is devoted to explaining why this seemingly small change in the assumptions of a model can have such important positive and normative implications. The paper also asks why the implications of new goods have not more extensively been explored, especially given that the basic economic issues were identified 150 years ago. The mathematical difficulty of modeling new goods has no doubt been part of the problem. An equally, if not more important stumbling block has been the deep philosophical resistance that humans feel toward the unavoidable logical consequence of assuming that genuinely new things can happen and could have happened at every date in the past. We are forced to admit that the world as we know it is the result of a long string of chance outcomes.
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