CSR, Development and the Bottom of the Pyramid
We’re talking the same language, aren’t we?

Presentations and agenda

DSA Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Study Group
DSA/EADI Multi-dimensional Poverty Group

JudgeBusinessSchool, University of Cambridge
18th June 2007

Theme

Increasingly the business and the development communities are coming together to tackle those persistent developmental concerns: poverty, exclusion and exploitation. This can be a challenging and fraught process with plenty of outspoken critics on both sides. Not only do objectives and measures of success often differ but, more fundamentally, perspectives and world-views can be radically different. Ideas such as development, progress, equity, prosperity and social responsibility can take on very different meanings in such different contexts and cultures. Yet, despite the criticisms and the problems, there is also much common cause – a shared concern that the environmental and social impacts of the spread of global industrialisation require us to find new alliances and new ways of operating.

How do those new ways of operating emerge? What happens when businesses and development organisations work together? How do they find common ground – and what do they learn from each other in the process? What is the value-added of the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ concept? How do the ‘recipient’ communities perceive and contribute to all this? How does this differ when the organisation is a local business in a developing country? In short, are we developing a shared way of thinking about, talking about and doing ‘development’ or do we just ‘talk past’ each other – we use the same words but the meanings and practices remain too different?

Provisional Programme

 10.00am     Registration

 11.00am     Panel 1 – Perspectives on the business case

• The business of business is business. So why should corporations be involved in development? [PDF 764Kb] Michael Hopkins. MHC International
• Poverty’s case for business: the evidence, misconceptions, conceits and deceit surrounding the business case [PDF 426Kb]. Michael Blowfield. Cambridge Programme for Industry, University of Cambridge

 12.30pm      Lunch

 1.30pm       Parallel panels

 Panel 2 – Perspectives from NGOs and Civil Society

• The NGO perspective on the Bottom of the Pyramid [PDF 680Kb] Nicola Day and Robert Bailey. Oxfam
• Why CSR is failing children? [PDF 60KB] Alison Holder. Save the Children UK
• Social Accountability in the extractive industries [PDF 80Kb]  James Van Alstine. London School of Economics and Political Science

Panel 3 – Case studies from communities

• The yawning gap between good intentions and socially responsible behaviour: a failure of commitment in India and the UK [PDF 149KB]. Peter Braithwaite. Institute of Development Studies
• A non-traditional public-private sector partnership model and rural poverty reduction in Madhya Pradesh, India [PDF 128Kb]. Meera Tiwari. University of East London
• Prospects for corporate sector engagement in pastoral development in Ethiopia [PDF 221Kb]. John Morton, Mohammed Mussa, Anne Tallontire. University of Greenwich

3.00pm        Tea

3.20pm        Panel 4 – Solutions or Chimera?

• Compacts, corporates and development: dismantling the smokescreen [PDF 181Kb]. Catia Gregoratti. University of Manchester, Centre for International Politics
• The Bottom of the Pyramid: the next ‘Big’ Idea? [PDF 244Kb] Andrew Crabtree, Copenhagen Business School, Andrew Sumner. Institute of Development Studies

4.30pm        Close

Contacts

This meeting was jointly convened by two Development Studies Association Study Groups – details of the DSA and the convenors of these groups are listed below:

Corporate Social Responsibility Group:

Valerie Nelson, v.j.nelson@gre.ac.uk
Anne Tallontire
Peter Edward, p.edward@jbs.cam.ac.uk

Multi-dimensional Poverty Group

Andy Sumner, a.sumner@ids.ac.uk
Meera Tiwari, M.Tiwari@uel.ac.uk

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