ABOUT

The intention of this website is to give a review of nine business cases presented in the book Business and Poverty: The global CSR case-book. Thereby, all cases published on this website, may be apprehended as simplification of their printed pendant. All nine cases are composed of the following seven parts: Company profile, Challenge, Deeper Insights, Solution, Evaluation, Analysis and Teaching Note. In spite of to the logical given interdependence, it was intended to create parts, that may be understood even without reading the entire case study. That way the user may decide where to start reading and in which field he wishes to deepen his knowledge.

BACKGROUND

Global wealth has almost doubled since 1990. But more than half of the world’s population still lives off of less than USD 2 a day. As global poverty continues to be one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century, the international community heralded the Millennium Development Goals MDGs in 2000 - with the first goal being a commitment to reduce the portion of those living in extreme poverty by half by 2015. For more than 10 years, ICEP and Codespa have been supporting people in developing countries to surmount poverty by contributing to their integration into economic processes. This commitment is based on the strong belief that economic development is an essential aspect of the global fight against poverty. As corporations are the driving force of economic development, they are central players in achieving the MDGs. In 2005, the European Commission qualified a project with the objective of enhancing the involvement of the European private sector in the quest to attain the MDGs within the framework of global CSR. The project was jointly implemented by ICEP (Austria) and Codespa (Spain) together with ARS (Czech Republic), Sila Rozvoja (Slovakia) and Híd (Hungary). One of its important outcomes is the case-book, Business and Poverty: The global CSR case-book.

The nine cases of European companies operating in the developing world presented in this book suggest that thinking and acting in terms of global CSR - that is to say, thinking and acting in socio-economic categories - has two positive effects for corporations: It can help companies create business opportunities, and it can help corporations manage operational risks in the developing world. On the basis of the corporate experiences captured in this book, Business and Poverty: The global CSR case-book also tries to link the practice of global social responsibility to its theory by presenting 13 essays by experts in the field. They are meant to offer insights into the on-going debate on CSR while increasing the understanding of the problems laid out in the cases.

The authors are recognised experts in their respective fields and include Edward Freeman, the inventor of the stakeholder theory, Wilfried Luetkenhorst, chief of cabinet of UNIDO, and Björn Stigson, chairman of WBCSD, to name only a few.