1 [This is a working paper from the project “Sustainable consumption and production and political economy in the UK food service sector”. Please do not quote without permission of the author] Daniel Welch, Sustainable Consumption institute, University of Manchester
[email protected] Corporate ownership and the provision of sustainable consumption: political economy and sustainability in the UK Food Service Sector Introduction This paper arises from a project that set out to examine the relationships between political economy and sustainability in the UK food services sector (comprising of restaurants, cafés, hotels, catering companies etc.). A brief overview of the political economy of the sector is provided in an Appendix. A focus of the project was to examine the effect of Private Equity investments in the sector, and a comparative case study was conducted of the sustainability engagements of two of the largest company groups in the sector: one a shareholder-owned publicly listed company, the other formerly owned by one of the world’s largest private equity groups. The paper proceeds by first addressing corporate sustainability in the sector and its relation to public and private equity ownership. I go on to argue that differences in corporate engagement with sustainability attributable to these corporate ownership forms have eroded with the development of corporate sustainability, closely allied to the sustainable development agenda. I argue we can usefully address the latter phenomena through the concepts of “metrological project” (Latour 1987; Mitchell 2008) and “economic imaginary” (Sum and Jessop 2013). I conclude by reflecting on the prospects for transitions towards genuine sustainability offered by sustainable development, and argue that a more profound transformation of economic institutions is required.