SUNY Geneseo KnightScholar Open SUNY Textbooks Open Educational Resources 2016 Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy Elizabeth Pulos SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology Guillermo C. Jimenez Follow this and additional works at: https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/oer-ost Part of the Business Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Pulos, Elizabeth and Jimenez, Guillermo C., "Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy" (2016). Open SUNY Textbooks. 8. https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/oer-ost/8 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Educational Resources at KnightScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open SUNY Textbooks by an authorized administrator of KnightScholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Good Corporation, Bad Corporation Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy Guillermo C. Jimenez Elizabeth Pulos SUNY Fashion Institute|I of Technology Good Corporation, Bad Corporation Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy Guillermo C. Jimenez Elizabeth Pulos Open SUNY Textbooks 2016 ©2016 Guillermo Jimenez and Elizabeth Pulos ISBN: 978-1-942341-25-3 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to: • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms: • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. • NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. • ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must dis- tribute your contributions under the same license as the original. This publication was made possible by a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant (IITG). IITG is a competitive grants program open to SUNY faculty and support staff across all disciplines. IITG encourages development of innovations that meet the Power of SUNY’s transformative vision. Published by Open SUNY Textbooks, Milne Library (IITG PI) State University of New York at Geneseo, Geneseo, NY 14454 About the Textbook This textbook provides an innovative, internationally-oriented approach to the teaching of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. Drawing on case studies in- volving companies and countries around the world, the textbook explores the social, ethical and business dynamics underlying CSR in areas such as: global warming, genetically-mod- ified organisms (GMO) in food production, free trade and fair trade, anti-sweatshop and living-wage movements, organic foods and textiles, ethical marketing practices and codes, corporate speech and lobbying, and social enterprise. The book is designed to encourage students and instructors to challenge their own assumptions and prejudices by stimulating a class debate based on each case study. About the Authors Guillermo C. Jimenez, J.D. is a tenured professor in the department of International Trade and Marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology (S.U.N.Y.) in New York City. He also holds adjunct teaching appointments at NYU Stern Graduate School of Business, Brooklyn Law School, Iona College (New York) and at the International School of Man- agement in Paris, France. Prof. Jimenez teaches courses on international law, international management, multicultural management, and international corporate citizenship. He is the author of four previous books, including: the ICC Guide to Export-Import, 4th Edition (ICC Publishing, 2012), the first book on the new legal discipline of fashion law, Fashion Law: A Guide for Designers, Fashion Executives and Attorneys (Fairchild Publishing), and a multi-disciplinary review of political psychology, Red Genes Blue Genes: Exposing Political Ir- rationality (Autonomedia, 2009). Prof. Jimenez received his B.A. from Harvard and his J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. As an international policy and legal expert, he has lectured in over 35 countries and collaborated with such intergovernmental organiza- tions as the United Nations, World Trade Organization and European Commission. Elizabeth Pulos is Senior Manager of Compliance Administration at Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP), a nonprofit dedicated to promoting ethical manufacturing around the world through certification and education. She has a BS in International Trade and Marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she was president of the CSR Club and recipient of the World Trade Week, New Times Group and PVH scholarships, as well as the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence. Prior to FIT, Elizabeth studied Music Performance at Mount Royal Conservatory and Environmental Science at the University of Calgary. A classically trained violist, she has performed in New York, Canada, Europe, the UK and Australia. Reviewer’s Notes Guillermo Jimenez’s Good Corporation, Bad Corporation is a fair-minded and thoroughly readable introduction to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility. It is intended for students in business management and economics courses, but I think it is accessible to any college student in any discipline with an interest in the subject. Chapter by chapter, students are encouraged not merely to master the information but to engage with it, to think critically about the real-world complexities of business ethics and to grasp competing rationales on both sides of tangled moral dilemmas. Rather than deal with abstractions, Jimenez walks the reader through the ways in which questions of CSR have actually played themselves out. There is no preaching or tendentiousness here. There is only respect for each student’s capacity to form intelligent opinions that are grounded in reason rather than in emotion. Reviewer: Professor Mark Goldblatt, Chair, Department of Educational Skills, Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) About Open SUNY Textbooks Open SUNY Textbooks is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruc- tion Technology Grants. This pilot initiative publishes high-quality, cost-effective course resources by engaging faculty as authors and peer-reviewers, and libraries as publishing service and infrastructure. The pilot launched in 2012, providing an editorial framework and service to authors, students and faculty, and establishing a community of practice among libraries. Participating libraries in the 2012-2013 pilot include SUNY Geneseo, College at Brockport, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, SUNY Fredonia, Upstate Medical University, and University at Buffalo, with support from other SUNY libraries and SUNY Press. The 2013-2014 pilot will add more titles in 2015-2016. Contents Chapter 1 Corporations and their Social Responsibility 1 Chapter 2 Debating CSR: Methods and Strategies 20 Chapter 3 Climate Change 39 Chapter 4 Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) 53 Chapter 5 Social Entrepreneurship 68 Chapter 6 Marketing Ethics: Selling Controversial Products 84 Chapter 7 Organic Food: Health Benefit or Marketing Ploy? 97 Chapter 8 Fair Trade 109 Chapter 9 CSR and Sweatshops 123 Chapter 10 Corruption in International Business 133 Chapter 11 Corporations and Politics: After Citizens United 147 Chapter 12 Animal Rights and CSR 163 Appendix A Nuclear Energy Is Our Best Alternative for Clean Affordable Energy by Emily Campchero 176 Appendix B Friend, Foe, or Frock: Animal Rights in Fashion by Briana N. Laemel 195 Appendix C Monsanto Company and Its Effect on Farmers by Akiko Kitamura 206 Appendix D To What Extent Are Small-Scale Coffee Producers in Latin America the Primary Beneficiaries of Fair Trade? by Larissa Zemke 216 Chapter 1 Corporations and their Social Responsibility Understanding Corporations and CSR The subject of this book iscorporate social responsibility (CSR), a broad term that refers generally to the ethical role of the corporation in society. Before we define CSR more precisely and before we explore in depth a number of case studies that illustrate aspects of the ethical role of corporations, we first need to understand exactly what corporations are, why they exist, and why they have become so powerful. Today, the global role of corporations rivals that of national or local governments. In 2000, it was reported that, of the 100 largest economic organizations in the world, 51 were corporations and 49 were countries.1 General Motors, Walmart, Exxon, and Daimler Chrysler all ranked higher than the nations of Poland, Norway, Finland and Thailand (in terms of economic size, comparing corporate revenues with national gross domestic product, or GDP). This trend has continued, and for the past decade, 40 to 50 of the world’s 100 largest economic organizations have been corporations, with the rest being national economies. In 2012, Walmart was the twenty-fifth largest economic organization in the world, putting it ahead of 157 countries.2 For corporate employees, as for citizens living in communities dominated by large corporations, the corporation