An important task of the Center for Corporate Governance & Business Ethics is the promotion of interdisciplinary discourse with regard to economic and business ethics aspects. Therefore, the CGBE Lectures have been held every semester since 2012: The lecture series is attended by students, teachers and the CSR community. In the summer term of 2018, leading international experts were once again guest lecturers at FHWien der WKW.
Getting CSR Going: Activists and CSR Managers
Prof. Dr. Frank De Bakker
Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility; IÉSEG School of Management
In his guest lecture, Prof. Frank de Bakker presented two of his most recent publications on the drivers of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in companies.
First, he described the results of a study by NGOs in the food sector, which focused on the interaction between activist groups and companies in questions of CSR. His study provides an overview of what tactics activists use to influence companies and induce social change. He categorized the various activist strategies according to participation intensity – are only a few or many participants required for the respective actions? – and the form of the damage or benefit that results for companies: symbolically or materially. Activist groups typically begin with small symbolic actions designed to attract public attention. If these actions have no effect, public pressure is usually increased by more participatory actions such as e-mail protests or boycott calls, which often have material consequences for the companies concerned. Here the activists differ from each other considerably in their approaches and objectives, depending on their ideological orientation.
In another study, de Bakker examined the role of CSR managers who act as “topic sellers” within their organization. His work provides important insights into what motivates CSR managers to ‘sell’ socially relevant topics within their company, what strategies they apply to be successful in the long term, and what role they play in this. It casts light on the motivation, aspirations and strategies of activist groups as external and CSR managers as internal “theme sellers”. Here is a short video about this topic.
Austrian Anti-Corruption Criminal Law: Concepts-Control-Concerns
Prof. Dr. Susanne Reindl-Krauskopf
Head of Criminal Law Department; University of Vienna
In her guest lecture, Prof. Dr. Susanne Reindl-Krauskopf focused on the fight against corruption by means of criminal law instruments. In her excellently prepared presentation, she first outlined the historical development of criminal law instruments for combating corruption at international and European level, focusing in particular on how the definition of what is considered criminally relevant corruption behaviour has expanded and developed over time. In addition to the development of Austrian anti-corruption criminal law, her presentation also discussed the control institutions that exist in Austria, namely the Economic and Corruption Advocacy and the whistle-blower system, which enables anonymous reports. According to her assessment, great efforts have been made in Austria in recent years to combat corruption under criminal law and to comply with international guidelines.
Using two real-life case studies, which Reindl-Krauskopf discussed with the audience, she finally explained very impressively that in certain complex circumstances, however, the current regulations may still be too short and are therefore not suitable for completely protecting society from the harmful effects of corruption.
The presentation was followed by a lively discussion with numerous questions from students, academic staff, employees from private companies and other interested listeners.
5 years after Rana Plaza: Stitching Governance Institutions in Global Supply Chains
Prof. Dr. Juliane Reinecke
Professor of International Management & Sustainability; King’s Business School
Prof. Dr. Juliane Reinecke’s lecture was about the “Rana Plaza” disaster five years ago and the developments until today: Over 1,000 people died in 2013 due to the collapse of a textile factory in Bangladesh. How did the textile industry react to this catastrophe?
In addition to impressive pictures and stories of her repeated research trips to Bangladesh, Reinecke introduced the audience to theory and research on collective action, and reported in detail on developments on the topic of working conditions in Bangladesh since 2013, in particular on the management of global value chains and the strategies of activists who increasingly turn directly to the globally known textile chains in order to exert pressure on the textile manufacturers in Bangladesh and improve safety in the factory buildings. On the one hand, the activists pursued cooperative and, on the other hand, confrontational strategies towards the textile chains.
After the lecture, there was a lively discussion with many interesting questions, especially from students of the Master’s degree of Organizational & Human Resources Development of FHWien der WKW.
Just before the lecture, Prof. Dr. Juliane Reinecke and FH-Prof. Dr. Markus Scholz were interviewed together for an Ö1 radio broadcast about the same topic (the German article can be read here).