The introduction presents the main argument, the historical relevance of the project, and provides a literature review to highlight the interventions that the book makes in a variety of subfields. This chapter also outlines the research terrain and discusses the methodology employed.

Chapter 4 examines how neoliberal development in West Bengal affected various identity markers to explain the marginalization of Bengali Muslims. English and Hindi became the privileged languages of global/national capital, effectively turning Bangla into a provincial, backward language in the popular mind. The decline of class politics and the rise of identity politics brought to the surface a kind of anti-Muslim sentiment informed by caste. The everyday marginalization of Bengali Muslims, on the one hand, relies on caste discrimination and ghrina (disgust) that reinforces the exclusion of Bengali Muslims, and on the other, is a product of conflating Bengali Muslims with Bangladeshis, effectively making them invisible, and hence justifying the lack of safety nets available to them. Using a variety of qualitative methods and a comparative analysis between West Bengal and Bangladesh regarding the hold of Bengali culture in the contemporary period, the chapter shows the various ways in which neoliberal ideas impact Bengali identity.

The relationship and place of firms within their natural environment is a central element of corporate sustainability. In this chapter, we provide a brief history of corporate sustainability from an ecological perspective, examine major related trends and challenges, and explore the core principles that such a perspective on corporate sustainability adopts. Several lenses to understand firms within their natural environment have been proposed; we selectively present and contrast twelve key ones relevant to business and management. We conclude by not only advocating for systems thinking as one core principle of corporate sustainability, but also calling for systems action.

This chapter aims to advance understanding of the relationship between sustainability and development, and, in particular, the role of business in development work. First, it outlines what the concept of development encompasses, providing insights on the different forms of development work. In examining the concept of development, the chapter also provides a brief history of its emergence as an academic discipline and the four distinctive features of development studies. Second, to help students comprehend the role and contribution of business in development outcomes, the chapter discusses the different ways in which firms have supported or undermined development goals through their corporate sustainability agendas. We provide explicit key case studies on Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa and Ghana, illuminating how the presence, decisions and activities of businesses can have a long-term influence on gender (in)equality, poverty reduction, democracy promotion and climate change adaptation. Overall, the discussions in this chapter are key reflections on the private sector for development agenda, and are aimed at triggering a discussion on how core business can be best aligned with societal interests to achieve development objectives.

This chapter discusses when, how and why consumers interact with corporate sustainability, both responding to it and, ultimately, shaping it. The chapter first outlines the two types of consumer behaviours that a company’s sustainability actions seek to impact: pro-company behaviours and pro-sustainability behaviours. Because the former is more directly critical to the survival and success of companies, this chapter focuses primarily on pro-company behaviours. The bulk of the chapter then explores the psychological processes that determine when consumers respond most favourably to corporate sustainability, and why. The different thoughts, feelings and motivations consumers have about a company’s sustainability efforts come together as the 3 U’s: Understanding, Utility and Unity. Understanding is how well consumers understand a company’s sustainability efforts. Utility is the value consumers get from such efforts. Unity is the sense of connection consumers feel with a company based on these efforts. The 3 U’s need to work synergistically for the key sustainability-guided behaviours to be obtained. Finally, the chapter discusses the key consumer, company and contextual factors that determine the exact nature of the 3 U’s and the extent to which these come together to produce pro-company behaviours.

This chapter will assess climate change as a concern for business, both as a stand-alone issue and as part of the broader shift that scientists are calling the Anthropocene. It begins by examining the extent to which the market – comprised of corporations, the government and non-governmental organisations, as well as the many stakeholders in market transactions, such as the consumers, suppliers, buyers, insurance companies, banks, etc., is the cause of the climate crisis, but also discussing the extent to which the market must also be the solution. It then presents two models for examining the role that business can play in addressing the climate crisis. The first is Enterprise Integration, which works by fitting climate concerns within existing business objectives and parameters. The second is Market Transformation, which is based on the premise that systemic change is necessary to address the systems challenge of climate change. The chapter concludes with a call for business students and business leaders to think of their career as a vocation or a calling, one that recognises the vast power that business has to solve our climate challenges or bring us to ruin.

Corporations can come to possess significant political capital. Consequently, they can come to exert influence not just on their own sustainability and responsible business policies and practices, but on those of society in general. To begin making sense of such influence, and of the fact that such influence is complex, multi-faceted and sometimes profound, this chapter focuses on four considerations. First, corporate involvement in multi-stakeholder initiatives is discussed. Second, the corporate capacity to influence (inter)national political processes is noted. Third, the current trend towards (potential) CEO activism, and the ways in which such activism appears shaped by ongoing transformations in social media, is outlined. Fourth, and most controversially, it is noted that, given the technologies they control, big tech corporations can play an increasingly directive role in how people comprehend, understand and decide upon decisions relating to (personal) responsibility and sustainability matters. In short, and as is re-emphasised in the chapter’s concluding remarks, the overall purpose of the chapter is to show that corporations can have a profound impact on matters relating to politics, sustainability and responsibility.

This chapter provides an introduction to the concept of corruption, presents an overview of the major stakeholders and strategies involved in the business response to the corruption challenge and explains how this all relates to corporate sustainability.

More specifically, the chapter starts out by proposing a workable definition for corruption and explains what different forms corruption can take and what its consequences are for business and society at large. In a second step, we map the key actors, rule frameworks and initiatives that shape anti-corruption governance relevant to the business environment. We then zoom in on the company perspective and review the common approaches deployed by businesses to tackle corruption and their evolution over time, as well as some of their weaknesses and challenges ahead. The concluding section shows how the business response to corruption is linked to broader concerns about corporate sustainability, highlighting that corporate anti-corruption efforts can be considered as part and parcel of a comprehensive corporate sustainability agenda.

Over the past three decades, globalisation has particularly manifested itself in the spread of global supply chains. Only recently, rising protectionism and trade wars between the United States and China, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, have placed an unprecedented burden on the world economy and the globalisation process of supply chains. Already existing power asymmetries and poor working conditions of workers in global value chains of MNCs have become even more visible. Against this background, the questions arise as to what role sweatshops play in global value chains, how they should be evaluated from an economic and ethical perspective, and what measures can and should be taken to improve poor working conditions. We provide a brief overview of the labour rights frequently affected by the contracts between MNCs and their suppliers before discussing a number of examples for violations of these labour rights in global supply chains. We offer a definition for sweatshops and then continue to critically evaluate the pros and cons of sweatshop labour. Based on these insights, we briefly review opportunities at different levels and by different actors to regulate and improve working conditions in global supply chains.

Chapter 3 lays out the book’s central theory as well as the theory’s observable implications. It argues that powerful producers seek to use their privileged knowledge of the risks and benefits of their products (and regulators’ dependence on that knowledge) to systematically push their own out-of-patent products and those of generic sellers off the market via regulation, in favor of more expensive, patented alternatives. Producers accomplish this first by strategically revealing negative information about out-of-patent products as a means of convincing regulators that these products require stricter regulations. Second, producers support regulatory institutions that require existing products to be reevaluated under a precautionary standard, meaning that failure to prove an existing product is safe leads to the assumption it is dangerous. These precautionary institutions help innovative producers eliminate out-of-patent products more systematically, allowing them to acquire stricter standards not via the provision of damaging information, which carries some reputational risks, but through the withholding of favorable information. This chapter also lays out expectations for where we might expect these precautionary institutions to be adopted, given the distribution of preferences across countries, and it shows why such precautionary institutions should tend to be supported by developed countries and opposed by developing ones. Finally, the chapter argues that because international standard-setters ought to be susceptible to the same sorts of information problems as domestic regulators, and given the distribution of national power within these organizations, we can expect international standard-setters to replicate the precautionary institutional preferences of their wealthier members. We can additionally expect this to create the same tendency on the part of international standard-setters to arbitrarily impose stricter standards on more affordable products, despite the fact that this creates trade barriers that disadvantage poorer members and that directly conflict with these standard-setters’ stated mission.