{"id":887,"date":"2021-12-16T09:52:16","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T09:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/?p=887"},"modified":"2021-12-16T09:52:16","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T09:52:16","slug":"bathbhr-do-creating-shared-value-initiatives-really-improve-human-rights-and-create-sustainable-societies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/2021\/12\/16\/bathbhr-do-creating-shared-value-initiatives-really-improve-human-rights-and-create-sustainable-societies\/","title":{"rendered":"BathBHR: Do \u2018Creating Shared Value\u2019 initiatives really improve human rights and create sustainable societies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

To mark Human Rights Day<\/a> on the tenth of December, we will spend this month exploring business and human rights. The Centre for Business, Organisations and Society will also host the webinar \"Business and Human Rights: A scholarly contribution to the \u2018decade of action\u2019<\/a>\" where academics will share lessons from their research, revealing how businesses can implement effective human rights practices and policies.<\/em><\/p>\n

New research<\/span><\/i><\/a> from <\/span><\/i>Elisa Giuliani<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>Annamaria Tuan<\/span><\/i><\/a> and Jos\u00e8 Calvimontes explores how effective \u2018Creating Shared Value\u2019 projects are at balancing the financial and ethical responsibilities of a business. They emphasise the need to re-conceptualise decision-making in order to give environmental and social priorities equal footing with the economic priorities.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies are fast becoming the norm in all types of firms, in advanced countries as well as low-to-middle income countries. In these latter countries, <\/span>the influential work of Michael Porter and associates <\/span><\/a>has led to the adoption of many so-called \u201c<\/span>Creating Shared Value<\/span><\/a>\u201d (CSV) initiatives. These initiatives are based on a \u2018win\u2013win\u2019 logic - that firms can prioritise environmental and social challenges while also generating profits and meeting stakeholder expectations. For example, Nestl\u00e9 was one of the first to introduce <\/span>CSV projects<\/span><\/a> in its operations, and many other organisations followed suit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite its popularity and widespread adoption, Porter and Kramer\u2019s original work on CSV has been the subject of <\/span>extensive debate and critique<\/span><\/a> from those questioning the originality of the construct. Scholars have also criticized its \u2018win\u2013win\u2019 logic, expressing doubts about whether firms can really transform their business thinking without radically departing from the current corporate mindset.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Inspired by this criticism, we developed our own unique study, looking at <\/span>cognitive frames<\/span><\/i>. It explores how business actors <\/span>make sense<\/span><\/i> of CSV projects - this is important because our starting point was that the actions of economic decision-makers are shaped by the ways in which they make sense of something. We also wanted to look specifically at whether these business actors thought this shared value creation related to human rights, or whether it focused primarily on environmental behaviours (that are more likely to generate profit).<\/span><\/p>\n

To do this we conducted an empirical investigation of small-scale entrepreneurs and other business actors in their local ecosystem, in a low-to-medium income country in Latin America, <\/span>where CSV projects have gained some traction<\/span><\/a> recently.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the dominant cognitive frames?<\/b><\/p>\n

By interviewing relevant professionals involved in the implementation of CSV, business representatives (entrepreneurs or managers) from the different <\/span>industry clusters<\/span><\/a> and representatives of a local non-profit organization, we found three distinct cognitive frames:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n