Jukka Mäkinen

An integrative framework for sustainability evaluation in tourism: applying the framework to tourism product development in Finnish Lapland

The adoption of sustainable practices has become widespread in tourism and has led to the proliferation of sustainability evaluation tools. They focus mainly on measuring outcomes, making scientific expertise an essential part of evaluations. This study argues that involving stakeholders throughout the evaluation process is essential if evaluation is to play a role in promoting the necessary understanding of sustainability to address the ecological and social concerns within a tourism setting. Drawing upon multi-stakeholder thinking, ethics, the Bellagio Principles and action research, this paper introduces a theoretical and methodological framework for engaging tourism organisations in collaboration with stakeholders in planning and implementing sustainability evaluations. The application of the framework is illustrated using a study of tourism product development, involving a group of eight craft-based entrepreneurs and their stakeholders in Finnish Lapland. A focus is placed on using ethical theories to promote dialogue and critical reflection and to expose the plurality of moral orientations behind the multiple views of sustainable tourism. Through discourse analysis, four moral discourses, ethical egoism, utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics, are constructed and examined. The paper shows how each influences the various ways in which stakeholders perceive sustainable tourism and the practical outcomes of the process.

In defense of a regulated market economy

The dominant understanding of political corporate social responsibility (CSR) suggests new, broader political roles for businesses in the globalized economy, challenging the classical liberal social order (where business firms’ task is to focus on economic issues and the governments role is to take care of political responsibilities). In this paper, we show how the major framing of the political CSR discussion not only challenges the classical liberal social order but also goes against the more general political economic perspective of the regulated market economy (where strict and [in most cases] strong boundaries exist between business and politics). We argue that this latter tendency of the political CSR discussion is its main weakness. We introduce a Rawlsian reframing of political CSR that is in line with the idea of a global-regulated market economy and compatible with some of the basic global ethical aims of the political CSR movement.

Clean Energy: Lumituuli

This chapter analyzes Lumituuli Inc., the first nation-wide customer-owned wind power producer in Finland. Its main business operations consist of commissioning and operating wind generators and funding these activities via share offerings targeted mainly at ordinary people. Electricity produced by the turbines is sold to the firm’s shareholders. Thus, Lumituuli is a customer-owned firm having more than 1200 shareholders; mostly private citizens but also other firms, associations, and municipalities. Lumituuli is a socially oriented company whose ultimate goal is to raise awareness about the possibilities and potential of wind power and extend its use. Its activities help to scale down the use of fossil fuels, reduce carbon emissions, and facilitate a transformation to renewable resources in the economy. Investment in Lumituuli ensures that new wind power capacity will be installed. Moreover, to broaden its scope, the company has released public loans which enable people to make direct investments in building new wind turbines without using the power generated from them. This move has enabled the disconnection of investments and personal electricity use. Lumituuli has offered opportunities to get involved with a €1000 minimal investment. Lumituuli has strong communal and civil society foundations, as the firm has played a distinctive role as a model for and as an active supporter of local community projects and of citizens in economically sustainable ways.