Rochelle Spencer

Australian indigenous social enterprise: measuring performance

Purpose Using an integrated framework for performance management of nonprofit organizations, this paper aims to present an analysis of the activities of an Indigenous social enterprise in the town of Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. The evaluation focuses on the social effectiveness of the organization and its ability to help generate income and employment and drive social capital creation. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is informed by data derived from “yarns” with social enterprise staff and semi-structured interviews conducted with key informants who were selected using snowball sampling. Data were transcribed and analyzed thematically. Findings The analysis reveals that the organization provides a successful community-based pathway for increasing Indigenous economic participation on local terms at a time of regional economic decline and high levels of Indigenous unemployment nationally. Practical implications The measured effectiveness of Nuwul highlights the need for targeted policy support for Indigenous enterprises and that social entrepreneurship is far more likely to be successful in a supportive government policy environment, a critical need for government-initiated policies to encourage the formation of Indigenous social enterprises that are entrepreneurial and innovative in their solutions to poverty and marginalization. Such policies should not only aid the establishment of Indigenous ventures but also facilitate their long-term growth and sustainability. Originality/value Although Indigenous entrepreneurial activities have been found to be effective in addressing Indigenous disadvantage in Australia, little is known about their community impact. The article provides original empirically grounded research on the measurement of Indigenous entrepreneurial activities and their wider community impact. The data show, against the backdrop of mixed results of government efforts to drive Indigenous economic mainstreaming, that the entrepreneurial activities analyzed in this paper are an example of more flexible and culturally appropriate pathways for achieving Indigenous equality in rural and remote regions of Australia.

Development Tourism in Cuba: Experiential Learning and Solidarity in the Development Tourism Encounter

ABSTRACT Increasingly non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide provide immersion programs that employ experiential learning strategies to promote greater global awareness and responsibility for development in the global South. Study tours are one such platform for NGOs in their public education efforts. Drawing on ethnographic research in Cuba, the purpose of this paper is to explore the discourses and narratives tourists draw on to give meaning to their experiences of Oxfam and Global Exchange study tours, as an example of emerging development tourism. We see how the study tours produce tropes of solidarity that are discursively reproduced through the desires, intentions and feelings of NGO study tourists. This experiential learning process through tourism is an important development strategy for NGOs working to promote awareness and support for their own activities and campaigns but also for promoting awareness of development issues more broadly.

Towards Epistemological Pluralism and Transdisciplinarity: Responsible Citizenship, CSR and Sustainability Revisited

Today’s global challenges not only threaten humanity’s survival but also that of millions of other species. It is generally agreed that these challenges are the product of anthropogenic impacts on the planet through humanity’s pursuit of economic ends. Due to the intractable nature of these challenges they are often referred to as wicked problems as their complexity and scale are “interconnected, contradictory, located in an uncertain environment and embedded in landscapes that are rapidly changing” (Sardar 2010: 183). However, the global pursuit of economic growth not only threatens to bring about ecological brinkmanship it also produces large societal costs. Dominant neoliberal development policies have largely failed to adequately address inequality or reduce poverty in an age of plenty, which suggests—as argued widely (Kates et al. 2000; Barth et al. 2007; Vare and Scott 2007; Rieckmann 2012; Barth and Rieckmann 2012; Thomas et al. 2013)—that future human wellbeing within environmental limits requires a fundamentally new and different approach; for the purposes of this book we regarded the concepts of responsible citizenship, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development as expressions of this new approach and the kind of social change agendas that share a vision of a more socially and environmentally just future. It has been the premise of this volume that universities have both the capacity and the responsibility to be the drivers of change towards this vision (Kates et al. 2000).

CSR for Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction? Critical Perspectives from the Anthropology of Development

An anthropology of development perspective on corporate social responsibility (CSR ) seeks to unveil unintended outcomes of CSR initiatives, to unpack its discourses and the assumptions that CSR is a driver of sustainable development and poverty reduction. The central question underpinning analyses of CSR from this perspective is what the implications might be of the private sector as an agent of development. The shift in the perceived role of business as only a profit -driven tool of development to that of development agent is vividly illustrated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs ). The SDGs emphasise that governments and multilateral development agencies cannot achieve the 2030 development agenda alone and that the private sector has the capital , resources and power to take on a central role in poverty reduction. This chapter presents the anthropology of development concerns with how the CSR apparatus utilises a sustainable development discourse to support the development encounter between corporations of the global North working in communities of the global South. From this anthropology of development perspective several concerns are brought to the forefront of CSR debates: the contested nature of both CSR and sustainable development; the taken-for-granted assumptions that the private sector and poverty reduction are compatible; and the unintended consequences of CSR activities despite well-meaning intentions.

Corporate Social Responsibility an australischen Hochschulen

Dieses Kapitel gibt Einblicke in den Stand der CSR Integration an australischen Hochschulen. Im internationalen Vergleich wird der Integrationsprozess als langsam gewertet, was auf universitatsexterne und -interne Barrieren zur CSR-Agenda an australischen Hochschulen zuruckgefuhrt wird. Speziell im Kontext eines starken Neoliberalisierungsdruckes auf die Hochschulen, der die Curriculum-Reform erschwert, wird eine akademische Aktivistenkultur als mogliche Antwort auf den CSR-Mangel an australischen Universitaten vorgestellt.

Teaching for Tomorrow: Preparing Responsible Citizens

The complicity of business schools in corporate wrong-doing has long been receiving public attention (Orr 1994), especially in more recent years following the collapse of companies like Enron, Tyco and WorldCom and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (Crane and Matten 2016). Perceptions of widespread corporate malfeasance have triggered growing calls—inter alia—for a greater emphasis on ethics in management education (Swanson and Frederick 2003; Alsop 2006; Crane 2004; Cornelius et al. 2007). Further compounding the moral dilemma of business schools are mounting socio-ecological problems globally, which have at their core the very economic model enshrined in business curricula world-wide (Willard 2004; Hart 2007; von der Heidt and Lamberton 2011; Godemann et al. 2014). Thus, places of higher education, and business schools in particular (especially since they attract the largest student numbers) are called upon not only to help students build their ethical identities (Swanson and Dahler-Larsen 2008), but also to equip them with the requisite tools to become earth-literate future leaders (after Martin and Jucker 2005) able to navigate and manage the complex challenges that have come to characterise this era (Lozano et al. 2015) we tellingly call the Anthropocene (see Steffen et al. 2011). It is considered a moral imperative but also a question of social relevance that business schools uphold their identity as places of learning with a conscience and purpose; driving positive social change by way of informing and shaping managerial and professional attitudes and practices (Adams et al. 2011; Jose Chiappetta Jabbour 2010; Tilbury et al. 2004; Green et al. 2017). As suggested by Seto-Pamies and Papaoikonomou (2016: 524): Academic institutions help shape the attitudes and behaviour of business leaders through business education, research, management development programs, training, and other pervasive, but less tangible, activities, such as the spread and advocacy of new values and ideas. Through these means, academic institutions have the potential to generate a wave of positive change, thereby helping to ensure a world where both enterprises and societies can flourish.