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BE439 Coursework Assignment

There are various ways of thinking about why corporations carry out Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Scherer and Palazzo (2010) distinguish between “economic perspectives” and “political perspectives” on CSR.

For this assignment, please choose one of the following cases:

• Starbucks’ “coffee growers” initiatives
• McDonald’s’ partnership initiatives with   environmental organisations on issues of packaging & waste   (i.e., their partnership with Environmental Defense, beginning in 1990)
• Nike’s engagement with/response to anti-sweatshop activists (i.e., the “No Sweat” campaign)
• IKEA’s recent ethical and local sourcing initiatives

Please write a 2,000 word essay examining your chosen case.   In your essay you should,

1) describe the history of these particular CSR efforts,

2) explain how one would analyse these efforts from an “economic” and
from a “political”   perspective,

3) critically assess the effectiveness of these CSR efforts from an economic
and from a political perspective.

You may use web resources and popular news items to research the concrete CSR activities you examine in your essay (i.e., the companies’ own websites, NGO and campaign organisations’ websites, newspaper and magazine stories, etc.). You should, however, reference academic articles from management journals when discussing economic and political perspectives on CSR initiatives (i.e., the Friedman (1970), Collins (1994) and Scherer and Palazzo (2010) articles we discussed in class, as well as others which you locate through your own independent research).

The coursework should fulfil the following formal criteria:

• It should include Harvard style references for all cited works, and a bibliography at the end of the text.
• It should be spellchecked and grammar-checked.
• It must be submitted by OCS by 3pm on Wednesday, December 1st, 2010 (week 9).
•...