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Abstract
An emphasis on making markets work for the poor has thrust companies into the role of ‘development agents’ – organisations that consciously seek to deliver outcomes that contribute to international development goals. This paper examines what business as a development agent means in terms of the promise, the conceptualisation and the developmental outcomes of several initiatives engaged in ‘bottom billion capitalism’. It argues that, while these initiatives are hailed as a solution for poverty, the benefits of such engagement must be weighed against other factors, including exclusion, the emphasis on capital assets and the reinterpretation of positive outcomes. The paper presents an alternative model of business as a development agent that better meets the criteria for a genuine development actor.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the National Science Foundation (Grant #0548997), the esrc/dfid (RES-167-25-0321), the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, and the Oxford University Press John Fell Research Fund for their generous support of this research. We would also like to thank Stefano Ponte and Lisa Ann Richey, and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments on the paper.
Notes
1. The discussion of Fairtrade is based on two multi-sited studies of Fairtrade (tea and flowers) conducted in Kenya from 2004 to 2007. Each study entailed interviews with smallholders, wage employees and industry stakeholders in Kenya, as well as with ‘ethical consumers’, companies, ngos, and Fairtrade organisations in Europe. Evidence on bop initiatives is based on two research projects – the care Bangladesh Rural Sales Programme (2008–10) and Avon South Africa (2008–11) – which examined the impact of bop entrepreneurship on poor women’s economic empowerment. Both included interviews with micro-entrepreneurs and their customers, government and civil society stakeholders, as well as participant observation and videography. The paper is also informed by extensive fieldwork conducted on csr by the authors over the period of 1997–2007.
2. Cowen and Shenton, Doctrines of Development, 50.
3. McMichael, “Changing the Subject,” 3; and Rankin, “Manufacturing Rural Finance.”
4. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.
5. Rodrik, “Goodbye Washington Consensus”; and Collier, The Bottom Billion.
6. Ballinger and Olsson, Behind the Swoosh; ingi, “Unjust but Doing It!”; and Morrison and Delaney, “Marine Pollution.”
7. Vogel, The Market for Virtue; Jenkins et al., Corporate Responsibility and Labour Rights; and Kolk et al., “International Codes of Conduct”.
8. Ponte et al., Governing through Standards.
9. See O’Rourke, “Outsourcing Regulation”; Bendell and Kearins, “The Political Bottom Line”; Hughes, “Learning to Trade Ethically”; and Prieto-Carron, “Women Workers.”
10. Locke et al., “The Promise and Perils of Private Voluntary Regulation”; and Mosley, Labor Rights and Multinational Production.
11. Knudsen, “Company Delistings”; and Baccaro and Mele, “For Lack of Anything Better?”
12. Newell and Frynas, “Beyond csr?”; and Reed and Reed, “Partnerships for Development.”
13. Kramer and Kania, “Changing the Game.”
14. See Blowfield and Dolan, “Outsourcing Governance” on Fairtrade; Prahalad and Hart, “The Fortune at the Bottom” on bop; and Jackson and Nelson, Profits with Principles on social enterprise.
15. See Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; and Wilson, Make Poverty Business.
16. Noyoo, “Corporate Social Responsibility”; and Frynas, Corporate Social Responsibility.
17. See Kolk et al., “Reviewing a Decade of Research.”
18. See Brett, “Fairtrade, Fair-Trade, Fair Trade” for Whole Foods; and Blowfield and Murray, Corporate Responsibility for Vodafone/Safaricom.
19. McKenna and Braithwaite, “Large Corporations and Obstacles to Peace.”
20. “The Company File.”
21. Blowfield and Dolan, “Fairtrade Facts and Fancies.”
22. Blowfield, “Business and Poverty Reduction.”
23. Blowfield, Ethical Trade; Freidberg, The Contradictions of Clean; and Archer and Fritsch, “Global Fair Trade.”
24. Fig, Corporations and Moral Purpose; and Utting, “The Struggle for Corporate Accountability.”
25. Ruggie, “Reconstituting the Global Public Domain”; and Vogel, The Market for Virtue.
26. Salomon, “aids is Risky Business”.
27. Nelson, Leveraging the Development Impact.
28. Roy, Poverty Capital, 5.
29. Ibid., 6.
30. Richey and Ponte, Brand Aid.
31. Roy, Poverty Capital; Collier, The Bottom Billion; and Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom.
32. wbcsd, “Inclusive Business is Key”; and Kinsley, Creative Capitalism.
33. Ferguson, “The Uses of Neoliberalism”; and Mosse, Cultivating Development.
34. undp, Human Development Report.
35. Roy, “Ethical Subjects,” 110.
36. See Elyachar, Markets of Dispossession; Ferguson and Gupta, “Spatializing States”; and Rankin, “Governing Development.”
37. Ferguson, “Formalities of Poverty.”
38. Roy, Poverty Capital, 32.
39. See Armendáriz de Aghion and Morduch, The Economics of Microfinance; Nelson and Pound, A Review of the Impact of Fairtrade; and Ansari et al., “Impact at the ‘Bottom’.”
40. Sen, “Wellbeing, Agency and Freedom.”
41. Bruton’s review of leading management journals found that only 11 articles published between 1989 and 2010 contained terms related to poverty. Bruton, “Business and the World’s Poorest Billion.”
42. See Hall et al., “Entrepreneurship and Innovation” for bop; Raynolds et al., “Fair Trade” for Fairtrade; and Hermes and Lensink, “Microfinance: Its Impact” for microfinance.
43. Lewis and Mosse, “Encountering Order and Disjuncture,” 6; and McMichael, “Changing the Subject,” 3.
44. Blowfield and Dolan, “Fairtrade Facts and Fancies.”
45. Schwittay, “The Marketization of Poverty,” S71.
46. Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine; Escobar, Encountering Development; Li, The Will to Improve; and Mosse, Cultivating Development.
47. Li, The Will to Improve.
48. Ibid., 7.
49. Cf. Boyd, “Ways of Seeing.”
50. Rose, cited in Li, The Will to Improve, 35.
51. See Mosse, “Global Governance”; Escobar, Encountering Development; and Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine.
52. Li, Neo-liberal Strategies of Government, 4.
53. Rose, Powers of Freedom; and Scott, Seeing Like a State.
54. World Economic Forum, The Next Billions, 6.
55. Quoted in ibid, 51.
56. Basheer, “The Handwashing Initiative,” para. 1.
57. Cf. Li, “Practices of Assemblage and Community,” 267.
58. Berlan and Dolan, “Of Red Herrings.”
59. McMichael, “Changing the Subject,” 3.
60. Kuriyan et al., “Consumption, Technology, and Development.”
61. University of Oxford, “The ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’”.
62. Cross and Street, “Anthropology at the Bottom,” 6.
63. Taylor and Buttel, “How Do We Know?,” 405–406.
64. Roy, “Ethical Subjects,” 107.
65. World Economic Forum, The Next Billions, 17; Viswanathan, “A Micro-level Approach”; and Hart and London, “Developing Native Capability.”
66. Corporate Citizenship, Inclusive Business, 14.
67. See also Elyachar, “Next Practices.”
68. Kashyap, Rural Marketing, 77.
69. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 2.
70. Cf. Boyd, “Ways of Seeing.”
71. Roy, Poverty Capital.
72. Dolan, “The New Face of Development.”
73. Roy, “Ethical Subjects,” 1.
74. Ivo, “The Redefinition,” 81; and Rankin, “Manufacturing Rural Finance.”
75. Dolan and Johnstone-Louis, “Re-siting Corporate Responsibility”; and Schwittay, “The Financial Inclusion Assemblage.”
76. Shell Foundation, “Enterprise Solutions,” 12.
77. Ibid., 207.
78. Dolan, “The New Face of Development.”
79. Anagnost, “Strange Circulations,” 510; and Dolan and Johnstone-Louis, “Re-siting Corporate Responsibility,” 29.
80. Ivo, “The Redefinition,” 82.
81. Mutersbaugh, “Ethical Trade and Certified Organic.”
82. Schwittay, “The Financial Inclusion Assemblage,” 395. See also Roy, Poverty Capital, 99; and Rankin, “Governing Development.”
83. Moreno, Good Governance in Microcredit, i.
84. Blowfield, “Reasons to be Cheerful”; and Lund-Thomsen, “Assessing the Impact.”
85. Barrientos and Smith, “Do Workers Benefit?”
86. Margolis and Walsh, “Misery Loves Companies.”
87. See Clay, Exploring the Links; and Kapstein, Measuring Unilever’s Economic Footprint.
88. Porter and Kramer, “The Big Idea.”
89. Porter, Competitive Strategy.
90. Koller, Spark.
91. Perez, Technological Revolutions.