A critical review of relations between corporate responsibility research and practice

This essay identifies epistemological, theoretical and methodological problems in a potentially influential subset of the interdisciplinary corporate responsibility literature, that which appears in the management literature. The received conceptualization of stakeholder analysis is criticised by identifying six sets of factors conventionally considered as promoting social responsibilities in the firm: inter-organizational factors, economic competitors, institutional investors, end-consumers, government regulators and non-governmental organizations. Each is addressed on conceptual grounds, its empirical salience in terms of the latest relevant research and prospects to be a significant factor in promoting outcomes consistent with social welfare. Despite obvious antagonistic relations between organization-centred economic objectives and extra-organizational-directed social considerations, the huge body of research we address drifts in a disengaged Sargasso Sea. The essay argues for appropriate directions for continuing business ethics/responsibility/corporate citizenship research, suggesting certain sociological works on moral leadership, moral courage, and academic leadership.

Democratizing health : consumer groups in the policy process

This timely book examines the role of consumer organisations in the health policy process. In an age of shifting boundaries between state and civil society, consumer groups are potentially drivers of democratisation in the health domain. Their activities bring new dynamics to relations between service providers, the medical profession, government agencies, and other policy actors. This book is unique in comprehensively exploring the opportunities and dilemmas of this type of activism, including sometimes ambiguous partnerships between consumer groups and stakeholders such as the pharmaceutical industry. These themes are explored within an internationally comparative frameThis book examines the important role of consumer activism within health policy in different national contexts. In an age of shifting boundaries between state and civil society, consumer groups are potentially drivers of democratization in the health domain. The expert contributors explore how their activities bring new dynamics to relations between service providers, the medical profession, government agencies, and other policy actors. This book is unique in comprehensively analysing the opportunities and dilemmas of this type of activism, including ambiguous partnerships between consumer groups and stakeholders such as the pharmaceutical industry. These themes are explored within an internationally comparative framework, with case studies from various countries. work, with case studies from many countries.

Youth, media and culture in the Asia Pacific region

Youth, Media and Culture in the Asia Pacific Region presents an analysis of youth media activities in a diverse, but geographically connected Asia Pacific region. The region, which is spatially connected by its colonial and imperial past, is becoming a significant player in the globalized world. In this context, youth situated in these economically, politically and socially structured communities are redefining their locales through their patterns of media use. The discourse of ‘youth’ in this disparate region is manifest in the media through their identity articulations and social activism. The book illustrates that these ‘youth subcultures’ in the Asia Pacific are part of the well marketed global consumerism culture, and yet at other times independent of the commodifying impetus of global capital. It draws on case studies to examine some of the media practices youth in the region are engaged in and elucidates the process of social change taking place in some Asia Pacific nations.

'This book contributes to the important and growing field of youth media studies. The regionalization of media research is necessarily recuperated here, bringing large populations of media users into a frame of reference that allows critical reflection on the new waves of use and sociality in the Asia Pacific region.'

Investimento na Preservação do Meio Ambiente no Setor de Cosméticos: Relevância Atribuída pelos clientes de o Boticário e sua percepção quanto à conduta da Empresa

In spite of the environmental consumerism in Brazil not to meet in levels as advanced as in Europe and in the United States, some sectors are emerging as precursors of environmental relationships with their markets. Cosmetic's sector is one of them. This study discusses the subject of the ethical consumerism, especially the environmental one. It is focused in the consumer-citizen's context, more specifically in the consumer of a company of cosmetic's sector in Rio de Janeiro. To carry out this study, we chose a company that clearly assumed its commitment with the investment in the preservation of the environment: O Boticário. Initially, we investigated the relevance attributed by the customers of O Boticário to the investment accomplished in the search by the preservation of the environment by companies of this sector, comparing these results with the importance that has been imputed by the customers to traditional attributes of the Marketing. Later, we have analyzed these customers' perception in respect of the investment accomplished by the company in the search for the preservation of the environment. In the preliminary phase of the research, fourteen customers of O Boticário were interviewed. A structured questionnaire was applied to 90 respondents that have declared themselves customers of the mentioned company. The information were treated with descriptive statistics. The software employed has been the SPSS 10.0. Although the field research has indicated the characteristics of the product as priority for the consumer, the relevance attributed to the investment of the company in the search for the preservation of the environment was considered significant, with more prominence than some attributes traditionally judged as attributes-key of the Marketing. However, this apparent sensibility for the environmental subject doesn't seem to influence in search of information on environmental conduct of cosmetics' companies. In fact, a great deal of customers of O Boticário has declared that they have been unknowing about the conduct in favor of the environment on the part of the company, and a number, even larger, was not aware of the existence of the Fundação O Boticário de Proteção à Natureza.

Formulação de políticas culturais: leis de incentivo e as inovações do Programa Cultura Viva

O presente trabalho analisa a formulação das políticas culturais no Brasil a partir da análise de dois casos bastante distintos: as leis de incentivo, formuladas no início da década de 1990, na esteira do neoliberalismo, e o Programa Cultura Viva, formulado no ano de 2004, no primeiro mandato do Presidente Lula. A partir da análise detalhada do contexto de formulação de cada uma das políticas culturais, bem como dos públicos efetivamente atendidos e dos valores disponibilizados, mostramos tratarse de duas formas de políticas culturais que apontam para diferentes horizontes em termos de cidadania cultural. Na questão das leis de incentivo, analisamos a passagem do modelo fordista de acumulação para a acumulação flexível, relacionando a importância das estratégias de branding para as novas formas da cultura do consumo. No caso do Programa Cultura Viva, analisamos quais os grupos privilegiados, delimitando os alcances e limites dessa política. Em nossa abordagem, apoiamo-nos no referencial gramsciano de hegemonia, relacionando-a fortemente com a cultura numa sociedade de classes. Dada à singularidade do conceito de sociedade civil na abordagem do pensador italiano, além da evidente relevância que essa esfera assume com o ideário neoliberal, faz-se necessário uma análise histórica de sua evolução, na busca de evidências que apontem para uma política emancipatória a partir das ações nessa esfera, e no seu relacionamento com o Estado e o mercado.

Tratamento de reclamações: estudo exploratório junto às empresas de serviços públicos urbanos

Estuda o consumerismo, o consumerismo no Brasil e investiga o tratamento que as empresas de serviços públicos dispensam às reclamações, através de pesquisa a 3 universos: o PROCON, 9 executivos de 4 empresas governamentais de serviços públicos e ,40 consumidores reclamantes.

Cultura e consumo: o fluxo dos bens

It is an ethnographic work that has an objective of verifying devices throngh the residents of a low income suburban area, and the way they deal with their social relations through sonsumerism (and the aspiration connected to it), the symbolic character acquired through consumer goods, understood as one of the fundamental components for the comprehension of the web as relations that established, Though consumerism, individuais will reveal ways of communication, of the status, of creating new forms of action and identification. Using the principal that believes in a web of symbolic significance where own individuais develop their impressions, as a resource to look at their own bodies, a social order (yet unstable), and the process of inclusion in a broader society. In conclusion, the act of consuming is more than a perspective that establishes statistics on consumer goods, with their ways of production, circulation and economic functioning: it is also a way of perceiving a collection mapped by consumers individually and socially, and by those means organizing, classifying and identifyring the social world

A transversalidade no currículo do ensino fundamental: as questões ambientais em foco

This thesis is the result of an investigation about the transversality of the environmental issues into the daily curriculum of High Schools (from first to eighth grade). The research field was the county of Santo Antonio de Jesus in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The investigation is related with the challenge that the present model of social development and organization has put to the school institution: to bring the regular discussion about Environmental Education (EE) to the school s daily life. Facing the complexity of the socio-environmental issues and the basic functions of Education, the object of study was restricted to the identification of the challenges and paradoxes of the EE inside the curriculum organization of Politic-Pedagogic Project of the schools and the teachers daily practices. About the methodology, we adopted different references for the qualitative research: sociology, history, economy, and education. As for the investigative procedures about the teacher s practices, we related the school s daily practices to the context of the community. We also adopted several investigative procedures, such as questionnaires, interviews, observations and formative intervention. The theoretical basis was organized based on references to curriculum organization, environmental culture, teacher education and also considering the pillars of a capitalistic system that is based on consumerism and that generates social exclusion. At the initial considerations, we contextualized the contemporary environmental issues in an attempt to interpret the conditions of the EE transversality into the school s daily practices, which are still oriented to the traditional Cartesian Education. Based on the collected data, we found the reasons for the teachers dilemma and reluctances to the insertion of the environmental issues into the organization of the work plan and into the management of a school. Nevertheless, the results also signed promising possibilities to the EE tranversality, in case the curriculum of the school could be more sensible towards the cultural and social-economical issues of a community. We especially questioned The National Curriculum Parameter s (PCN), which is considered highly insufficient to inform the teachers about the environmental issues, facing the actual local conditions of social and pedagogic work. The final considerations showed the role and the importance of this research as one strategy to organize the curriculum education into the perspective of the transversality of environmental issues inside the education of both teacher and student

Arranjos urbanos e subjetivos contemporâneos na invenção de territórios turísticos

We seek consistency empirical and analytical rigor to the concept of touristification in the course of the contemporary arrangements of subjectivity and urbanity stations through a landscape of social (dis)encounters between residents and foreigners living in the capital of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal. In the last three decades the city has become a major destination country for national and international tourism, making tourism an important monitor of choreography in search of synchrony between cities and subjectivities, orchestrated by the cyclical crises and the relentless battle for systemic capitalistic expansion and survival. We proceed with an ethnographic and cartographic inspiration in Ponta Negra, where the waterfront redevelopment in 2000 conducted by the government, influenced the implementation of various establishments, services and practices related to the construction of Natal s major industry hub of tourism and entertainment. We proposed an arch-genealogy of touristification inspared on Michel Foucault analytical perspective, increased by authors in confluence or in different theoretical and methodological approaches, among which stand out Karl Marx, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. The reflections that initially turned to the advancement of the sphere of consumerism as the issue capable of articulating the developmental trajectory of the capitalist system and the practice of tourism, promoting some effects (un)desirable in the conflictual dynamics of the condition of the district of Ponta Negra, territory each again (re) produces the designs to meet the consumption by affluent portion of the population and foreign, encountering social exclusion and inclusion differentiated a growing trend. We go forward with an analysis of the "liberation of desire" phenomenal features of the process of producing subjective, providing a breakdown of the recent world s financial crisis initially, but proved social and political crisis also, through a plot derived from the operation of real estate speculation, which Natal is mainly caught through touristification, showing the outlines of a generalized crisis in establishing a new order buoyed by the emergence of a context "biopolitical" since it is a major route that uses the capital to survive and expand, while guiding the process of "strategic beautification" held in Ponta Negra, problematized by us. We conclude by assessing the appropriateness of proposing on further analysis to explore the establishment of a "new social ontology in terms of interference touristification ongoing and the constitution of a "new order" local/global, away from that characterize a system's capitalist overcoming, try to give emphasis in the current stage of the radicalization of a capitalistic utopia

O adolescente em conflito com a lei e a escola: criminalização e inclusão perversa

This study aims to identify the relation between adolescents in conflict with the penal law, who were convicted to assisted freedom (a socio-educative measure applied by the Juvenile Justice system as a sanction to adolescent offenders), and the school. The research was developed in the Community-based Assisted Freedom Program of Pastoral do Menor , in Fortaleza (capital city of Ceará State, Brazil). The study has engaged 21 adolescents, eight program professionals, three members of the Center for Defense of Child Rights in Ceará, five teachers and eight school principals and education managers from the schools attended by the adolescents in the neighborhoods of Pirambu, Tancredo Neves, Jardim Iracema e Bom Jardim. It intends, based on dialectical and historical method, to define the investigated adolescents as persons with a very singular insertion into the social structures of neoliberal capitalism. Their adolescence is subject to consumerism appeals, to the limits imposed by these appeals and to perverse ways of insertion in the system, such as criminalization, segregation and marginalization. It reveals that the school attended by the adolescents reproduces such conditions of insertion. At the same time, these conditions are elements of identity, by which the adolescents are characterized.

A Educação Matemática Focalizando Questões Sociais Maiores

Excessive specialization and the fascinating advances of technology and the sciences, particularly of mathematics, cause a false dichotomy between the sciences and technology and the arts and humanities. The survival of civilization is threatened. Clearly, the fragility of the current social organization allows for the exclusion of the larger part of the population from the benefits of progress. We need to revert this scenario, moving into a civilization without inequity, without uncontrolled consumerism and with respect for social and environmental conditions. In this paper, we discuss these issues and we illustrate with some examples how this can be achieved. We discuss the development of mathematics in Brazil, environmental crimes and its prevention through mathematical education, and a proposal for alternative educational models, using as an example the Waldorf Educational System.

Indústria cultural e infância: uma análise da relação entre as propagandas midiáticas, o consumo e o processo formativo das crianças

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