The responsibility to protect and the crisis in Darfur

Governments that have endorsed the 'sovereignty as responsibility' approach have shown little inclination to protect civilians suffering at the hands of their own government in the Sudanese province of Darfur. After providing an overview of Darfur's crisis and international society's feeble response, we explore why the strongest advocates of 'sovereignty as responsibility', the NATO and EU states, failed to seriously contemplate military intervention. We suggest that three main factors help explain the West's unwillingness to intervene in Darfur: increased scepticism about the West's humanitarian interventionism, especially after the invasion of Iraq; Western strategic interests in Sudan; and the relationship between the crisis in Darfur and Sudan's other civil wars. We conclude that the emerging norm of humanitarian intervention remains weak and strongly contested, and that advocates of the 'responsibility to protect' approach have yet to persuade their governments to help save populations in danger.

Minding the money: A growing responsibility for informal carers

Managing the assets of older people is a common and potentially complex task of informal care with legal, financial, cultural, political and family dimensions. Older people are increasingly recognised -as having significant assets, but the family, the state, service providers and the market have competing interests in their use. Increased policy interest in self-provision and user-charges for services underline the importance of asset management in protecting the current and future health, care and accommodation choices of older people. Although 'minding the money' has generally been included as an informal care-giving task, there is limited recognition of either its growing importance and complexity or of care-givers' involvement. The focus of both policy and practice have been primarily on substitute decision-making and abuse. This paper reports an Australian national survey and semi-structured interviews that have explored the prevalence of non-professional involvement in asset management. The findings reveal the nature and extent of involvement, the tasks that informal carers take on, the management processes that they use, and that 'minding the money' is a common informal care task and mostly undertaken in the private sphere using some risky practices. Assisting informal care-givers with asset management and protecting older people from financial risks and abuse require various strategic policy and practice responses that extend beyond substitute decision-making legislation. Policies and programmes are required: to increase the awareness of the tasks, tensions and practices surrounding asset management; to improve the financial literacy of older people, their informal care-givers and service providers; to ensure access to information, advice and support services; and to develop better accountability practices.

Whither the responsibility to protect? Humanitarian intervention and the 2005 World Summit

At the 2005 World Summit, the world's leaders committed themselves to the "responsibility to protect", recognizing both that all states have a responsibility to protect their citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and that the UN should help states to discharge this responsibility using either peaceful means or enforcement action. This declaration ostensibly marks an important milestone in the relationship between sovereignty and human rights but its critics argue that it will make little difference in practice to the world's most threatened people. The purpose of this article is to ask how consensus was reached on the responsibility to protect, given continuing hostility to humanitarian intervention expressed by many (if not most) of the world's states and whether the consensus will contribute to avoiding future Kosovos (cases where the Security Council is deadlocked in the face of a humanitarian crises) and future Rwandas (cases where states lack the political will to intervene). It suggests that four key factors contributed to the consensus: pressure from proponents of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, its adoption by Kofi Annan and the UN's High Level Panel, an emerging consensus in the African Union, and the American position. Whilst these four factors contributed to consensus, each altered the meaning of the responsibility to protect in important ways, creating a doctrine that many states can sign up to but that does little to prevent future Kosovos and Rwandas and may actually inhibit attempts to build a consensus around intervention in future cases.

Corporate social responsibility reporting in developing countries:the case of Bangladesh

Historically, the study of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting has largely been within the context of Western economies. However, in the wake of highly publicized incidents such as Bhopal and the struggle of the Ogoni people in Nigeria, many large corporations now claim to be taking steps to improve their environmental and social performance within developing countries. Using the lens of stakeholder theory, this book examines whether the current practice of CSR reporting in developing countries is motivated by a desire to discharge accountability to all relevant stakeholders or whether it is being driven by the imperative of advancing corporate economic interests. While concepts like CSR reporting have become more fashionable, they vary widely in different national contexts; this book therefore clarifies the types and roles of CSR reporting and the underlying corporate motivations. The author considers the current CSR reporting practices in a number of developing countries, with particular attention given to illuminating a case study of Bangladesh.

Taking strategy seriously:responsibility and reform for an important social practice

Strategy is a pervasive and consequential practice in most Western societies. We respond to strategy's importance by drawing an initial map of strategy as an organizational field that embraces not just firms, but consultancies, business schools, the state and financial institutions. Using the example of Enron, we show how the strategy field is prone to manipulations in which other actors in the field can easily become entrapped, with grave consequences. Given these consequences, we argue that it is time to take strategy seriously in three senses: undertaking systematic research on the field itself; developing appropriate responses to recent failures in the field; and building more heedful interrelationships between actors within the field, particularly between business schools and practitioners.

Employee social responsibility:development of an ESR measure and a multi-level investigation of antecedent and boundary conditions

The following thesis instigates the discussion on corporate social responsibility (CSR) through a review of literature on the conceptualisation, determinants, and remunerations of organisational CSR engagement. The case is made for the need to draw attention to the micro-levels of CSR, and consequently focus on employee social responsibility at multiple levels of analysis. In order to further research efforts in this area, the prerequisite of an employee social responsibility behavioural measurement tool is acknowledged. Accordingly, the subsequent chapters outline the process of scale development and validation, resulting in a robust, reliable and valid employee social responsibility scale. This scale is then put to use in a field study, and the noteworthy roles of the antecedent and boundary conditions of transformational leadership, assigned CSR priority, and CSR climate are confirmed at the group and individual level. Directionality of these relationships is subsequently alluded to in a time-lagged investigation, set within a simulated business environment. The thesis collates and discusses the contributions of the findings from the research series, which highlight a consistent three-way interaction effect of transformational leadership, assigned CSR priority and CSR climate. Specifically, efforts are made to outline various avenues for future research, given the infancy of the micro-level study of employee social responsibility.