Socially Responsive Organizations & the Challenge of Poverty

This book makes crucial ties between poverty alleviation and the many sectors and issue areas where business can play a role. From examples to actionable ideas, this book is a meaningful resource for anyone interested in sustainable and social development on how to take forward their work. -- Jonas Haertle, Head, PRME Secretariat, UN Global Compact Office Our aim as business school Deans cannot be to fight poverty in order to save any economic model or system. Our aim should be to help to develop a political and financial mind-set and infrastructure to ensure that nobody has to suffer from poverty ... The book offers a great contribution in its examples of rising living standards and quality of life. These examples can inspire professors of management and business leaders all over the world. -- Prof. Danica Purg, CEEMAN President, President of the IEDC-Bled School of Management This ground-breaking book will give confidence to entrepreneurs and managers in understanding the complexities of unacceptable global inequality. Its extensive case-studies, in a wide range of countries and industries, combining the best scholarship and practice, will inspire a new generation of world-changing leaders ... Readers of Socially Responsive Organisations and the Challenge of Poverty will be amongst those who will be best equipped to rise to the challenge. -- David Urquhart, Bishop of Birmingham and Chair of Giving Hope Changing Lives Social Inclusion Process

This book provides a combination of case studies and current action research describing how businesses and civil society organizations are working to alleviate poverty in local and global communities. It intends to provide conceptual and research rationales for why management education and management institutions must address the issue of poverty.

This book provides a combination of case studies and current action research describing how businesses and civil society organizations are working to alleviate poverty in local and global communities. It intends to provide conceptual and research rationales for why management education and management institutions must address the issue of poverty. The book responds to one of the major findings from the research of the PRME Working Group on Poverty that the topic of poverty still lacks a strong business case for management educators and program/institutional administrators. The distinctive features of this book are that it: (1) includes examples of small and medium-sized (SME) businesses; (2) deals with the issue of poverty as a human rights violation; (3) explores the issue of absolute versus relative poverty; (4) deals with leadership challenges in organizations committed to poverty alleviation; and (5) discusses the issues in terms of management education’s responsibility for setting new management, research institutional and intellectual agendas. The first of two books to be produced by the PRME Working Group on Poverty, Socially Responsive Organizations and The Challenge of Poverty aims to provide both researchers and practitioners with the most wide-ranging coverage yet published on how business can be a positive force in alleviating poverty and how management education needs to adapt to this increasingly crucial prerogat