Corporate Social Responsibility in Innovation: Insights from two Cases of Syngenta's Activities in Genetically Modified Organisms

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) implies that companies have collective responsibility beyond legal requirements. This ‘beyond’ can be described along the ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability (social, environmental and economic dimensions). Dealing with these dimensions is under discussion in societies and some propose the stakeholder concept as a framework for companies to identify their responsibilities. However, who counts as a key stakeholder and what is a legitimate stake are difficult to determine. This article discusses reasons, possibilities and difficulties of managing responsibility in innovation, taking two cases of genetically modified organisms as examples. It is argued that the stakeholder approach is necessary to provide different perspectives, but is not enough or even completely unsuitable for defining responsibilities. Moral responsibility involves judgement that differs between stakeholders and might vary over time, owing to emerging insights and changing priorities. Therefore, pursuing or abandoning a particular project does not constitute a responsible organization; rather, it is the preparation of decisions, accountability and the resulting pattern of behaviour that renders an organization responsible. The various notions of responsibility set the scene for discussion but do not provide a clear answer to the questions of right or wrong and good or ill intent. Key conclusions are that companies need to organize for responsibility and that responsibility needs to be complemented with accountability.

A Hybrid MCDM Approach for Strategic Project Portfolio Selection of Agro By-Products

“…The final purpose is to assign the importance levels to the indicators to be consequently usable for the decision-making process. In order to verify the appropriateness on the indicators' list and to make sure that the identified indicators are practically applicable, a pilot survey was carried out through semi-structured interviews with six experts (DM 1 , DM 2 DM 3 , DM 4 , DM 5 and DM 6 ) involved in Edible Oil product projects in India. The characteristics required to define an individual as an "expert" are equivocal, according to [90].…”

“…Authors in [5] found that up to 2014, 18 million farmers of 28 countries were able to cultivate over 181 million hectares of GM yields. GM yields with enhanced tolerance to pests and conservation stresses may reduce the use of chemical pesticides in the production of agricultural yields [6]. Moreover, because of their advanced yields, such crops may limit deforestation in developing countries and can preserve biodiversity [7].…”

“…D 25 Integrated crop health solutions [6,14] This involves restructuring and managing the crop ecosystem in ways, which maximize the "built in" preventive strength along with the naturally occurring biological agents and back up use of therapeutic measures.…”

“…Deciphering the mechanism of host and non-host innate immunity [6,19] Innate immunity is the natural immunity power resent in an organism against infection.…”

“…Isolation of stress resistance genes for transgenics/cisgenics [6,7,10] Stress resistance genes are isolated from a plant (which may not be a crop plant) and then it is transferred to a crop plant to make it stress resistant. Such transgenic (gene from different species) or cisgenic (gene from different strain of same species) plant may be developed having multiple stress resistance characteristics.…”