Harnessing Innovation for Change: Sustainability and Poverty in Developing Countries

Abstract

To date, a well‐developed business perspective on how to promote sustainability for those in poverty is sorely lacking. For sustainability enhancing innovations in developing countries, poverty presents unique challenges. In this paper, we argue that if sustainability enhancing innovations introduced in developing countries are to stick, they need to be designed with local customers, networks, and business ecosystems in mind. We illustrate this view using case examples from mobile telephony, fuel efficient stoves, clean drinking water, and household electrification. Our paper underscores the need for today's managers to understand poverty as an integral part of the sustainability nexus and the new international business equation.

Crafting Sustainable Development Solutions: Frugal Innovations of Grassroots Entrepreneurs

“…According to this view, rather than tapping into underserved consumers, grassroots innovators aspire to address problems that are essentially and primarily social [60] providing appropriate [43], socially acceptable [5] and environmentally sustainable [66] solutions. According to Gupta [67] and Fressoli et al [68], including grassroots entrepreneurship and innovation within the range of public policy would not only lead to the delivery of affordable products/services but also to the strengthening of the activity of actors such as Civil Society Organizations (CSO) [69] and NGOs [70], empower local communities [71][72][73][74][75] fill institutional voids [76,77] and promote more inclusive patterns of development [78,79].…”

Elementos Para Discussão Da Escravidão Contemporânea Como Prática De Gestão

“…A prática da responsabilidade social corporativa vem sendo enviesada pelos temas ambientais, em detrimento de visões mais complexas dos problemas a serem enfrentados (Barkemeyer, 2009;Houffman, 2011). Além disso, pobreza vem sendo considerada um tema inconsistente e muito distante do mainstream do business (Khavul & Bruton, 2013; Principles for Responsible Management Education, 2012). Este artigo sustenta que a problemática da escravidão contemporâ-nea avança nosso conhecimento de como práticas de gestão estariam ligadas à reprodução ou ao aumento da pobreza no mundo (Crane, 2013;Lindsay, 2010;Singer, 2006).…”

“…Os debates penetram principalmente o campo jurídico (Halley, Kotiswaran, Thomas, & Shamir, 2006;Lorenzetti, 2010;Monteiro, 2010;Rassam, 2005), direitos humanos (Figueira, Prado, & Galvão, 2013;Quirk, 2006;Welch, 2009), antropologia, sociologia e estudos de gênero (Doezema, 1999;Meillasooux, 1995) e políticas públicas (Antero, 2008;Lorenzetti, 2010); em estudos de temas como desenvolvimento (Barkemeyer, 2009), pobreza (Boyle & Boguslaw, 2007;Castilho, 1999;Jenkins, 2005;Khavul & Bruton, 2013;Kolk & Tulder, 2006;Pehn, 2009;Phillips & Sakamoto, 2011;Smith, 2009); segurança e tráfico de pessoas (Clark, 2003;Lobasz, 2009) e crimes corporativos (Oliveira, Valadão, & Miranda, 2013). As oportunidades que se colocam são diversas, tais como análises-explicativas com aporte teórico de várias correntes, diversificando a reflexão sobre as temáticas que contribuam para entendimento do trabalho escravo como prática de gestão.…”

Connecting the Dots for Social Value: A Review on Social Networks and Social Entrepreneurship

“…Several scholars advocate that social entrepreneurship may not be understood in purely economic terms, but needs to be studied in relationship with its (local) social environment (Mair and Marti 2006;Khavul and Bruton 2013). Hence, the embeddedness of social entrepreneurship at its different stages constitutes a promising avenue for research.…”