Corporate environmental responsibility and accountability: What chance in vulnerable Bangladesh?
By A. Belal, S. Cooper, N. Khan. 2015
165 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Bangladesh has recently been enjoying significant economic growth mainly arising from an export led development strategy. However, in that process its natural environment has been degraded and become more vulnerable in geophysical terms (e.g. environmental pollution). Much of the Bangladeshi population are also vulnerable in socio-economic terms due primarily to widespread poverty. In this context we ask, albeit sceptically, whether there is any chance of holding corporations to account for their environmental responsibilities. Using the notions of vulnerability and ecological rifts we answer this question by providing evidence from published sources and a series of 32 semi-structured interviews with Bangladeshi stakeholder groups. Key findings include, inter alia, corporate reluctance to take responsibility for the environmental impact of their activities. Our interviewees discuss the possibility of a role for mandatory corporate reporting in enhancing corporate accountability and we argue that this is essential if the contradictions and irrationalities of the globalized capitalist system are to be made visible. Achieving such accountability, however, will not be easy due to a lack of political will and the prohibitive costs involved. Incurring such costs could raise the dangerous prospect of Bangladesh losing business to other, less regulated, economies.
Subfields: Business and International Management, Development, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/85a2b5adaf502b270961ace4f4de37e6f00fa814
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Citations in the corpus
- The role of country-level institutional factors in escaping the natural resource curse: Insights from Ghana (2019, background): “3 Accounting and Petroleum revenue management (APRM) The paper also considers the role accounting plays regarding transparency and accountability issues in curbing corruption and the resource-curse in natural resource abundance economies (Belal et al., 2015; Holmgren Caicedo, 2015; Sikka and Lehman,”
- Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and Investment Decision in Bangladesh (2018, background): “Irresponsible industrial behaviors contribute to environmental pollution in Bangladesh [47].”
- Globalisation, governance, accountability and the natural resource ‘curse’: Implications for socio-economic growth of oil-rich developing countries (2019, background): “Incidentally, Boschini et al. (2007) also pose a similar hypothetical question – “resource curse or not: a question of appropriability”? They argue that the interaction between institutional setting and the types of resources a country owns is crucial in suggesting whether natural resources are good”
- Water Pollution and the Textile Industry in Bangladesh: Flawed Corporate Practices or Restrictive Opportunities? (2019, background): “The reasons for the enforcement failure are insufficient resources (knowledge, human resources, and funds) [4,12]; economic corruption [4,12]; weak political will [4,13]; and inadequate coordination among concerned agencies [14].”
- Rana Plaza collapse aftermath: Are CSR compliance and auditing pressures effective? (2016, background): “The garment industry holds a paradoxical role in this country as it is both a heavy contributor to the country’s economic development and seen as a potential obstacle to its future development (Belal et al., 2015).”