Redesigning Social Inquiry Fuzzy Sets And Beyond

The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility. By David Vogel. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 2005. 222p. $28.95.Is there a “market for virtue”? If so, what can it do, and what can it not do to improve our world? In his incisive new book, David Vogel takes aim at these questions and the now-fashionable claim that there is a business case for corporate social responsibility (CSR). He concludes that there is no business case that can be generalized to all firms per se, but there is a political case for broadening what we mean by that much-used term.

The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility

Human Development Report 2006

A drawback of the Handbook’s emphasis on introducing disparate groups of researchers to one another is that these groups sometimes seem to be talking past each other. The editors do not attempt to develop an overarching framework that would “make sense” of the work and family field by locating different topics and perspectives within a coherent whole. The reader is left to puzzle out how research on the determinants of government policies relates to work on the intra-psychic processes generating individual stress, how cultural interpretation of employers’ use of family metaphors fits with investigation of quantitative variation in work schedules over the life course, and how rigorous positivist methodologies mesh with a clear normative commitment to increasing work-family integration for both men and women. But perhaps it is too early in the game to ask for this kind of coherence. By the time of the next edition of the Handbook, the work-family field may have matured sufficiently to allow a clearer mapping of the terrain. In the meantime, the Handbook represents a rich and valuable collection that will be important for any scholar whose research and teaching focuses on work, family, or the links between the two.

Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval TradeInstitutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, by GreifAvner. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 526 pp. $34.99 paper. ISBN: 0521671345.

Agricultural waste: Review of the evolution, approaches and perspectives on alternative uses

More than forty states worldwide currently pursue explicit political strategies to expand and promote their bioeconomies. This paper assesses these strategies in the context of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our theoretical framework differentiates between four pathways of bioeconomic developments. The extent to which bioeconomic developments along these pathways lead to increased sustainability depends on the creation of effective governance mechanisms. We distinguish between enabling governance and constraining governance as the two fundamental political challenges in setting up an effective governance framework for a sustainable bioeconomy. Further, we lay out a taxonomy of political support measures (enabling governance) and regulatory tools (constraining governance) that states can use to confront these two political challenges. Guided by this theoretical framework, we conduct a qualitative content analysis of 41 national bioeconomy strategies to provide systematic answers to the question of how well designed the individual national bioeconomy strategies are to ensure the rise of a sustainable bioeconomy.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/191783/1/zef-dp-264.pdf

Governance of the Bioeconomy: A Global Comparative Study of National Bioeconomy Strategies

More than forty states worldwide currently pursue explicit political strategies to expand and promote their bioeconomies. This paper assesses these strategies in the context of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our theoretical framework differentiates between four pathways of bioeconomic developments. The extent, to which bioeconomic developments along these pathways lead to increased sustainability, depends on the creation of effective governance mechanisms. We distinguish between enabling governance and constraining governance as the two fundamental political challenges in setting up an effective governance framework for a sustainable bioeconomy. Further, we lay out a taxonomy of political support measures (enabling governance) and regulatory tools (constraining governance) that states can use to confront these two political challenges. Guided by this theoretical framework, we conduct a qualitative content analysis of 41 national bioeconomy strategies to provide systematic answers to the question of how well designed the individual national bioeconomy strategies are to ensure the rise of a sustainable bioeconomy.

Voluntary Sustainability Standards have become a popular private governance framework for more sustainable agri‐food value chains. Yet, amid increasing concerns over the decoupling of standards and practices, it is still unclear to what extent agricultural standard requirements are implemented on the ground, and what may account for such differential implementation. This study employs a novel dataset of 659 Honduran coffee producers to examine this puzzle, focusing on the most widely used standards in the coffee sector (Common Code for the Coffee Community, Fairtrade, Fairtrade/organic, UTZ Certified, and Rainforest Alliance). It first presents results on implementation and behavioral change, based on matched groups of certified and non‐certified farmers, for eight representative social and environmental sustainability practices. Analyzing determinants of implementation success, it finds that the stringency of rules – if they are known by farmers – and the level of farm‐gate prices are significantly correlated with farmers’ performance and lower levels of decoupling across a majority of indicators. These results speak to the importance of supporting small‐scale actors’ awareness of and financial capacity to comply with proposed sustainability rules.

Mainstreamed voluntary sustainability standards and their effectiveness: Evidence from the Honduran coffee sector

The Voluntary Coffee Standard Index (VOCSI). Developing a Composite Index to Assess and Compare the Strength of Mainstream Voluntary Sustainability Standards in the Global Coffee Industry

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/sd.2072

Thomas Dietz

Papers

Governance of the Bioeconomy: A Global Comparative Study of National Bioeconomy Strategies

Governance of the Bioeconomy: A Global Comparative Study of National Bioeconomy Strategies

Mainstreamed voluntary sustainability standards and their effectiveness: Evidence from the Honduran coffee sector

The Voluntary Coffee Standard Index (VOCSI). Developing a Composite Index to Assess and Compare the Strength of Mainstream Voluntary Sustainability Standards in the Global Coffee Industry

Bioeconomy futures: Expectation patterns of scientists and practitioners on the sustainability of bio‐based transformation