The Business Plan for Peace

The Business Plan for Peace
Author: Scilla Elworthy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2018
Genre: Conflict management
ISBN: 9781999816438

"Many people feel powerless in the face of what they see on TV or read in the news -- a world in crisis, with wars and violence taking place across the globe. Scilla Elworthy has written a book for all those who want to step out of helplessness and apply their own personal skills to do something about the challenges now facing us."--Back cover.

Corporate Peace

Corporate Peace
Author: Mary Martin
Publisher: Hurst & Company
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2020-01-23
Genre: Social responsibility of business
ISBN: 1787381277

A challenge to conventional wisdom, this eye-opening account explains how businesses can stabilise conflict and improve people's lives while still pursuing the bottom line. Ours is an era of big companies, multinational brands and global business power, but also of seemingly unending conflict. Corporate Peace examines how corporations respond to the life-and-death business of war and peace. What happens when they come up against Mexican drug cartels, or the Ebola epidemic in Liberia? Through the experiences of behemoths such as Fiat, Veolia, BP and Unilever, Mary Martin shows how big business is increasingly critical in building a safer world, in the face of failed states, health pandemics, insurgencies and organised crime. Can companies do more than generate profits in the poorest and most fragile parts of the world? Should they also shoulder responsibilities neglected by government? Martin contends that corporations must move beyond simply 'doing no harm', or upholding human rights. They are becoming part of the solution, contributing expertise and investment to resolve complex issues of violence, authority and law. Corporate Peace offers an alternative account of business, challenging our assumptions about security and how companies function in an unstable world. It is an invitation to anyone interested in how society works: to rethink how multinationals can mobilise their power and influence for the common good.

Business, Peacebuilding and Sustainable Development

Business, Peacebuilding and Sustainable Development
Author: Jason Miklian
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2019-05-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0429614667

The intersection of business, peace and sustainable development is becoming an increasingly powerful space, and is already beginning to show the capability to drive major global change. This book deciphers how different forms of corporate engagement in the pursuit of peace and development have different impacts and outcomes. It looks specifically at how the private sector can better deliver peace contributions in fragile, violent and conflict settings and then at the deeper consequences of this agenda upon businesses, governments, international institutions and not least the local communities that are presumed to be the beneficiaries of such actions. It is the first book to compile the state-of-the-field in one place and is therefore an essential guide for students, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners on the role of business in peace. Without cross-disciplinary engagement, it is hard to identify where the cutting edge truly lies, and how to take the topic forward in a more systematic manner. This edited book brings together thought leaders in the field and pulls disparate strands together from business ethics, management, international relations, peace and conflict studies in order to better understand how businesses can contribute to peacebuilding and sustainable development. Before businesses take a deeper role in the most complicated and risky elements of sustainable development, we need to be able to better explain what works, why it works, and what effective business efforts for peace and development mean for the multilateral institutional frameworks. This book does just that.

Peace is Everyone's Business

Peace is Everyone's Business
Author: Lowell Ewert
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2021-08-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1648025986

The premise of this book is very simple. While acknowledging that much progress has been made since the end of World War II to improve life conditions for billions of people and reduce the likelihood of war, current global challenges threaten to undermine, undo, or even reverse much of the progress made. Growing political and social polarization, and the resultant increasing fear of each other, is on a trajectory that could cause unprecedented harm. The book illustrates how everyone can have an impact on peace and that many already do so in both constructive and negative ways, illustrated by many examples. The book offers an expansive view of peace, which includes promoting human rights, identifying and resolving situations of slow violence, working to promote fair and sustainable economic development, identifying and resolving injustices, and establishing institutions and practices for resolving conflicts by communicative means. The book especially focuses on the role universities can and should play in promoting peace. Universities, which have played a pivotal role in creating a more humane and just world through their research, teaching and scholarship, now face the challenge of thoughtfully examining how each discipline and vocation and the university as a whole can contribute to fostering peace. In general, universities help to prepare students actively to work for peace by cultivating their capacities at reasoning and reflecting, developing their skills in communicating and research, and fostering among them an active awareness of their responsibilities as citizens of the world. While not every discipline or vocation shares the same level of responsibility to advance peace, all have the potential to do so as they intentionally and thoughtfully look for avenues to do so.

Business and Peace-Building

Business and Peace-Building
Author: CAROL. BOND
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2020-12-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367734183

In a world struggling to adapt to seismic social and environmental changes, the time is now for businesses to prioritise creating local conditions of peace. This book builds on original research foregrounding 'peace' as a core business outcome for natural resources industries. Especially in non-warlike situations where natural resources industries have exacerbated or caused conflict, foregrounding peace as a core business outcome can bring substantial benefits. Peace is a concept external and internal stakeholders understand. Consequently, research shows that when natural resources sector CSR professionals start reframing their day-to-day decisions in terms of peace outcomes, they are more likely to create efficient and cost-effective solutions to environmental, social and economic business challenges. This book provides both theory and practical suggestions for how to reframe day-to-day CSR activities of natural resources companies as peace-focused, business decisions. Especially in the remote and rural regions of the world where natural resources industries have the greatest impact, businesses can lead the way in contributing to conditions of peace while bringing much needed resources to market.

Peace Through Entrepreneurship

Peace Through Entrepreneurship
Author: Steven R. Koltai
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2016-08-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0815729243

Joblessness is the root cause of the global unrest threatening American security. Fostering entrepreneurship is the remedy. The combined weight of American diplomacy and military power cannot end unrest and extremism in the Middle East and other troubled regions of the world, Steven Koltai argues. Koltai says an alternative approach would work: investing in entrepreneurship and reaping the benefits of the jobs created through entrepreneurial startups. From 9/11 and the Arab Spring to the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate, instability and terror breed where young people cannot find jobs. Koltai marshals evidence to show that joblessness—not religious or cultural conflict—is the root cause of the unrest that vexes American foreign policy and threatens international security. Drawing on Koltai’s stint as senior adviser for Entrepreneurship in Secretary Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and his thirty-year career as a successful entrepreneur and business executive, Peace through Entrepreneurship argues for the significant elevation of entrepreneurship in the service of foreign policy; not rural microfinance or mercantile trading but the scalable stuff of Silicon Valley and Sam Walton, generating the vast majority of new jobs in economies large and small. Peace through Entrepreneurship offers a nonmilitary, long-term solution at a time of disillusionment with Washington’s “big development” approach to unstable and underdeveloped parts of the world—and when the new normal is fear of terrorist attacks against Western targets, beheadings in Syria, and jihad. Extremism will not be resolved by a war on terror. The answer, Koltai shows, is stimulating entrepreneurial economic opportunities for the virtually limitless supply of desperate, unemployed young men and women leading lives of endless economic frustration.

The Building and Breaking of Peace

The Building and Breaking of Peace
Author: Molly M. Melin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2021-08-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197579388

Private corporations are rarely discussed as playing a role in efforts to curb civil violence, even though they often have strong interests in maintaining stability. Violence often damages the infrastructure necessary to deliver goods to market or may directly target companies. Corporations also have a normative obligation to conduct business in ways that promote peace. While there are historical examples of firm-instigated violence and firms reaping benefits from instability and conflict, there is also evidence that corporations proactively engage in peacebuilding. For example, firms devise programs to promote economic development, offer access to education, and employ former combatants. In The Building and Breaking of Peace, Molly M. Melin develops a theory of the conflicting roles corporations play in both building and preventing peace. Melin shows that corporations engage in peacebuilding when there is a gap in the state's capacity to enforce laws, but they also weigh the opportunity costs of peacebuilding, responding to the need for action when conditions enable them to do so. Firms are uniquely situated in their ability to raise the cost of violence, and proactive firms can increase the years of peace in a country. At the same time, an active private sector can make it harder for states with ongoing conflict to reach an agreement, as they act as an additional veto player in the bargaining process. Including original cross-national data of peacebuilding efforts by firms in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa from 2000 to 2018, and in-depth case analyses of corporate actions and outcomes in Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Tunisia, Melin shows that corporations help to prevent violence but not resolve it. In examining the corporate motives for peacebuilding and the implications of these activities for preventing violence and conflict resolution, the book builds a more holistic picture of the peace and conflict process. The findings also help explain why armed civil conflicts persist despite the multitude of diverse actors working to end them.

The Profit of Peace

The Profit of Peace
Author: Karolien Bais
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2017-10-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 135128066X

This book examines how multinationals can promote peace and stability in conflict regions. The authors interviewed CEOs of multinationals working in challenging countries such as Afghanistan, Burma and Rwanda, outlining the ingredients for an approach that can best lead to positive outcomes for business, people and the environment.

Business, Integrity, and Peace

Business, Integrity, and Peace
Author: Timothy L. Fort
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2007-09-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107321026

Ethical business behavior has an unexpected payoff: it reduces the likelihood of violence. This insight forms the basis of Business, Integrity, and Peace, first published in 2007. Academic and popular interest in the topics of corporate responsibility and 'peace through commerce' has surged. This book demonstrates that the adoption of generally accepted ethical business practices does not require wholesale changes in corporate governance. It does require, however, the development of more reflexive and self-regulating models of corporate decision-making, drawing upon three strands of existing corporate responsibility approaches: the legal, the managerial, and the aesthetic. Fort introduces the concept of Total Integrity Management, providing an integrative framework that transcends disciplinary boundaries to create ethical corporate cultures, which in turn offer the best opportunity for corporations to become instruments of peace. Business, Integrity, and Peace is an important and provocative work that will appeal to academic scholars, business leaders and policy-makers alike.

Business, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding

Business, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding
Author: Derek Sweetman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2009-05-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134013833

Business, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding examines the actions currently being taken by businesses in areas of violent conflict around the world, and explores how they can make a significant contribution to the resolution of violent conflicts through business-based peacebuilding. This book combines two approaches to provide a comprehensive look at the current state and future of business- based peacebuilding. It marries a detailed study of documented peacebuilding activities with a map of the possibilities for future business-related conflict work and pragmatic suggestions for business leaders, conflict resolution practitioners, and peacebuilding organizations. The use of the label ‘business-based peacebuilding’ is new and signifies actions business can take beyond simple legal compliance or making changes to avoid creating a conflict. Although business-based peacebuilding is new, examples are included from around the world to illustrate that, working together, businesses have a strong contribution to make to the creation of peaceful societies. The book advocates pragmatic peacebuilding, which is not overly concerned with cause-driven models of conflict. Instead, pragmatic peacebuilding encourages an examination of what is needed in the conflict and what can be provided. This approach is free of some of the ideological baggage of traditional peacebuilding and allows for a much wider range of participants in the peacebuilding project. This book will be of much interest to students of peace studies, conflict resolution, international security and business studies, as well as to practitioners and business leaders. Derek Sweetman is Dispute Resolution Director for Better Business Bureau in Washington, DC and Instructor at New Century College, George Mason University, USA.