money & work

The anti-aid argument is too crude, says Chola Mukanga

Daniele Archibugi reflects on a new history of piracy

  Today we start our collaboration with fergana.ru,  the best source of information on Central Asia, with the findings of an indepth survey on Uzbek migration.  Some 30% of Uzbeks are forced to become migrant workers, at home or abroad. What will happen when they start being laid off? Disaster looms.

Surgut's image in Russia as an oil-rich paradise can't survive a visit there

A great financial scandal is taking place. Italy’s food giant, and one of the world’s great companies, has collapsed in a cloud of fraud. An Italian financial journalist assesses the causes and global ramifications of “Enron alla parmigiana”.

The reckless financial policies of leading western powers in the last two decades make it likely that the next seismic debt crisis will be in America, not Argentina. It can be avoided, says Ann Pettifor of the Real World Economic Outlook, only by serious efforts to bring regulation and balance to the international economy.

Marginal farmers in India find it difficult enough to ensure a modestly sustainable life on existing patterns of land ownership and seed availability. But when manipulative marketing strategies introduce GM seeds, cash dependency and debt, their poverty becomes a cruel trap.

The US economic model that commands around a third of the world’s wealth fascinates and infuriates Europeans. But both reactions reveal ignorance of its most essential features. The keys to its success lie not in industry, but in those sectors providing social amenities to the middle class – health care, education, housing and pensions: systems of provision that have little to do with the free market.

“Control fraud” is what happens when the person who controls a large company is a criminal. Enron was only the most conspicuous example of a pervasive phenomenon in corporate behaviour, says this white-collar criminologist. The participants in openDemocracy’s roundtable on corporate power and responsibility miss the point: as long as regulators fail to ask the right questions, we are condemned to suffer further crimes.

What does a real-life captain of industry have to say about corporate power and responsibility? Here, the Chairman of Anglo-American (and former Chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell) responds to openDemocracy‘s roundtable, focussing on the role of multinational corporations in Africa. He says that unless business, civil society and government team up to create sound systems of governance in developing societies, wealth will tear them apart.

Argentina's presidential election of April 2003 follows seventeen months of economic devastation and social turmoil in the fallen giant of Latin America. The collapse of the neo-liberal model has reduced millions to penury, yet the political class is impervious to civic protest, quiet desperation, and radical insurgency alike. As Peronists, ex-Radicals, and leftists compete for a tarnished prize, a former resident paints a vivid panorama of the "land without heroes". 

What are the boundaries of corporate power and responsibility in the 21st century? In this key note roundtable discussion, leading activists, analysts and practitioners talk to Iain Ferguson and Caspar Henderson of openDemocracy.

Participants in openDemocracy’s roundtable on corporate power and responsibility introduce themselves.

Ahead of the publication of openDemocracy’s keynote roundtable on Corporate Power & Responsibility, Deborah Doane reflects on the debate so far and concludes that our relationship with modern capitalism and big companies is like a rocky marriage. It needs constant attention and compromise, but can ultimately be beneficial if only we are ready to take responsibility for our own actions.

In the age of globalisation, companies are often associated with scandal (Enron), litigation (Microsoft), or overweening power (Wal-Mart). But in the wider historical perspective, the institution is both socially more transforming and politically less powerful than it often appears.

What are the key events in the rise of modern corporations? Why do these institutions matter? Are they more powerful now than before, better behaved or worse? openDemocracy's corporate timeline explores the long, complex and controversial history of this engine of contemporary capitalism.

‘Get your facts right’ says Diane Coyle to Friends of the Earth (FoE) – business is far from evil or unduly powerful. The bad behaviour of a few companies will be solved by better corporate governance rules. In the fifth of our introductory texts to the debate Corporations: Power and Responsibility, Diane Coyle argues that FoE’s push for heavy regulation on a sector already subject to rising tax burdens would be a spanner in the engine of global growth and prosperity.

Business is bigger and ‘badder’ than ever, say two Friends of the Earth (FoE) campaigners, in the opening round of our debate, Corporations: Power and Responsibility. Corporations, FoE argues, evade the flimsy systems of regulation currently in place. The only way to stop them from being destructive is to create a legally binding set of global rules that will force them to care about the consequences of their actions. (Economist Diane Coyle responds next week)

When Giovanni Agnelli died this year he was still Honorary Chairman of the Fiat group. His extraordinary influence marked the growth of post-war Italy, and is essential to understanding the country now. But is his life achievement a model for future businessmen or a glorious memory of an unviable past?

Are transparency and honesty, rather than the fashionable notion of corporate social responsibility, the best ways to business success? Sir Luke Very-Moody, Chairman of the Swell Oil Company thinks so. In the draft of a speech exclusively leaked to John Kay, Sir Luke celebrates the first gush of oil production in the African country of Couldbericha by reasserting the need for business to follow its own values and leave moral standards to be written by the people it serves.