Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.

Shiv Nadar University

Economics and Public Policy

World University root node

(SME) School of Management and Entrepreneurship

Neoliberalism in India: How an elephant became a tiger and flew to the moon

In their efforts to internationalize in the emerging global economy, co-operatives not only face a variety of problems that are common to all firms, but encounter specific challenges due to their particular value commitments, forms of incorporation and organizational structures. These features of cooperatives are generally seen as a major source of competitive disadvantages and may cause significant trade-offs, forcing cooperatives to choose between living up to their principles of member ownership and control and remaining economically viable. Critics argue that such trade-offs signal the increasing irrelevance of cooperatives in a global economy. Advocates, however, counter that cooperatives may have unique competitive advantages which can be exploited in a global economy and that current trade-offs facing cooperatives can be overcome with the development of new international and transnational cooperative institutions and practices. Cooperatives, they claim, represent a much more sustainable and equitable form of production and may form the basis for viable, alternative approaches to development. This collection examines these debates about the roles of cooperatives in our increasingly global economy.

Co-operatives in a Global Economy: The Challenges of Co-operation across Borders

Over the last two decades there has been a proliferation of partnerships between business and government, multilateral bodies, and/or social actors such as NGOs and local community organizations engaged in promoting development. While proponents hail these partnerships as an important new approach to engaging business, critics argue that they are not only generally ineffective but also serve to legitimate a neo-liberal, global economic order which inhibits development. In order to understand and evaluate the role of such partnerships, it is necessary to appreciate their diversity with respect to not only the activities that they engage in, but also the degree to which they are subject to social control. This paper distinguishes four different types of business partnerships, based upon differing degrees of social control: conventional business; corporate social responsibility; corporate accountability; and social economy. Each type of partnership is described, their basic forms are noted, and the conditions and prospects for them contributing to development are examined. By way of conclusion, an analysis is offered of how the different types of business partnerships relate to different conceptions of development and function as policy paradigms to promote different globalization agendas.

Journal of Business Ethics

Partnerships for Development: Four Models of Business Involvement

In South Asia and beyond, human development continues to be in a state of crisis. Each successive Human Development Report (HDR) and the pervasive global failure to achieve the Millennium Development Goals are constant reminders of this crisis. An equally, and even more distressing dimension of human development is its great unevenness. Even in countries with high levels of human development it was noted that gender differences were significant. Levels of educational attainment and incomes remain significantly unequal between social groups, constituted along other categories of difference such as race, ethnicity and religion, as do levels of economic and political participation. This book explores the unevenness of human development with respect to the question of difference. The author develops a conceptual framework that focuses on social power, whereby human development is seen as a process/es of reconstruction of the matrices of social power. The approach builds on three main components: a relational rather than an identity-centric view of difference; a transformative notion of social justice - as opposed to a distributive understanding of justice; and the notion of agency. These are applied to the South Asian reality, where important insights into structural aspects of human development can be obtained in terms of religion, gender and caste. Written accessibly and lucidly, this book will be of interest to students and researchers in development studies, political economy, political science, public policy, governance, security studies, human rights, social and religious studies and South Asia. © 2008 Ananya Mukherjee Reed. All rights reserved.

Human Development and Social Power: Perspectives from South Asia

Human development and social power: Perspectives from South Asia

This paper provides a brief conceptual analysis of democracy in development. In particular, it explores the concept of developmental democracy as it is outlined in various EU documents. The paper provides a brief analysis of the main challenges to democracy building in South Asia. It explores whether, in the backdrop to these challenges, a developmental approach to democracy building might have some resonance. The final section examines the policy tools that could be used for democracy building in South Asia. It considers the applicability of EU experience to South Asia and possible EU approaches at the regional and national levels. The paper focuses on EU strategies for each country, with a focus on the bilateral and the local levels.

Prospects for Democratic Development in South Asia and the European Union's Role in Democracy Building

Governance and Development: Examining the Problematic Role of Corporate Profit Strategies

Urban Poverty in Central America, Report of study commissioned by United Nations Development Programme, Anti-Poverty Partnership Initiatives (co-authored)

This paper investigates whether calls for a new, more critical corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda are sufficient to address the concerns of critics that CSR activities have not only been largely ineffective, but have functioned to legitimate other corporate practices that adversely affect development. After examining what a more critical CSR agenda might look like, the paper argues for the need to move beyond CSR and address the issue of corporate profit strategies and the power of capital. A recent conference organized by the United Nations Research Institute on Social Development (UNRISD) had as its theme "Corporate Social Responsibility and Development: Towards a New Agenda?" In his opening remarks to the conference, the Deputy Director and CSR Research Co-ordinator at UNRISD, Peter Utting, argued for a more critical approach to CSR, one that not only took into account the priorities of developing countries, but was rooted in an account of "the structural and policy determinants of underdevelopment, inequality and poverty, and the relationship of TNCs to these." (2003: 7) Several presenters at the conference went beyond arguing about the form of a new CSR agenda, however, to advocate the need for a corporate accountability (CA) agenda. CA moves beyond CSR in that it contends that corporations should not be free to set their own standards or choose to follow recommended standards in key areas. Rather, there should be legal mechanisms in operation that compel them to live up to socially determined standards. Drawing upon these themes, this paper investigates the following questions: 1) what a new CSR agenda – one based upon a more critical understanding of CSR – should entail; 2) whether and why there may be a need to go beyond a new CSR agenda, and; 3) how much beyond CSR we may need to go. Underlying these questions is a not only doubt about the effectiveness of CSR programs, but a concern that CSR may function to detract attention from or even legitimate other corporate practices that can adversely affect development. Answers to these questions presuppose some normative account of what development should be and a social scientific (and, in particular, a political economy) account of the relationship between corporate activities and the structural causes of inequality and poverty in the Global South. In investigating these questions, we first distinguish three different conceptions of (human) development. Next we go on to give an account of the uncritical nature of mainstream approaches to CSR, and criteria for developing a more critical approach. In the third section, we illustrate what a new CRS agenda might look like, as well as indicating how a CA agenda would move beyond this. Finally, by way of conclusion, we examine how the three different conceptions of (human) development relate to the question of whether there is a need to merely adopt a new CSR agenda or to move beyond CSR.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Human Development: Towards a New Agenda and Beyond

Rethinking Development Research in an Era of Globalization: Overcoming the North- South Divide, report of a workshop in response to a national initiative on internationalization led by the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Ottawa.