Dissertation Research: Corporate Social Responsibility? Reconciling Competing Values for Quality in the Chilean Grape Commodity Subsector

非政府组织(NGO)越来越多地要求跨国公司实施企业社会责任(CSR)实践，以改善其社会和环境绩效。这方面的一个例子是2001年由欧洲主要食品零售商协会EUREP制定的一套以科学为基础的标准。EUREP要求供应商满足的标准不仅要促进食品安全和质量，而且要促进劳工和环境的健康和福祉。这种转向私人的、非政府的、据称更“客观”的系统来确保质量和安全，是过去20年新自由主义全球政治经济带来的最重要、但研究最少的变化之一。被认为对商业世界至关重要的效率和盈利价值如何与公众在食品安全、工人福利和环境保护方面的利益相协调，在很大程度上仍未得到探索。私营农业食品标准如何将全球超市的经济目标与公民的不同社会、经济和环境关切协调起来？在创建这样的标准时，如何协商和解决与这些质量要求有关的利益和价值观的冲突？科学是如何使它们合法化的呢？私营标准对发展中国家农业食品部门的利益攸关方有何社会和伦理影响？这一社会层面的工程、科学和技术论文改进赠款支持一个项目中旨在帮助解决这些问题的研究，该项目将审查私营零售商主导的食品安全和质量以及环境和劳动力的新标准如何重组和改变智利的出口鲜食葡萄商品子行业。私营部门监管机制的兴起和企业社会责任问题正在成为与标准、全球农业食品部门转型、国际发展、全球化和企业社会责任有关的一系列领域中的关键问题。这项研究将进一步加深我们对“质量经济”的兴起如何促进全球农业食品体系中从公共监管机构和系统向私人监管机构和系统的转变并使之合法化的概念性理解。该项目将有助于就私人监管(即标准)对食品安全、环境保护和工人福利等表面上的社会商品的影响进行理论辩论。特别是，这个项目试图提高我们的能力，以了解潜在的利益和价值观冲突的世界是如何谈判成一套标准的，以及如何利用诉诸科学价值观和实践来解决谈判。在企业社会责任的许多努力越来越多地被认为只不过是企业公关活动的背景下，这项研究将为利益相关者(即消费者、非政府组织、零售商)做出重要的经验贡献，这些利益相关者有兴趣评估据称是科学的标准对确保企业对利益相关者负责的价值。由于劳工和环境标准本质上反映了伦理和社会关切，因此这项研究对于工人、工会、非政府组织和社区活动家来说将是有价值的，他们关心如何利用科学来定义和执行社会标准，并使其与食品安全和质量标准相协调。在分析EUREPGAP标准对不同利益攸关方的影响时，这项研究可以为关于如何最好地保护和扩大农业食品部门工人的健康和福祉以及环境的辩论提供参考。此外，随着EUREPGAP日益成为进入英国和欧洲农产品市场的标准，这项研究将帮助生产商了解这些标准可能如何限制或扩大他们在全球市场上的生存能力。最后，通过确定私营企业社会责任标准对智利葡萄网络参与者的社会和伦理影响，这项研究可以为关于政府对农业食品标准和法规的适当责任的公共政策辩论提供信息。为了实现我们的项目目标，将使用三种互补的方法：1)与葡萄行业标准相关的历史研究和技术文献的内容分析；2)半结构化访谈；3)参与者观察。所有经验数据都将根据它们所呼吁的伦理理想进行分析，例如基于权利的主张、基于美德的主张或功利主义的成本和收益概念。这些信息对于致力于创建一个被广泛视为对所有利益攸关方公平和公正的全球农业食品体系的一系列团体来说将是有价值的。例如，这些团体将包括农业食品生产商、出口商、各国政府、工会、非政府组织、消费者团体和发展机构。

Non-government organizations (NGOs) are increasingly demanding that multi-national corporations implement Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices to improve their social and environmental performance. An example of this is a set of science-based standards developed in 2001 by EUREP, an association of major European food retailers. EUREP requires suppliers to meet standards that promote not only food safety and quality but also the health and well being of labor and the environment. This shift to private, nongovernmental, and purportedly more 'objective' systems for assuring quality and safety is one of the most important -and least studied- changes resulting from the neoliberal global political economy of the past two decades. How values of efficiency and profitability, which are considered critical to the business world, are harmonized with the public's interest in food safety, worker welfare, and environmental protection remains largely unexplored. How do private agrifood standards reconcile the economic goals of global supermarkets with the diverse social, economic, and environmental concerns of citizens? How are conflicting interests and values concerning these quality demands negotiated and settled in the creation of such standards? How is science used to legitimate them? What are the social and ethical implications of private standards for stakeholders in the agrifood sector of developing countries? This Societal Dimensions of Engineering, Science and Technology dissertation improvement grant supports research intending to help address these questions in a project which will examine how new private retailer-led standards for food safety and quality, as well as the environment and labor, are reorganizing and transforming Chile's export table grape commodity subsector. The rise of private-sector regulatory mechanisms and problems of corporate social responsibility are emerging as key issues within a range of fields concerned with standards, the transformation of the global agrifood sector, international development, globalization, and corporate social responsibility. This research will further our conceptual understanding of how the rise of an 'economy of qualities' facilitates and legitimates a shift from public to private regulatory institutions and systems in the global agrifood system. This project will contribute to theoretical debates concerning the implications of private regulation(i.e. standards) for ostensibly social goods, such as food safety, environmental protection, and worker welfare. In particular, this project seeks to improve our ability to understand how potentially conflicting worlds of interests and values are negotiated into a set of standards and how appeals to scientific values and practices are used to settle the negotiations. In a context where many efforts at CSR are increasingly dismissed as little more than corporate public relations exercises, this research will make an important empirical contribution for stakeholders (i.e. consumers, NGOs, retailers) interested in assessing the value that purportedly scientific standards have for ensuring corporate accountability towards stakeholders. Since standards for labor and the environment inherently reflect ethical and social concerns this research will be of value to workers, unions, NGOs, and community activists, concerned with understanding how science is used to define and enforce social standards and reconcile them with standards for food safety and quality. In analyzing the implications of EUREPGAP standards on various stakeholders, this research can inform debates about how the health and well-being of workers and the environment can best be protected and expanded in the agrifood sector. Furthermore, as EUREPGAP increasingly becomes the standard for access into the UK and European produce markets, this research will assist producers to understand how these standards might constrain or expand their ability to remain in the global marketplace. Finally, through identifying the social and ethical implications of private CSR standards for actors in the Chilean grape network, this research can inform public policy debates about appropriate government responsibilities towards agrifood standards and regulations. To achieve our project objectives, three complementary methods will be used including: 1) content analysis of historical studies and technical literature related to grape industry standards, 2) semi-structured interviews and, 3) participant observation. All empirical data will be analyzed in light of the ethical ideals to which they appeal, such as rights-based claims, virtue-based claims, or utilitarian notions of costs and benefits. This information would be valuable for a range of groups concerned with creating a global agrifood system that is broadly seen as fair and just for all stakeholders. These groups would include, for example, agrifood producers, exporters, national governments, unions, NGOs, consumer groups, and development agencies.