Corporations As Custodians Of The Public Good

This book provides a comprehensive assessment of how local corporate water strategies influence global water governance objectives. In various geographies, companies spearhead a quest for more sustainable water management within and beyond their own operations. This book critically examines such strategies and provides an overarching analysis of the effects that mounting corporate involvement has had on the global water discourse. More specifically, it explains why companies from the food, beverage, textile, and mining sectors have started to incorporate water management objectives into their business strategies, how companies work in partnerships with other stakeholders to realize these objectives, and how these actions acquire wider political legitimacy. It presents insightful interview material from business leaders and other high-level stakeholders. Readers will gain the necessary knowledge to develop a critical view and respond appropriately.

This book examines the role played by business in urban water governance by analyzing the evolution of the global private water sector along with four public-private partnerships in Mexico and the U.S. The local nature of water services often hides the global developments behind the rise of transnational water corporations, which have gone from being local operators to becoming dynamic and powerful actors within an interconnected transnational space for water. This book focuses on the French groups Veolia and Suez, two of the most prominent private actors in global water governance, and the development and adaptation strategies of both companies in the cities of Aguascalientes, Mexico City, Atlanta, and Milwaukee over the past 30 years. Drawing on over 100 interviews conducted with corporate executives, public authorities, and local users of water services, this book moves beyond the simplistic dichotomy of the public-private debate and develops a theoretical framework that analyzes the economic and political power wielded by transnational business actors in global water governance. Not only does the book explain how Veolia and Suez strategically mobilize resources at difference scales in order to expand their global operations, but it also provides a nuanced picture of how state regulation remains of central importance to understanding the dynamics and evolution of the global water sector. Students and scholars interested in business and the environment, including public-private partnerships, business management and transnational corporations, and water governance, will find this book of great interest as will professionals and policymakers working in these fields.

A sweeping, policy-oriented account of the private and public management of the world's essential natural resource. Governments dominated water management throughout the twentieth century. Tasked with ensuring a public supply of clean, safe, reliable, and affordable water, governmental agencies controlled water administration in most of the world. They built the dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that store water when available and move that water to areas with increasing populations and economies. Private businesses sometimes played a part in managing water, but typically in a supporting position as consultants or contractors. Today, given the global need for innovative new technologies, institutions, and financing to solve the freshwater crisis, private businesses and markets are playing a rapidly expanding role, bringing both new approaches and new challenges to a historically public field. In Liquid Asset, Barton H. Thompson, Jr. examines the growing position of the private sector in the "business of water." Thompson seeks to understand the private sector's involvement in meeting the water needs of both humans and the environment, looks at the potential risks that growing private involvement poses to the public interest in water, and considers the obstacles that private organizations face in trying to participate in a traditionally governmental sector. Thompson provides a richly detailed analysis to foster both improved public policy and responsible business behavior. As the book demonstrates, the story of private businesses and water offers a window into the serious challenges facing freshwater today, and their potential solutions.

This is a compilation of the proceedings and papers presented at an international conference on the organization of economic institutions in a dynamic society which includes detailed comment and discussion sections following each lecture.

This book sheds light on good practices concerning boards of directors of state-owned enterprises. It draws on national practices from over 30 economies.

First Published in 1960, Nationalized Industry and Public Ownership is concerned with the state of nationalized industries in Britain in the context of the wider sphere of public enterprise in the world. It critically examines themes like the motives and background of nationalization; the state of public corporation in Britain; public utilities as monopoly; parliamentary debates and questions regarding government control; the idea of public accountability; the status of consumers’ councils, and the link between labour relations and public ownership. This book is an important historical document for scholars and researchers of public administration, political economy, British economy, labour economics and British labour history.

What is business for? On day one of a business course, students learn that the purpose of business is maximizing shareholder profit. This single idea pervades thinking and teaching about business around the world - but it is fundamentally wrong, according to the author of this book. This idea has had disastrous and damaging consequences for economies, the environment, politics, and societies. In this book, the author challenges the fundamentals of business thinking by proposing a new agenda for establishing the corporation as a force for promoting economic and social wellbeing in its fullest sense - for customers and communities. The author presents a prescription for improving corporations, their ownership, governance, finance, and regulation. Drawing insights from business, law, economics, science, philosophy, and history, the author demonstrates how the corporation can realize its full potential to contribute to the economic and social wellbeing of the many, not just the few.

First Published in 1952, Problems of Nationalized Industry presents the first serious discussion on the issues related to nationalization of industries in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. Part I includes fourteen essays on the general framework of public corporations; methods of assessing compensation; the organization of nationalized industries; labour and staff problems; joint consultation between management and workers; finance and price policy; scientific research and development; and a comparison between nationalization in England and France. Part II consists of a substantial body of general conclusions which are related to the earlier chapters. This book is a must read for scholars and researchers of British politics, labour politics, labour economics and political science.