Lecture 3 - 01 March 2014

We started the class with a discussion on the Tutorial  (given in the earlier post).

We recalled the three functions of the environment, three characteristics of the environment that cause potential conflicts and the three conflict resolution techniques.

I explained to you that environmental issues for business arise through out the life cycle of a product.  Like human beings, products also have a life-cycle and they follow almost the same pattern of events.  For example, human beings are conceived, delivered, age (i.e. used / put to use), and at the end-of-life sent to a crematorium or a burial ground; some donate their body parts after their death.  Similarly products are designed, manufactured and sold, used and at the end-of-life either land-filled or incinerated; some products are so designed that their parts can be recycled, reused or re-manufactured.  The last option is possible only when these features are in-built in the product during the design of the product.  Such a design which takes care of environmental performance while at the same time makes the product economically attractive is called Eco-design.  As you are aware, manufacturing results in emissions and discharges and generation of solid and hazardous wastes.  The extent to which resources are used in manufacturing, pollutants are emitted or discharged and  wastes are generated can be guided by the design of the product and its manufacturing; eco-design helps to reduce emissions, discharges, generation of wastes etc., during the manufacturing; it also helps to avoid toxic substances in the product and processes.  It helps to improve energy efficiency of products and to reduce the mass of the product continuously.  Such improved performance of products lead to improved environmental performance throughout the life-cycle.  Eco-design also aims at reducing packaging mass and eliminating toxic materials  (e.g. PVC blister packing) from packaging. Design for dis-assembly (a concept used in eco-design) ensures that products at the end-of-life can be easily dismantled and components are amenable to recycling and reuse.

We discussed as to how the conflict situations arising out of the characteristics of environment, viz., common property, multiple use, un-covered cost can be seen arising out of the use of  products like the cell-phone (other examples are cars, cigarettes, music systems, public address systems)

After a short discussion on life-cycle environmental impacts of products, we discussed various protocols related to social issues.  They relate to labour issues (ILO declaration on fundamental principles and rights at workplace ), human rights (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) related to wages, working conditions and corruption (UN Convention against Corruption).  I explained to you that the Companies Act 2013, Schedule VII activities cover almost all the Millenium Development Goals (MDG) of the UN.

We have been studying and discussing the paper "Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy" by ME Porter and MR Kramer, Harvard Business Review, December 2002, in our last two classes; we agreed that the next tutorial is about "Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy" based on this paper.  For the second tutorial you may start preparing now; you have to prepare one A-4 sheet write-up on the topic. You may refer to the material available in the above referred paper or from any other source.  You should be able to support or reject the hypothesis that Corporate Philanthropy can be advantageous to a company.  I shall inform you the date for submission of this tutorial later.