Labour and livelihoods

Microcredit, defined as small loans to people who have no regular access to credit, is an innovative strategy in the fight against poverty. Microcredit institutions can obtain funding from Private Institutional Investors (PIIs) that channel funds from donors, private lenders, and socially-responsible investors. Private financing of development aid is likely to become more important and microcredit presents an investment opportunity within this context.

All over Gaya District in Bihar, irrespective of a person's caste or economic status, irrigation is the overriding topic of concern on public platforms and in private conversations. In the absence of adequate government action, different kinds of community endeavour are emerging to answer the need, some supported by radical political movements, others by organisations of a religious persuasion, and still others primarily by prominent local citizens.

In the corporate world, design has received increasing attention over the last 50 years and is now firmly embedded within almost all aspects of corporate activity. This article explores the role of design in development. Design is widely used and understood, within capitalist economies, to denote a diverse set of tools, used to maximise market share, sales, and profits, and support market differentiation and brand identity of products.

Current mainstream development thinking, with the exception of a few areas like microcredit, tends to favour size over substance. This article aims to challenge the belief that large-scale companies, markets, and institutions are the most effective means of `delivering development'. We argue that, by designing institutions to meet different needs at different scales, long-term sustainable development outcomes are more likely.

A corporation has only limited ability to create social capital through philanthropic activity, and in the context of a decline in official aid, the corporate sector is increasingly assuming a de facto developmental role. The presence of social capital assists communities in moving towards sustainable development and may contribute to the business case for corporate- community partnerships.

As corporate social responsibility (CSR) increases in large corporate organisations, a genuine approach to sustainable development is often best achieved through the supply chain. This is directly applicable to North-South supply chain interactions (private sector organisations, NGOs, and donors). CSR has adopted techniques from their `development' usage, yet a reverse flow is not observed back to the `development' sector. This is unfortunate.

Economic issues associated with poverty are complex and require holistic responses in order to realise the goals of sustainable development. While business alone may have significant economic impacts, the link between business-level behaviour and macro-level development aspirations is unclear.

Although the concept that corporations are responsible not only to their shareholders but also for the social and environmental impacts of their activities has now entered the mainstream, pressure is still required to ensure that companies honour their public commitments. This article describes the work of the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility in harnessing the power of individual shareholders and ethical investors in order to hold companies to account, with particular reference to the activities of Shell in Nigeria and the Republic of Ireland.

This paper investigates how, why, and when community-based strategies are effective in promoting corporate accountability (CA) to the poor. It argues that mainstream approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) underestimate the importance of power in the relationship between corporations and the communities in which they invest, which limits their applicability to many developing country contexts in particular.

Few issues in the development process raise as much heat as the role of the international private sector in the form of transnational corporations (TNCs) and foreign direct investment (FDI). This article reviews the most recent research on the impact of FDI on economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. A brief history of FDI is given. This is followed by discussion of the conceptual transmission mechanisms linking FDI, growth, and poverty. The available empirical evidence is then discussed.