Abstract
The role of markets is no longer a topic limited to economics. Markets have emerged as increasingly important alternatives for solving social problems, paralleling welfare state retrenchment and economic globalization. Reviewing this trend in the last 40 years, Steven Anderson brings attention to market-oriented social development approaches that intend to help the poor and disadvantaged groups. This book focuses on four approaches that have gained increasing attention among scholars and practitioners: corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, private sustainable development, and fair trade.
In Chapter 1, Anderson summarizes the historical context for the emergence of market-based appsroaches. Anderson argues that innovative ideas, resources, and technologies have arisen at a time when the government in many countries is not capable or willing to address pressing challenges related to poverty. In discussing various social development approaches that have emerged and grown, Anderson points out that they typically have been promoted without accompanying “conceptual or empirical assessment,” “comparative assessments,” and “the resources or conditions that are most essential to successful model implementation or to attendant approach limitations” (p. 6). The central intent of this book is, thus, to provide the overarching conceptual framework upon which various social development approaches can be analyzed and compared. In Chapter 2, Anderson discusses concepts that will be used in the analysis and comparison, such as behavioral logic, implementation processes, and dynamics of change.
Chapters 3 to 6 cover the four models of social development. Each is analyzed in several aspects, including its definition, examples, development process, change agents, benefits, and limitations. The first model, corporate social responsibility (CSR), concerns the social impacts of corporate activities. Anderson distinguishes various sources that motivate CSR. For example, CSR is internally driven when corporate leaders promote CSR in an ethical and altruistic way as well as when corporate officials use CSR as profit-maximizing strategies. However, CSR is externally driven when consumers, investors, advocates, media representatives, and government officials take initiatives such as boycotts, buycotts, and socially conscious investing. Although the primary motivation of corporations is driven by profit and not by social benefits, Anderson argues CSR bears critical implications for monitoring, developing, and impacting corporate responsibilities that can benefit subcontractors and communities, and eventually consumers and corporations.
The second model, social entrepreneurship (SE), is a term that has gained much traction in recent years. Social entrepreneurs are similar to business entrepreneurs, but Anderson distinguishes the two in that social entrepreneurs have a purpose of creating social value or social change using any generated profits. In contrast to CSR, SE represents a more bottom–up approach in which an individual or a small group initiates innovative solutions for less privileged populations. A seminal example is Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank, which provided microloans to poor persons in Bangladesh. Anderson underscores that the SE approach has strengths in valuing creativity as a great asset and germinating projects at a very small scale with limited funding. Despite its innovativeness and inclusiveness, however, Anderson also points out the limitations. SE is a loosely defined term, and its effectiveness is, therefore, difficult to measure. Furthermore, whether SE can bring meaningful social change at an aggregate level, beyond individual entrepreneurial success, remains an open question.
The third model, the private sustainable development (PSD) approach, resembles the SE model in that it emphasizes the development of innovative products and services for the poor. However, Anderson accentuates that the primary goal of the PSD approach is on generating profits and reinvesting those profits back to the poor communities especially in developing countries. Anderson discusses three variants of the PSD approach: bottom-of-the-pyramid development, microenterprise development, and indigenous technology creation. These variant approaches slightly differ in the development process and logic but ultimately share the same goal: to develop profitable products and services that can be sold to the poor while simultaneously providing social benefits to them. Concepts such as market research, niche markets, and improvement of quality of life are highly relevant and important for the PSD model. Readers interested in “third world” problems such as illiteracy, lack of daily goods, or access to health care will find this chapter especially useful.
Fair trade is the last model discussed in the book. Fair trade initiatives have grown rapidly in the last 40 years owing to consumers’ growing interest in fair trade products and the broad fair trade movement led by various Southern governments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations. As shown in well-known examples such as coffee bean fair trade or Ten Thousand Villages, the main concern of fair trade advocates is to provide economic benefits to smaller-scale and low-income producers in their dealing with large corporations. Although the fair trade movement reflects the awakening of consumers’ social values in honesty and protection for the poor, Anderson points out that fair trade practices are still very marginal in all global trade because the effectiveness of fair trade largely depends on the ethical decisions of enterprises that import goods.
Anderson concludes the book by offering a broad picture that compares the four models as well as discusses their strengths and limitations. Overall, I found the main contribution of this book lies in its attempt to suggest an overarching framework that helps readers conceptually articulate and compare four closely related approaches. This book also distinguishes itself by engaging market-based perspectives into social work or policy intervention approaches. It points to a timely challenge that social work, public policy, nonprofit, and human service professionals need to carefully think through regarding the roles that business and technology can play for serving the needs in our societies. Many examples in the book demonstrate that the markets’ reach encompasses various sectors at multiple levels, including organizational, community, and international agents and dynamics. This book naturally expands our perception of “market-based” approaches not only from “corporates and businesses” but also to their interactions with the government, employees, consumers, nonprofits, advocates, and media. The extensive description and comparison of each model, accompanied by numerous acronyms and theoretical elements, may not promise a fast read. Nonetheless, this book can be a useful guide for scholars who are interested in the implications of public–private partnerships and various market-based strategies for nonprofits or social service organizations.