Business on the Edge
How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World's Toughest Places
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
A road map for how businesses can grow and make money while reducing poverty and conflict in some of the world’s most challenging environments
Many companies worry that expanding into emerging markets is a risky—and even dangerous—move. Professors Viva Ona Bartkus and Emily S. Block see things differently. They argue that by entering markets in the world’s frontline regions—areas stuck in cycles of violence and extreme poverty—businesses can actually create stability and expand opportunity for communities and corporations alike.
From helping Colombian farmers transition to growing produce instead of coca to disrupting human trafficking rings by creating more construction jobs in the Philippines, Business on the Edge proves that businesses can make money while advancing corporate social responsibility, environmental conservation, and social justice. Partnering with groups including multinational companies, NGOs, and the US military, Bartkus and Block outline their process for generating opportunities, detailing their successes and failures in launching over eighty growth-oriented business solutions in thirty countries.
Bridging the gap between academic research and real-world experience, Business on the Edge shows how businesses can reduce risks, cut costs, and increase profits, all while creating economic opportunities that transform communities.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this misguided report, Bartkus (Getting It Right) and Block, business professors at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Alberta, respectively, distill lessons from the successes and failures of a program they oversee that pairs MBA students with international corporations to solve problems related to operating in foreign markets roiled by unrest. Among the successes are Green Mountain Coffee, whom the authors credit for developing secure supply chains by "embedding their staff in communities of coffee growers." Bartkus and Block take for granted that the incursion of American multinationals into foreign countries accrues benefits to their civilians and workers, even as critics of that idea linger on the edges of their own account. For instance, they describe their unsuccessful attempt to broker a partnership between an American mining company and an "international humanitarian NGO" to offer microloans in Ghana, blaming the failure on differences in the parties' internal decision-making processes instead of the NGO's reservations over partnering with a major player in an industry "notorious disregard for both safety and the environment." Further raising doubts about whether the authors' efforts actually "improve lives" is their admission that "fully half of our projects have failed to have the impact on the ground that we aspired for them." This doesn't convince.
