Danila Livshits, today at 14:17

Today, we will be examining a chapter about in-kind donations from Jared Diamond’s famous book: “Big businesses and the environment: different conditions, different outcomes”. In the passage we are analyzing, the author states that
in-kind donations cause more harm than good. While ostensibly free, donated goods raise oare a nightmare for management: from collecting, sorting, packaging and shipping bulky items across long distances to, upon arrival, reception, sorting, warehousing and distribution. Not to mention the fact that, according to the author, these types of actions tend to cause a 70% reduction in the sales of domestic producers (on average).

Clearly, the author had to put in a lot of research, before publishing this book. Therefore, I believe what he has to say on the subject at hand. Also, charity is a virtue- if people go to the trouble to help someone, their impulses and efforts should be used for good.
In my opinion, countries might benefit more we let the professionals procure goods and services. Instead, donating money seems to be a far more viable choice.

Diamond, Jared (2011). “Big businesses and the environment: different conditions, different outcomes”. Collapse: how societies choose to fail or survive (Second reprinted ed.). Penguin. pp. 441–485

CSR Report

The report I am working on is reaching its final stages (with some help from me). I decided that now would be optimal time to examine what an official report actually looks like. Thankfully, my university has a vast archive of private research that it seems to conduct each year. Hopefully, this will be beneficial for all of us.

Today, we will be examining CSR-Sustainability Monitor 2016 Edition, which was created thanks to the effort and contributions made Professor S. Prakash Sethi and his colleagues from the Weissman Center for International Business. The authors are among the many researchers concerned that, despite the growth in CSR reporting, there is an increasing lack of standardization and of a unified regulatory and supervisory landscape. As a result, it is hard for stakeholders to analyze these reports and compare companies based on the information provided. By analyzing 629 valid CSR reports (out of 743) from 43 different HQ locations and 20 industries, the authors came to several conclusions: Higher-tier companies tend consider credibility an integral part of their CSR reports, and that there is a substantial variation in the different styles employed during publication.

Only by rereading the report several times can one truly appreciate the massive amount of effort needed to create such a piece of work. Sadly, for now, I consider this “opus” to be merely a blend of “interesting” and “tedious”. Naturally, companies with a greater amount of capital would try to focus on providing extra evidence to support their claims about their actions- they have more to lose. Furthermore, I believe that that CSR reports should not be a deciding factor for investors- “illogical” acts of charity are never easy to classify, and the focus should instead be on how well a particular company actually operates. Over the past several weeks, we have examined several cases where CSR could help attract new customers, or reduce court penalties- however, so far, we (or I) have failed to discover any precise relationship between the amount of charity work done, and the results it brings. Hopefully, in the future, some new information might come to light.

Sethi, S. Prakash; Martell, Terrence F.; Demir, Mert; Skou, Lene; and Weissman Center for International Business, “CSR-Sustainability Monitor 2016 Edition” (2017).CUNY Academic Works.

A new hope

To all my readers who are interested in how my project is going- everything is progressing smoothly. My task became especially simple after I discovered an article that is directly related to the topic I am currently researching. I was so overjoyed with my discovery that I decided to share it with all of you!

Today, we will be examining an article entitled “Shoeing the Children: The Impact of the TOMS Shoe Donation Program in Rural El Salvador”. As can be inferred from the title, the authors (Bruce Wydick, Elizabeth Katz, Flor Calvo, Felipe Gutierrez, and Brendan Janet) think that charity in the form of “in-kind” donations tends to have a negative effect on the populace it is trying to help. Using cluster-randomized trials on the data obtained from questioning 1,578 children from 979 households in rural El Salvador, the researchers tested the impacts of TOMS “one-for-one” donations on children’s time allocation, school attendance, health, self-esteem, and aid dependency. They obtained the following results: Lower-middle income countries such as El Salvador, where clothes and shoes are relatively widespread, are unlikely to be ideal targets for in-kind gifts, and those that do receive them tend to exhibit negative psychological side-effects in the form of a heightened sense of dependency.

Clearly, this new is quite troubling, and needs to reach the ears of Tom’s shoes executives. As someone who grew up in an environment where you had to earn everything by yourself, I am all the more against actions that turn people into parasites. Based on the data used by the researchers, practically all of the test subjects already had a pair of shoes to begin with- therefore, assuming Tom’s shoes is truly focused on helping people from these countries, they should give them opportunities to grow, and not simply shower them with gifts. In the article, the authors actually suggest a somewhat decent remedy for this situation: instead of simply handing their products out, Tom’s shoes should make them rewards for academic and sport achievements. I believe, such a solution would result in a favorable outcome for all parties concerned.

Wydick, Bruce and Katz, Elizabeth and Calvo, Flor and Gutierrez, Felipe and Janet, Brendan, Shoeing the Children: The Impact of the Toms Shoe Donation Program in Rural El Salvador (September 14, 2016). World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 7822.