Institute for Management Research

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In this article, we critically reflect on the responsibilities that the food industry has for public health. Although food companies are often significant contributors to public health problems (e.g., obesity, type 2 diabetes), the mere possibility of corporate responsibility for public health seems to be excluded in the academic public health discourse. We argue that the behavior of several food companies reflects a split corporate personality, as they contribute to public health problems and simultaneously engage in activities to prevent them. By understanding responsibility for population health as a shared responsibility, we reassess the moral role of the food industry from a forward-looking perspective on responsibility and ask what food companies can and should do to promote health. (Am J Public Health. Publishedonlineaheadofprint January 19, 2017: e1–e5. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2016.303601)

In this article, we explore the debate on corporate citizenship and
the role of business in global governance. In the debate on
political corporate social responsibility it is assumed that under
globalization business is taking up a greater political role. Apart
from economic responsibilities firms assume political
responsibilities taking up traditional governmental tasks such as
regulation of business and provision of public goods. We contrast
this with a subsidiarity-based approach to governance, in which
firms are seen as intermediate actors who have political coresponsibilities in society endowed upon them by (inter)national
governmental institutions. We argue that both approaches face
conceptual and empirical problems, and do not make clear the
content and scope of political corporate responsibility. Based on
Iris Marion Young’s account of political responsibility we argue
that corporate actors and governmental actors have a shared
responsibility to tackle societal problems. Taking political
corporate responsibility not only entails engaging in private action
or engaging in public–private partnerships, but it also includes
aiding governmental actors to remedy injustice or even create
public institutions where they do not yet exist. By adding this
perspective we contribute to the debate on responsibility in
corporate citizenship and clarify the political role business can
play in global governance.

This paper gains insight into the role of gender in interpersonal networks, which is largely neglected in research on networking. We do so by exploring the concept of ‘practising gender’, the spatial-temporal accomplishment of gender practices, when people build, maintain and exit social networks. The paper is based on a study of male-dominated technological collaboration projects between universities and industry. Our analysis of observations of project meetings and interviews with project participants demonstrates how people in real time and space draw from culturally available gender practices in their networking with each other. This practising of gender was found to be done largely unreflexively, sometimes through humour, within allegedly trivial activities such as pouring coffee and socializing as well as in critical activities such as composing the network. The exploration of the practising of gender in relation to culturally available gender practices enabled us to examine how those gender practices are reproduced, stretched or challenged when people network. We show how focussing on the dynamic side of gender allows us to get better insight into how gender inequalities in networks are reproduced or countered on the micro-interactional level.

Farah Dubois-Shaik and Bernard Fusulier (eds.) (2015). Academic Careers and Gender Inequality: Leaky Pipeline and Interrelated Phenomena in Seven European Countries, GARCIA working papers n. 5, University of Trento (ISBN 978-88-8443-641-2)

www.garciaproject.eu

Chapter 3 (pp. 62 - 79) shows data on the Leaky Pipeline phenomenon in a natural sciences and a social sciences department in a Dutch university.