One Blog, Many Authors

By Oliver Laier.

This entry is not one of the usual kind. Rather you will find thoughts about this blog as such, its motivation, relevance, and a recap of articles posted in the last few months.

A researcher-blog is a particular thing, the description itself, researcher blog, appears contradictive in the first place. Typically, the researcher’s publishing realm are journals, contributions to textbooks or own publications. Whereas a weblog is typically loosely written, open for ex post published critique and comments, a researcher publication is as clear and precise in language as possible, and peer-reviewed before the print or upload. Scientific papers rarely feature colourful pictures to draw attention, and they always exceed 500 words. Blogs are often about opinions on certain topics, provoke, deal with actual events or contemplate issues; a paper ideally generates insight, knowledge and facts, only as far as possible.

So, why is CBS’ Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (cbsCSR) and the Governing Responsible Business (GRB) research environment maintaining this “Business of Society” (BOS) blog, not to mention the twitter, facebook and even instagram presences? Does it make any sense?

We think it does. Not only are we convinced that sustainability and the responsibility of business and society for a more sustainable future are of concern to everyone but we also believe that related topics and discussions from around and beyond CBS should get out fast to a broad audience, that is, via online publishing. The blog is not only aimed at the ones in the office next door, who might not yet know who is doing research on what, our department, other departments, other universities, in Denmark and abroad. We are also targeting students, practitioners, politicians, friends, family – basically everyone who is concerned with sustainability in some way.

Why maintaining a researcher blog? Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash.

The contributors span from big names in the field to not-yet-well-known PhDs, (visiting) professors, fellows, students, colleagues from other institutions, and guest contributors. We seek diversity on the blog, as sustainability is not one clearly defined ‘thing’. It is related to all kinds of fields and while the term itself stems from forestry, the contested expression is now informing environmental sciences, politics, economics and business; theory and practise; professional and private lives. What do you buy, how do we (want to) live, how about our children?

The Business of Society (BOS) blog is meant to expand every reader’s horizon and to engage you in critical thinking and discussion. Providing short entries in accessible language does not imply a lower relevance of the articles. Rather, it means that the proverbial, non-academic ‘grandmother’ can understand what is at stake and participate in a discussion. Having scientific thought from many different researchers in condensed form is also a source of inspiration for students or and soon-to-be PhDs. Following, a few selected articles are presented to give you a taste of this blog’s spirit and the people behind the articles.

From the Business of Society archive

Jan Bauer is associate professor at CBS and part of the Governing Responsible Business (GRB) Research Environment. He is doing research in the fields of health economics and consumer behaviour. In June, he contributed to this blog with an article about a sustainable food policy trial, here at the MSC department at CBS. A new choice architecture in regard to the food policy at the department reveals the power of defaults. However, Jan also emphasises the importance of the foundation of guiding principles in such nudging approaches. What is the best way to decide upon a new policy, scientific evidence or democratic process? Follow the link above to get a more comprehensive image of the nudge-experiment and its related issues.

Climate change solutions must naturally consist in a collective effort of different parties: various fields of research, politics, business; technology are often seen as candidates to deliver the solution(s) from a supply side, among others when it comes to decarbonisation. Yet, the demand side must not be overlooked either, knows Kristian Steensen Nielsen, PhD fellow in environmental behaviour change at CBS. In his article in July, he writes about a framework for assessing the potential of behaviour change for global decarbonisation, suggesting that demand-side behaviour change can offer a solution for long-term reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Pointing the fingers at others is easy. But before blaming somebody else, it is sometimes a good idea to look at one’s own backyard. To some people, the Chinese Social Credit system seems to be an idea stemming from 20^th century dystopia literature and deserves critique. The Western backyard here would be what tech-industry giants and governments do with the (private) data, and how citizens think and (don’t) act about it. Dieter Zinnbauer and Hans Krause Hansen wrote a brilliant piece on the big fuss about a big policy plan. It is a bit longer but worth the time.

Is the cake really getting bigger? Sharing economy is such an omnipresent phenomenon and buzzword that few people ask what is behind it. Fact is, people have been sharing ever since they lived in communities. It can also be taken for granted that Airbnb and the like neither (re-)invented the sharing-concept, nor act upon non-profit or redistributive beliefs. Attila Marton, from our neighbouring department of digitalization at CBS, depicts in his article generic types of sharing economy platforms and why it is rather a not-so-sharing economy in the case of large-scale business models.

Sharing or not sharing? Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash.

Granting the BOS readers a first taste of his upcoming book, Stefano Ponte from the Business and Politics department at CBS contributed an article based upon ‘just sustainabilities’ in a world of global value chains. Living in the Anthropocene (or, the capitaloscene??), humanity has to take care of how much more it changes the planet’s surface and ecosystems. The problem of global governance has to be tackled from all possible sides, business large and small, politics local and global; yet business of sustainability is not sufficient as a solution for, among others, climate change. What to do? Read yourself.

A common critique towards environmentalist researchers, politicians and activists is the fact that they -if only for the greater good- behave environmentally debatable themselves, such as short trips to conferences involving air travel, the excessive use of resources at conferences (e.g. paper, i.e. info flyers, posters; plastic bottles, one-time coffee mugs).

Being in charge of organizing a Sustainable Consumption conference at CBS, Louise Thomsen, project manager for CBS PRME and the VELUX Chair, asked how this conference, and events at CBS in general, can be made more sustainable. In her guest post, she contemplates the issue of making events more sustainable and presents the actual measures taken. Just one example: in cooperation with a student group from DTU, a life cycle analysis was done to guide decisions in terms of water supply. Check out the whole article about raising the bar for sustainable events.

As this selection of recent posts shows, BOS is a platform for diverse and rich sustainability discourses, starting here at CBS and extending to topics of global reach and relevance. Supply chains, politics, sharing, consumption behaviour, ethics, business responsibility, the SDGs, the next conference you’ll be attending, all these issues belong here. If you would like to contribute to the BOS blog of meet for a coffee and chat, write a mail ol.msc@cbs.dk.

Photo by Jordan Heath on Unsplash.

Raising the bar for sustainable events

By Louise Thomsen

How often do we as event coordinators ask ourselves: how can I minimize the plastic use, the waste, the paper? I could also reverse the question and ask: Could we imagine a smarter, more efficient and even more inspiring new way to host events?

Copenhagen Business School hosts a significant number of conferences and other events throughout a year and all carry the opportunity to be managed more sustainably. But, what makes an event sustainable? In June, the Sustainable Consumption Conference hosted by the VELUX Endowed Chair in Corporate Sustainability at CBS became the first pilot conference for implementing sustainable initiatives at a bigger event at CBS.

Hosting events is a wasteful affair

We all know exactly what to expect when attending a conference. You receive a name tag when you register, which you usually throw in the waste bin when you leave. You get a plastic bottle of water, and when you are done with that, or even before you are done, you get another one. You get the conference programme and the participant list which you look at a couple of times before that goes into the waste bin. Often printed in colour.

Now, imagine attending a conference with no plastic bottles, no paper, no meat, and no food waste. Imagine, how this conference would increase the level of awareness, communication and engagement between the participants and the hosts. And ignite fruitful discussions because we would realize, how much we can actually achieve with little changes in our everyday lives.

Sustainability taken to new heights

On June 27-30, more than 200 scholars and policy practitioners participated in an international conference on sustainable consumption at Copenhagen Business School, The conference topic Sustainable Consumption naturally raised the question how a sustainable conference could look like at Copenhagen Business School? No attempt at all to satisfy the conference’s title would be more than hypocritical.

In order to make sure that the sustainability initiatives implemented at the conference were the most sustainable solutions and had a high impact factor, the conference organizers allied themselves with a group of students from the Danish Technical University (DTU) who were doing a course on Life Cycle Assessments.

The students received 2 cases

How should the conference supply water?
How should the conference be catered?

Over the course of 4 months, the DTU student teams collected data from CBS and carried out life cycle assessments taking into account various impact factors such as production, transportation, use and disposal etc. Based on the results, all conference meals were vegetarian, and all conference participants received one glass bottle that could be filled from water dispensers throughout the entire conference.

The conference participants also received information about the sustainability initiatives that they could expect prior to the conference. The findings from the life cycle assessment were communicated on posters and on the back of the staff t-shirts. All conference staff engaged with the participants and assisted with water bottles and waste sorting. Furthermore, the conference participants were continuously encouraged to share feedback and discuss the attempts made with each other and the staff.

Implemented sustainability initiatives at the Sustainable Consumption Conference

Each conference participant received one reusable glass bottle, which replaced single-use plastic bottles for the distribution of water throughout the conference.
Every meal served at the conference was vegetarian, reducing the environmental impact of the conference’s catering by 44% compared to meat-based meals.
Participants were asked to sort their waste throughout the conference, using designated bins for paper, plastic, food, and general waste.
The conference was largely paperless. Programs and other general information were made available in ways that reduced the need for paper, such as printed posters and an app with, among other information, the timetable.
The lanyards for name tags were made from recycled polyester, and both name tags and lanyards were collected for reuse after the conference.
Food waste was minimized by asking participants to give notice in advance about which meals they were going to participate in, and any leftover food was brought to a nearby centre for homeless people.
All conference staff wore a sustainable and organic cotton t-shirt with key sustainability messages on the back.

Invitation to a learning journey

When hosting an event at CBS, you are in touch with many different stakeholders who have procedures on how to efficiently meet requests on catering, waste handling, or cleaning. This means that it must be a collaborative effort if you want to change the existing structures. Engagement and communication are key.

We should not get carried away by the belief that the easiest solutions to implement will necessarily be the most impactful or more environmentally significant than our starting point. There is a big difference between solutions that carry a high degree of reducing CO2-emissions (real impact), and solutions that have the purpose of creating awareness. Both aspects are highly important. However, we should be aware of when we spend resources on one or the other and communicate this clearly.

I want to invite you to think about how we can improve our ecological footprint when we host events at CBS and elsewhere. As you will soon learn, there is no such thing as a “sustainable event”. However, there are well-founded decisions and much to learn if we dare to ask the question:

How can we raise the bar for sustainable events?

Louise Thomsen is Project Manager for CBS PRME and the VELUX Chair in Corporate Sustainability at the Department of Management, Society and Communication, CBS. Louise is focused on implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals in an university context through student engagement. Follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Save the date: 29 August, 15 h, Dalgas Have, Copenhagen Business School.

Creating a whole conference to have a significantly reduced amount of waste, use of paper and plastics is a big challenge. But many people also wonder, what they can do as individuals to limit climate change, if there is anything at all.
This issue is treated in another edition of the Sustainability Seminar Series at the department of Management, Society and Communication at CBS.

For more information and sign-up click on “What Can the Individual Do to help Limit Climate Change?”.

Feeling the Pain

By Robin Porsfelt.

While the recent US ’opioid crisis’ has been widely reported, a second, less recognized, crisis related to opioids has been taking place, and is still ongoing, more quietly in countries with less Western media visibility. Whereas the crisis in the US is arguably related to an over-subscription to opioid-based pain relief, such as OxyContin, the second crisis could rather be seen as a case of too tightly regulated access to opioids in health-care systems. This is at least the argument of a recent report commissioned by The Lancet which proclaims that the world is experiencing an under-management of pain where as many as 25 million people are suffering partly as a result of regulatory and cultural approaches to the use of opioids.

Severe lack of access

The report was the result of a three-year study on the integration and access of pain relief and palliative care in health systems. It opens with a succinct description of the problem: “Poor people in all parts of the world live and die with little or no palliative care or pain relief. Staring into this access abyss, one sees the depth of extreme suffering in the cruel face of poverty and inequity” (Knaul, Farmer & Krakauer et al, 2017: 1).

Those suffering from lack of access to adequate medication are predominantly found in low-income and middle-income countries, often with terminal illnesses, and includes approximately 2.5 million children dying with, what the report terms, ‘serious health-related suffering’ each year (Knaul, Farmer & Krakauer et al, 2017: 2). Of the almost 300 metric tons of morphine-equivalent opioids distributed annually, only 0.1 metric tons reach health systems in low-income countries. This is something the report’s authors condemn as: “a medical, public health, and moral failing and a travesty of justice” (Knaul, Farmer & Krakauer et al, 2017: 1).

Addiction and pain relief

But what are the reasons for this state of potentially unnecessary suffering? In contrast to many other debates on access to medication, the problem is in this case not predominantly related to questions of scarcity, costs, or tightly enforced intellectual property rights to drugs, but rather a mix of cultural and regulatory factors. There are (at least) two factors that explain the pattern: One is a lack of visibility due to fragmented patient advocacy and exclusion of pain alleviation from standard measures of health. Another key factor is that opioids do not only fall under the scope of medical regulation but are also controlled substances under international drug conventions (Ibid.).

As substances such as morphine are listed and regulated as narcotic substances by the UN, they become part of a machinery of international checks and balances on their flow, including import quotas and reporting requirements. The UN treaties are based on two imperatives, on the one hand the limitation of harmful and addictive substances, and on the other hand to secure access to medically vital analgesics.[1] In recent decades, the war on a drugs-compatible first imperative of strict control has become increasingly dominant, making such medication harder to access (Knaul, Farmer & Krakauer et al, 2017: 8).

A second related issue suggested by the report is ‘opiophobia’, described as prejudice and misinformation concerning medical use of opioids. Whereas a balanced approach to opioid prescriptions is needed, a prevalent fear of non-medical use and its side-effects among health-care providers, regulators, and patients have led to an underestimation of needs and insufficient medical use in many countries (Ibid.).

What’s to be done

Even though this inequity in pain relief is indeed under-acknowledged, potential solutions should at least, in theory, not be gridlocked by economic interests. As morphine and morphine-like medication is cheap to produce and commonly used in Western medical systems, the problem is rather about framing and contesting stigmatization. While acknowledging the risks with a too laissez-faire approach, there is a need to recognize the value in a controlled medical use of opioids to avoid unnecessary suffering as well.

A way to do so, as the report highlights, would for instance be a broadening of the third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on ensuring healthy lives and well-being for all. Currently, the battle against substance abuse is covered in the SDG target 3.5, a step forward however would be to include pain alleviation and access to pain relief as similarly essential objectives – for instance as part of SDG target 3.8 on universal health coverage. As a measure, this is of course not enough, but at the current stage, and given the documented ‘abyss’ of equity in pain treatment worldwide, simply diagnosing the issue as problematic per se would to some degree seem like progress.

[1] A member of a group of drugs to achieve analgesia, i.e. relief from pain. (editor’s note)

References

Knaul, F. M., Farmer, P. E., Krakauer, E. L., et al. (2017). Alleviating the access abyss in palliative care and pain relief––an imperative of universal health coverage: The Lancet Commission report. Lancet. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32513-8

Robin Porsfelt is a PhD fellow at the Department of Management, Society and Communication. He is part of a PhD cohort on time and societal challenges, with particular research interests in the sociology of valuation and global governance

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash.