Counter-reporting sustainability from the bottom up : the case of the construction company WeBuild and dam-related conflicts
Bontempi, Antonio (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Geografia)
Del Bene, Daniela (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Di Felice, Louisa Jane (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)

Date:	2023
Abstract:	Controversies around large-scale development projects offer many cases and insights which may be analyzed through the lenses of corporate social (ir)responsibility (CSIR) and business ethics studies. In this paper, we confront the CSR narratives and strategies of WeBuild (formerly known as Salini Impregilo), an Italian transnational construction company. Starting from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas), we collect evidence from NGOs, environmental justice organizations, journalists, scholars, and community leaders on socio-environmental injustices and controversies surrounding 38 large hydropower schemes built by the corporation throughout the last century. As a counter-reporting exercise, we code (un)sustainability discourses from a plurality of sources, looking at their discrepancy under the critical lenses of post-normal science and political ecology, with environmental justice as a normative framework. Our results show how the mismatch of narratives can be interpreted by considering the voluntary, self-reporting, non-binding nature of CSR accounting performed by a corporation wishing to grow in a global competitive market. Contributing to critical perspectives on political CS(I)R, we question the reliability of current CSR mechanisms and instruments, calling for the inclusion of complexity dimensions in and a re-politicization of CS(I)R accounting and ethics. We argue that the fields of post-normal science and political ecology can contribute to these goals.
Note:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Note:	Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UAB
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Corporate social irresponsibility ; Large dams ; Hydropower schemes ; Salini Impregilo ; WeBuild ; Counterreporting ; Post-normal science ; Political ecology ; Environmental justice ; EJAtlas
Published in:	Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 182, Issue 1 (January 2023) , p. 7-32, ISSN 1573-0697

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-021-04946-6
PMID: 36567693

26 p, 4.1 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles