By J. Gary Taylor and Patricia J. Scharlin
Yale University Press. 278 pages $30 hardback
There have been some brief accounts of partnerships between companies and NGOs, but almost no indepth studies that chart their progress over time. This book plugs that gap handsomely, getting behind the public face of the relationship between Chiquita, the banana company, and the Rainforest Alliance NGO to reveal the life within. The picture that emerges is of a relationship that works – sort of – though after 12 years of living together, both parties still need their own space.
Anxious to throw off a dismal reputation for exploitation, pollution and political interference, Chiquita’s management lit upon the Rainforest Alliance and its recently-developed agriculture certification programme. The authors, who work for The Environment Group consultancy, relate how at the first meeting in 1991, both sides sat ‘glaring across the table in disdain and mistrust’. But company and NGO had something in common: neither knew what a certification programme for bananas would actually look like. Problem-solving brought them together. The old boy network also played its part. In high school, Alliance founder Daniel Katz had been a tennis partner of the son of Chiquita Brands’ CEO Carl Lindner.
Over the next decade, Chiquita lost its most profitable market, went bankrupt, changed ownership and switched CEO. Yet the relationship has endured. Why? Because each party has respected the other’s objectives outside the partnership, and Chiquita has made the link between labour relations and productivity. Because the Better Banana Programme is fairly cheap. Because some of the NGO’s idealism has rubbed off on company personnel. And above all, because the Chiquita brand is the company’s most valuable asset.
Alistair Townley