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Clem Seecharan. Ian Randle Publishers. 696 pages. Paperback. £25.95
This lengthy but illuminating book is not likely to be on any recognized CSR reading list, but it probably should be. The author, Clem Seecharan, is a professor of Caribbean history and no expert on corporate responsibility. But the real-life subject he tackles – a sugar company’s struggle to make itself more socially responsible in the postwar West Indies – is the kind of thing we should have more of in CSR literature.
The company in question – Booker, which is now more famous for its past sponsorship of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction – engineered a spectacular turnaround in its social performance in the South American colony of British Guiana (now Guyana) after the Second World War. Much of this was due to the extraordinary commitment and vision of the company’s chairman, Jock Campbell, whose life and works are the focus of this scholarly but passionate work.
Driven by the spectre of his family firm’s historical involvement in slavery and the horrendous conditions he found on its Guyanese sugar plantations, Campbell set about using his leadership of the company to right the wrongs of the past. Workers’ wages were vastly increased, slave barracks that still served as worker homes were replaced by 15,000 new houses with drinking water supplies, free medical facilities were created for employees and their families, and the company built community centres, sports clubs and libraries while handing over almost half of its land to co-operatives for farming. In a groundbreaking move that was to have ramifications for the rest of the world, the company also sponsored the work of the great Italian doctor George Giglioli, who did much to eradicate malaria in the country. As a result of Campbell’s measures, Booker sugar production all-but doubled during his tenure.
Seecharan’s detailed and engaging account of these dramatic changes shows the potential in every company for engineering social change. Yet it also illuminates the limits of corporate responsibility. Booker’s gains were many, but in the end they were neutered by the chaotic pre- and post-independence politics of Guyana, demonstrating that without a supportive societal framework, CSR can easily wither on the vine.
Peter Mason
This lengthy but illuminating book is not likely to be on any recognized CSR reading list, but it probably should be. The author, Clem Seecharan, is a professor of Caribbean history and no expert on corporate responsibility. But the real-life subject he tackles – a sugar company’s struggle to make itself more socially responsible in the postwar West Indies – is the kind of thing we should have more of in CSR literature.
The company in question – Booker, which is now more famous for its past sponsorship of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction – engineered a spectacular turnaround in its social performance in the South American colony of British Guiana (now Guyana) after the Second World War. Much of this was due to the extraordinary commitment and vision of the company’s chairman, Jock Campbell, whose life and works are the focus of this scholarly but passionate work.
Driven by the spectre of his family firm’s historical involvement in slavery and the horrendous conditions he found on its Guyanese sugar plantations, Campbell set about using his leadership of the company to right the wrongs of the past. Workers’ wages were vastly increased, slave barracks that still served as worker homes were replaced by 15,000 new houses with drinking water supplies, free medical facilities were created for employees and their families, and the company built community centres, sports clubs and libraries while handing over almost half of its land to co-operatives for farming. In a groundbreaking move that was to have ramifications for the rest of the world, the company also sponsored the work of the great Italian doctor George Giglioli, who did much to eradicate malaria in the country. As a result of Campbell’s measures, Booker sugar production all-but doubled during his tenure.
Seecharan’s detailed and engaging account of these dramatic changes shows the potential in every company for engineering social change. Yet it also illuminates the limits of corporate responsibility. Booker’s gains were many, but in the end they were neutered by the chaotic pre- and post-independence politics of Guyana, demonstrating that without a supportive societal framework, CSR can easily wither on the vine.
Peter Mason
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