Varieties of Green Business

G.  Jones

Book | 2018

Varieties of Green Business: Industries, Nations and Time

Abstract

Published at a time of ever-increasing warnings that the pace of climate change and other environmental changes risk making the Earth unsustainable within our own lifetimes, this book looks at the past of green business to identify lessons for the future. It provides rich new evidence and insights on green business as it examines its variation between industries and nations over time. It shows the deep historical origins of endeavors to create for-profit businesses that were more responsible and sustainable as well as how these strategies have faced constraints, trade-offs, and challenges of legitimacy. The industries covered range from sustainable finance and solar energy to organic food and wine, ecotourism, and outdoor clothing. Strategies pursued range from incremental shifts towards sustainability to abandoning for-profit business entirely and re-wilding and conserving millions of acres of lands in Latin America. The book's distinctiveness lies in the use of original empirical data and the willingness to engage with both successful and unsuccessful cases. The wide geographical coverage includes not only the United States and Europe but also less studied settings, including Chile, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and Japan. The book serves as a warning against facile beliefs in the potential of win/win solutions as business tries to reduce its environmental impact or even save the planet. The lesson of history is that making business sustainable is a hard journey, littered with system-wide roadblocks, but it is a journey that is possible and one that is urgently needed.

Keywords: Green Business; sustainability; business history; eco-tourism; organic wine; organic food; waste management; sustainable finance; Ethics; Finance; History; Entrepreneurship; Accommodations Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Banking Industry; Energy Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Green Technology Industry; Tourism Industry; Europe; Asia; Latin America; North and Central America; New Zealand;

Format: Print

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Jones, G. Varieties of Green Business: Industries, Nations and Time. Northamption, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018.

The case examines the entrepreneurial career of Rupert Murdoch and the growth of News Corporation from a small Australian newspaper to a global media giant. It shows how he expanded geographically to Europe, the United States, and Asia and from newspapers to the film and television industries. The case identifies the personal role of Murdoch in this growth and the role of his family in its management. The case considers the political impact of News Corporation's newspapers and other media and their alleged role in shaping political opinion.

This case examines the career of the Russian business oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky was one of a small group of business tycoons that became fabulously rich after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, as the new Russian government, advised by prominent Harvard economists, privatized state assets. The case provides an opportunity to explore how this happened, and what its impact was both at the time and for the subsequent development of capitalism in Russia. Berevosky's business empire suffered a major reversal after the appointment of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2000. Berevosky's opposition to Putin's plans to restore the authority of the Russian state led to his exile in Britain, where he reinvented himself as an opponent of authoritarianism.

Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2018 (Revised November 2019)

John Chambers, Cisco and China: Upgrading a Golden Shield

Geoffrey Jones and Emily Grandjean

This case examines the role of Cisco led by John Chambers in facilitating web filtering in China. It begins by tracing the origins of Cisco as a pioneer of networking equipment. John Chambers, who had worked as a sales manager at IBM and Wang Laboratories, joined Cisco in 1991 and became CEO in 1995. The company expanded rapidly thereafter, acquiring many firms and growing globally, including in China, where it virtually created the internet. The case explores how the firm facilitated surveillance and monitoring of the internet under the Golden Shield project launched in 2000, and in 2004 served as a key participant in the CN2 upgrade that greatly enhanced official capability to filter content online. The case ends in 2007 with Chambers announcing further capital expenditure in China but facing growing criticism by U.S. Congress and others for Cisco's human rights record. At the same time, Cisco faced a powerful domestic competitor in China, Huawei, that had grown rapidly by investing in innovation even as Cisco pursued a share buy-back campaign after experiencing a sharp fall in its share price following the end of the Dot-com bubble. The case provides a vehicle for exploring the ethical and human rights responsibilities of corporations in the technology sector, as well as the impact of the internet on democracy.

Keywords: Cisco; Internet; Governance Controls; Ethics; Rights; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Technology Industry; China;

Citation:

Jones, Geoffrey, and Emily Grandjean. "John Chambers, Cisco and China: Upgrading a Golden Shield." Harvard Business School Case 318-158, June 2018. (Revised November 2019.) View Details

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Varieties of Green Business: Industries, Nations and Time

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