New project: Global Retailers and Corporate Responsibility: Developing and Promoting a Strategic Agenda

Throughout the past decade an increasing number of elite retailers such as Wal-Mart, Tesco, Carrefour and METRO have opened outlets, buying and distribution centres in developing economies. The questions of why such processes have accelerated and their possible effects have become a subject of interest amongst a number of economic geographers and economists. The topical nature of this theme was highlighted in a recent special issue of the Journal of Economic Geography which presented the latest research and thinking on retail TNCs and host economies impacts. 

This ESRC funded IMPACT project builds on this emerging research agenda and investigates what notions of responsibility underpin the management of transnational retail operations in host economies. It examines what corporate social and environmental responsibility means for the largest retail TNCs and how corporate responsibility (CR) programmes are developed and implemented along retailers' supply chains and in overseas operations.

The context of the debate and the findings of the empirical component of the research are elucidated in the position paper 'Global Retailers, Global Responsibilities: Towards a New Research Agenda'. The paper suggests that conceptualisations and studies on retailers' impact in host economies ought to acknowledge and interrogate the scope and effects of retailers' CR interventions.

More information available at http://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/research/projects/GlobalRetailersCSR.html