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Dear All,

Please join us online on Monday, 13 February, at 4pm GMT, for the second R:ETRO seminar of this term, hosted by the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.

Laura Edinger-Schons (University of Hamburg) will be giving a paper entitled "One price tag for impacts – a critical reflection on the standardization of impact measurement and valuation."

Abstract:

In the quest for transparency about sustainability impacts of corporations, various initiatives are developing and piloting methods of impact measurement and valuation, i.e., the assignment of monetary values to their positive as well as negative impacts on people and the environment. In this seminar, I propose to discuss the process of quantification and standardization of sustainability impacts with a special focus on its potential ambivalence. While quantification and standardization promise to bring the unseen into the light and urge managers to take sustainability impacts into account when steering their companies, the idea of standardization has reached a myth-like status and implies the possibility of one central viewpoint on the value of impacts which neglects the multiplicity of worldviews and value judgments. I argue that the process of method development and standardization which is currently underway lacks widespread participation and, as a consequence, could be viewed as a form of epistemic neocolonialism. Further, the omnipresent call for standardization can be argued to counter the need for distributed experimentation which has been called for to address grand challenges like sustainability issues. I invite the group to reflect on our role as academic community in co-developing such standards and the potential meta-insensitivity which we might want to be cautious of.

Click here to register.

I hope to see many of you there!

All the best,
Rita

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Rita Mota
Assistant Professor
ESADE Business School
Barcelona
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