Richard Evans – a man who helped to change the rules – answers and key
1 His job is looking at the reports that organisations and companies produce to explain how they deal with their social and environmental responsibilities – i.e. how they affect various people such as their customers, people who live in countries where they build factories, their suppliers, employees, how their business affects them and how the decisions business directors make impact on society.
2 The foundry, plastics processing and furniture industries.
foundry – a workshop or factory for casting metal
3 1) to help themselves i.e. improve their situation by their own efforts and 2) to work their way out of poverty
4 The message was that business and economics had to take the human factor into account, they had to be managed as if people mattered and not as if people did not matter – that all that mattered was making a profit.
5 6.
6 He ‘learned to appreciate that technology isn’t the whole answer.’
To be the be-all and end-all – informal – to be the feature of an activity that is of greater importance than any other. Eg "Enjoying yourself isn’t the be-all and end-all, you know……." – i.e. is not the only thing that is important.
"Money seems to be the be-all and end-all of her life." – i.e. nothing else seems to matter at all.
7 On getting the right sort of social cohesion, on getting people to commit to working together and helping one another and also paying attention to what sort of impact technology was having on their environment and on the people in their communities.
8 1) it is a fair-trade organisation 2) it was one of the pioneers in developing trade with small communities, cooperatives and farmers’ organisations in developing countries.
9 1)That they would get a fair price for their products and also 2) have some continuity of orders so they could begin to find new opportunities for business in local and export markets.
10 Furniture, clothing, jewellery and handcrafted goods.
11 In 1985 as their marketing director.
12 He says it caused quite a lot of laughter among financial accountants and some very funny looks from sociologists.
13 It is a different or extra form of accounting that looks at the social impact of the business, particularly the socio-economic impact on the suppliers
14 Because he believed they were accountable to society (particularly to stakeholders, suppliers and customers, shareholders and employees).
15 Business ethics, how businesses thought about or described their ethical responsibilities to wider society and at what attempts had been made to provide some sort of account or commentary on the businesses’ social and environmental impact.