Customer Reviews

Branded!: How the 'Certification Revolution' is Transforming Global Corporations

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How many books do you know of that are critical of the way economic globalization is going but that also glow with optimism about the future? Rather than yet another treatise on how multinational corporations are hijacking the globalization process to the advantage of the few, this book shows how global corporate reach is exactly what is making multinationals more vulnerable and easier to change. As global firms spread the globe they increasingly compete on their "brand." Once they get big they come under the scrutiny of a growing global advocacy community that investigates the social and environmental practices of these firms from the retail shop to the sweatshop and then threatens (and often delivers) to slander the very brands that give these firms legs.
More and more global firms fear this and are slowly becoming pro-active in seeking third party certifications for their practices. Such alternative branding gives the firm a literal "stamp of approval" by global civil society, makes producer and consumer alike feel better about production and consumption decisions, and betters the bottom line for producers and their suppliers. Conroy demonstrates how this has happened in coffee, timber, and fisheries markets and is beginning to take hold in mining, flowers and elsewhere.

This is by far the most comprehensive work on the "fair trade movement" thus far. Its actually a few books in one. First, it documents how global social movements are evolving in the 21st century. Rather than being simply protest oriented in campaigns to stop corporations in their tracks the certification movement channels firms toward a more sustainable alternative. Second, the volume is a global economic analysis of the political economy of fair trade, showing that the principles of consumer information can be in sync with neo-classical economics and improve firms bottom lines. Finally, it is an insider memoir of a movement that few have the access to the archival and anecdotal evidence of its breadth and detail. Mike Conroy shows that another globalization is not only possible, it is happening.