Arguments Against Creating Shared Value: Globex Shipping Case Analysis

This discussion post critically examines the concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV) through the lens of the Globex Shipping case study. The paper argues against the efficacy of CSV, highlighting its limitations and potential pitfalls. It posits that CSV, as proposed by Porter and Kramer, often fails to address the inherent tensions between social and economic goals. The analysis of Globex Shipping illustrates how CSV can prioritize corporate profit over broader societal and environmental concerns, particularly in cases involving multiple stakeholders and ethical considerations. The assignment emphasizes that CSV can lead to 'cherry-picking' of easy win-win projects while neglecting deeply rooted social and environmental issues. The post concludes that a more comprehensive approach, involving industry-wide solutions and multi-stakeholder initiatives, is necessary to address pressing societal problems effectively, especially in the shipping industry where rogue actors can cause significant environmental damage. The assignment makes a case for rational changes in the shipping industry to prevent disasters from oil spills.

Opposing Creation of Shared Value (CSV) 1
OPPOSING CREATION OF SHARED VALUE (CSV)
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Opposing Creation of Shared Value (CSV) 2
OPPOSING CREATION OF SHARED VALUE (CSV)
Creating Shared Value (CSV) purposes at re-inventing capitalism and hence to unleash
growth and innovation wave, from which enterprises and society would both gain/profit (Porter
and Kramer 2019). The overarching issue, however, is whether CSV actually lives up to its
promise and whether Porter and Kramer herald a turnaround in discussing society and business
or whether their idea obviate CSR (Porter and Kramer 2019). It is argued in this paper that
whereas Porter and Kramer appear to be quite progressive about their CSV idea, it sadly ignores
the actual tension between social and economic goals and being premised on a shallow
conception of the role of a corporation in the society as demonstrated in the Globex Shipping
Case study (Crane et al. 2014).
Rather than stressing on the intrinsic dilemmas and the unavoidable trade-offs between
social and economic value creation, CSV is surprisingly a move to whitewash the trade-offs
problems and disregard adversarial influence of corporate activities (Crane et al. 2014). In
emphasizing on a win-win solutions alongside individual projects, CSV facilitates corporations
to concentrate on easy wins, whereas leaving unsettled deeply-rooted social concerns to which
they remain connected (Crane et al. 2014). For instance, creating shared value in Globex
Shipping case, would make the primary holders in this case (ship owners) to continue to benefit
through a win-win easy solutions at the expense of the secondary stakeholders (wildlife affected
like turtles and seabirds, government and even the people at large) (Crane et al. 2014). This is
because the government would still use their money amounting to 1.5M to clean-up when it
should be entirely on the ship owners. This shows that CSV is not living up to its promise as its
implementation is even hard to achieve (Wójcik 2016).

Opposing Creation of Shared Value (CSV) 3
Indeed CSV sadly promotes corporate cherry-picking and whitewashing which is only
destined to culminate in “islands of win-win projects in the ocean of unsettled social and
environmental conflicts” as seen in the case (Crane et al. 2014). This is because such a win-win
model does not bar the rogue ship owners from hurting the secondary stakeholders and would
still continue with their pollutions because they will still have their easy way out (Crane et al.
2014). Thus, CSV is premised on a wrong objective in the first place of creating additional
opportunities for profit for these rogue corporations (17 ship owners) at the expense of rational
objective of the need to contribute to solving severely pressing societal problems of ensuring no
disasters from the ship oil spillage once and for all by removing these ships with bad records (de
los Reyes Jr, Scholz. and Smith 2017).
The CSV’s objectives remain narrow since they exclude industry-broad solutions as well
as multi-stakeholders initiatives which would otherwise help solve the societal problems
amicably. This is because, fundamentally, Porter and Kramer narrowly seek to solve a system-
level issue/problem, the capitalism crisis, with just organizational-level changes (Crane et al.
2014). Eventually, Porter and Kramer are perceived as presenting yet a new approach whereby
society and alongside its needs are viewed as something the corporations (ship owners) might
cater to successfully in terms of traditional economic (Porter and Kramer 2019). This, however,
has failed to work in the Globex Shipping case since the ultimate outcome is that no ship claimed
responsibility for the oil spill in 2015 and hence it cannot be said that the corporation cater for
the society in traditional economic terms (Corazza, Cisi and Scagnelli 2018).
In regards to discourse on capitalism crisis and the business purpose, the insufficiencies
of CSV in the case of Globex Shipping leads us to the conclusion that the interests of corporate
(ship owners) can never and shall never provide an sufficient ground for solving pressing social

Opposing Creation of Shared Value (CSV) 4
and environmental issues (disastrous oil spill without shipping owners claiming responsibility)
being faced in this case, despite the promised that Kramer and Porter made in CSV arguments
(Chen et al., 2018). Thus, we must implement rational changes in the shipping industry/market
along with its framework conditions (Crane et al. 2014). However, CSV need to still assist us in
making certain improvement in this same direction. The panacea is to change the win-win model
proposed by CSV and come up with a broad based approach which brings in industry-broad
solutions as well as multi-stakeholders initiatives to tame the rogue ship owners (Tantalo and
Priem 2016).

Opposing Creation of Shared Value (CSV) 5
References
Chen, Y.R.R., Hung-Baesecke, C.J.F., Bowen, S.A., Zerfass, A., Stacks, D.W. and Boyd, B.,
2018. The role of leadership in shared value creation from the public’s perspective: A multi-
continental study. Public Relations Review, p.101749.
Corazza, L., Cisi, M. and Scagnelli, S.D., 2018. Creation of Shared Value in Action: The Case of
a Living Lab Using Transformative Learning, 12(2), pp. 12-56.
Crane, A., Palazzo, G., Spence, L. J., & Matten, D. (2014). Contesting the value of “creating
shared value”. California management review, 56(2), 130-153.
de los Reyes Jr, G., Scholz, M. and Smith, N.C., 2017. Beyond the “Win-Win” creating shared
value requires ethical frameworks. California Management Review, 59(2), pp.142-167.
Porter, M.E. and Kramer, M.R., 2019. Creating shared value. In managing sustainable
business (pp. 323-346). Springer, Dordrecht.
Tantalo, C. and Priem, R.L., 2016. Value creation through stakeholder synergy. Strategic
Management Journal, 37(2), pp.314-329.
Wójcik, P., 2016. How creating shared value differs from corporate social responsibility. Journal
of Management and Business Administration, 24(2), pp.32-55.