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Global business impact is intimately linked with the current global ecological crisis and rising social inequality and elite power. Responsible Business Initiatives, i.e. organisations and initiatives seeking to change corporate behaviour, have proliferated, but are not well understood. We conceptualize the overall theory of change of Responsible Business Initiatives and analyse the diverse mechanisms employed, including enabling, pressure and ideational strategies to achieve desired objectives, such as positive outcomes for workers, communities and environments. We review the available evidence on the effectiveness and impact of Responsible Business Initiatives, finding major challenges in terms of their ability to shift corporate behaviour on a scale and depth required to achieve a safe and just operating space for humanity. We explore other types of interventions supported by donors, companies and civil society and consider their potential complementarity and or possible role as a substitute for voluntary, private governance approaches. We conclude by reflecting upon the systemic constraints facing Responsible Business Initiatives and possible future avenues which merit consideration, which are more focused on root causes.

The Trade and Global Value Chains Initiative seeks to test whether investments in social upgrading (better working conditions and access to better work) can lead to business and development gains, and also ensure that better skilled, younger workers enter the sector and work more productively. Previous research indicated that companies do not invest in social upgrading because they lack both sufficient incentive to act on their own and convincing evidence of the benefits. Investment with other stakeholders in social upgrading could deliver business benefits and help to ensure the longer-term profitability and sustainability of corporate supply chains. A catalytic fund is the delivery mechanism (a modified challenge fund with technical advice provided to grantees), making public funds available to successful coalition applicants and leveraging private sector investment. The aim is to facilitate corporate behavioural change, benefitting workers/smallholders (social upgrading) and suppliers and retailers (economic upgrading). The TGVCI focuses on Ready Made Garments, Bangladesh, and horticulture in South Africa and Kenya.\ud This report presents the Mid-Term Evaluation (MTE) of the TGVCI conducted by the Evaluation Management Unit (EMU). Twenty projects have been funded in two rounds. The Round 1 projects are nearing completion and Round 2 projects are still on-going. This slightly delayed implementation means that the evidence available and the analysis feasible at this stage are necessarily limited. The projects do nevertheless allow reasonable conclusions to be drawn on relevance, effectiveness and plausible impacts, provide initial findings on cost-effectiveness and indications on sustainability.

This capstone report provides a practical example of how to assess the operational resiliency of an Army company team. In this research, operational resiliency is the ability of a company team to preserve its warfighting capability when operating in different operational scenarios comprised of distinct mission, enemy, and terrain requirements. This study evaluates three alternative configurations for their performance in three distinct scenarios (Mountain Attack, Urban Clear, and Desert Ambush) based on three measures of effectiveness (MOEs): force exchange ratio (FER), indirect-fire kill ratio (IDK), and intelligence time to detect 50% of enemy forces (INTEL). The systems engineering approach utilizes Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) techniques to produce nine agent-based simulation meta-models. The study performs a value-focused, multi-objective decision analysis of the three alternative configurations by developing MOE-specific value functions and scenario-specific swing-weight matrices. The results are compiled into an Operational Resiliency Decision Block that provides decision makers with a visual display tool to further analyze and assess performance. To ensure robustness of the results, the research analyzes the nine scenario-MOE weighted values for sensitivity. http://archive.org/details/operationalresil1094547870 Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

First page of article Keywords: anti-HCV agents; hepatitis C virus; STAT-C therapies