Poverty alleviation as business strategy? Evaluating commitments of frontrunner Multinational Corporations

SummaryIn the debate on how to combat poverty, the positive role of MNCs is frequently mentioned nowadays, although doubts and criticism remain. Facing this societal debate, MNCs feel the pressure to formulate a position. This paper analyzes MNCs’ policies on their poverty-alleviating potential. “Frontrunner” MNCs turn out not to be very outspoken, especially not on those issues that have the largest potential to help alleviate poverty. Placed in the context of other MNCs’ behavior, a sector-coordinated morality seems important, which means that a meso approach to poverty alleviation needs to complement the current global (macro) and individual company (micro) focus.