Browsing by Author "Rajapakse, B."

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Environmental Management: A Lesson from Giants of the Corporate Sector in Sri Lanka
(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Rajapakse, B.
Sri Lanka is an agricultural economy base country. Ancient people protected the environment since their economy (farming activities) was totally depended on the healthy environment. Therefore, people themselves voluntarily contributed to protect the physical environment of the country. However, this situation was adversely affected by the commercialization of agriculture activities, basically tea, rubber and coconut plantations introduced after the colonialisation. In addition, increasing trend of population and the continuing effort to improve their living have created a tremendous pressure on the natural environment of the country. Therefore, relazing this adverse impact, even the colonial government imposed various acts/ordinances in order to protect physical environment of the country. However, provisions of these acts were not enough to control declining trend of the physical environmental of the country. Later on, this situation was further accelerated with the liberalization of economic activities in late 1970s. Then, the major challenge faced by the country was the imperative of harmonizing economic and social development with environmental management. Government and public concern on conservations of natural resources and physical environmental issues have been dramatically increased during the last few years. As a result, the government has taken various steps to minimize such environmental pollution, which resulted mainly from industrial activities. Meanwhile, some leading business organizations have voluntarily introduced their own environmental management polices to achieve sustainable development through the protection of the physical environment of the country. The study is designed to assess the environmental management practices and contribution of leading business organizations as a lesson to other entrepreneurs. This study is based on two leading business entities in the country and it is found that both those entities have introduced excellent environmental practices. If other entities follow such type of environmental management practices it will be easy to overcome environmental problems in future.
Human Rights in the Corporate Sector: Applicability of the UN Norms in the Context of Sri Lanka
(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Nilakshan, S.; Rajapakse, B.
‘Human Rights’ is an amorphous and dynamic subject, which addresses issues concerning the rights of each and every individual in the society. States have the primary obligation to protect human rights but the Universal Declaration of Human Rights demands that human rights shall be ‘respected, recognised and observed’ by ‘every organ of society’. The UN has developed a set of “Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights”, which seek to clarify what adherence to different rights should entail in practice for companies. This research tends to assess the extent of awareness and concern in the Sri Lankan corporate sector on the need to incorporate promotion and protection of human rights into their business policies relating to Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR). The study also analyses the preference of the corporate sector and policymakers on whether the set of voluntary guidelines or a compulsory compliance mechanism should be in place for the promotion and protection of human rights in the corporate sector. In the process of data collection, different business stakeholders were interviewed and a questionnaire was distributed among senior management level employees in the corporate sector to obtain their views and preferences. Additionally, annual reports of selected public companies were also perused. The UN Human Rights Norms for Business was used as the conceptual framework to compare and analyse the existing practices in the Sri Lankan corporate sector and the applicability of the Norms in the context of Sri Lanka. The study found that, though members of the Sri Lankan corporate sector are not very familiar with the recent initiatives of the UN Human Rights Norms for Business, they have realised the importance of ensuring the rights of the community and the employees in their business operations. So that, they have already voluntary taken many initiatives for the protection of the human rights enumerated in the UN Norms for business sector.