Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is fast becoming imperative for corporate governance
in industry and business worldwide and is assuming an increasing role in the general
discourse on globalization and sustainable development. The World Business Council for
Sustainable Development has defined CSR as the continuing commitment by business to
behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life
of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.
Different countries and organisations agree on the fundamental principles and spirit
embedded in this definition. The major challenge, however, is that there are currently no
standardised modalities by which it is should be achieved nor a yardstick by which
compliance can be graded. Differing perceptions of CSR have resulted in many disparate
codes where they exist. In Africa this problem is further exacerbated by lack of awareness.

This dissertation primarily aims to address this gap. A tool to support this objective has been
proposed, designed and tested in the field.

The Malawi tea industry has been identified as a case study. A multitude of challenges in this
industry include child labour and deforestation on one hand as well as dwindling product
quality and profit margins. These objective have conflicting demands. The overall objective
of this thesis is to develop a multi-objective optimization tool to support decision-making
processes in the Malawian tea industry. This dissertation describes a novel decision-support
tool, called MOISAT, which integrates three analytical tools, including Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA), Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), and multi-objective
optimization (MOO) methods. This dissertation comprises three standalone but interrelated
studies. The first one is an exploratory study which assess the current state of sustainability
practices, motivations for their adoption, and how the conceptualization of sustainability in
these companies is evolving. Data collection was primarily conducted by industrial surveys,
semi-structured interviews, document analysis. Interviews were conducted with
representatives of 8 tea companies, purposely selected, from the list of all tea companies
operating in the country. The second study consists of a Delphi process to select a set of
sustainability assessment criteria from the literature and refining these through an interview
study with 9 experts from the tea industry and academia. The third study describes the
development of three life cycle models, including life cycle costing (LCC), environmental
life cycle assessment (e-LCA), and social life cycle assessment (s-LCA). These three models
are then integrated into the proposed MOISAT framework. The developed tool has been
tested in practice and validated in three representative tea companies in Malawi. The
MOISAT has been shown capable of pinpointing social sustainability hot spots within the tea
production life cycle stages that needs further improvement. The research findings also
confirmed s-LCA as a potential suitable tool for social assessment of company’s products,
processes and activities in the tea industry. The environmental life cycle assessment indicated
that the manufacture stage is the step with the highest consumption of energy and offers
greatest opportunities for improvements in environmental performance. Optimization results
further showed that the MOISAT algorithm proposed in this study is effective and has great
potential for solving multi-objective optimization problem in the tea industry. The
dissertation contributes to the literature by (1) developing the model which can be used to
facilitate the implementation, management and integration of sustainability issues in the tea
industry, (2) proposing a systematic framework that enables consideration of the three-
dimensional sustainability, simultaneously optimizing the economic, social and
environmental impacts as following life cycle analysis procedure in a multi-objective
framework; (3) developing and validating a unique NSGA-based algorithm that integrates
economic indices, life cycle assessment (LCA) framework, multi-criteria decision analysis
(MCDA), and an evolutionary multi-objective optimization algorithms (EMOAs).

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) promotes a vision of business accountability

to a wide range of stakeholders, besides shareholders and investors. Key areas of
concern are environmental protection and the wellbeing of employees, the
community and civil society in general, both now and in the future.

Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically

and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and
their families as well as of the local community and society at large” Source: World Business
Council for Sustainable Development
Issues such as child labour deforestation plague countries such as Malawi while optimal
productivity and personnel motivation impact on the quality and pricing of their produce,