Conceptualising corporate community development

Abstract

Globally there is an increasing focus on the private sector as a significant development actor. One element of the private sector’s role emphasised within this new focus has been corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, whereby the private sector claims to contribute directly to local development. There is now a substantial body of work on CSR but it is a literature that is mostly polarised, dominated by concerns from the corporate perspective, and not adequately theorised. Corporations typically do development differently from NGOs and donors, yet the nature and effects of these initiatives are both under-researched and under-conceptualised. In this paper we argue that viewing CSR initiatives through a community development lens provides new insights into their rationale and effects. Specifically we develop a conceptual framework that draws together agency and practice-centred approaches in order to illuminate the processes and relationships that underpin corporate community development initiatives.

Keywords:

• Corporate community development
• corporate social responsibility
• poverty reduction
• business
• market-based development
• community perspective
• agency

Notes

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2. Hopkins, Corporate Social Responsibility, 2.

3. Rugman and Doh, Multinationals and Development.

4. Ibid.

5. Long, Development Sociology.

6. Long, Development Sociology.

7. Blowfield, “Business and Development,” 415.

8. Ibid.

9. Lodge and Wilson, A Corporate Solution to Global Poverty; and Schulpen and Gibbon, “Private Sector Development,” 1.

10. Schulpen and Gibbon, “Private Sector Development,” 2.

11. Cowen and Shenton, Doctrines of Development.

12. Cowen and Shenton, Doctrines of Development.

13. Essex, Development, Security, and Aid.

14. Murray and Overton, “Neoliberalism is Dead.”

15. Ibid., 317.

16. Roberts, “Development Capital.”

17. IBLF, “Business Equal Partners in Development.”

18. Eyben and Savage, “Emerging and Submerging Powers”; and Mawdsley et al., “A ‘Post-aid World’?”

19. High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, 25.

20. High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, 26.

21. Mawdsley et al., “A ‘Post-aid World’?”

22. Clémençon, “Welcome to the Anthropocene.”

23. UN, “Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum.”

24. UN, “UN Global Compact Leaders’ Summit Agenda.”

25. Blowfield and Dolan, “Business as a Development Agent”; and Richey and Ponte, “New Actors and Alliances.”

26. Blowfield, “Business and Development,” 415.

27. Blowfield and Dolan, “Business as a Development Agent,” 25.

28. Cowen and Shenton, Doctrines of Development.

29. Hart, “Development Critiques in the 1990s.”

30. Merino and Valor, “The Potential of Corporate Social Responsibility.”

31. Hopkins, Corporate Social Responsibility, 9.

32. Blowfield and Frynas, “Setting New Agendas,” 503.

33. Merino and Valor, “The Potential of Corporate Social Responsibility.”

34. Lund-Thomsen, “Corporate Accountability in South Africa,” 621.

35. Utting, “Corporate Responsibility,” 378.

36. Akpan, “Between Responsibility and Rhetoric”; and Font et al., “Corporate Social Responsibility.

37. Ashley and Haysom, “From Philanthropy to a Different Way”; Blowfield, “Corporate Social Responsibility”; Frynas, “Corporate Social Responsibility and International Development”; and Utting, “Corporate Responsibility.”

38. Christian Aid, Behind the Mask.

39. Dahlsrud, “How Corporate Social Responsibility is Defined.”

40. Blowfield and Frynas, “Setting New Agendas,” 503.

41. Newell, “Citizenship, Accountability and Community.”

42. Banks et al., “Conceptualizing Mining Impacts”; and Imbun, “Cannot Manage without the ‘Significant Other’.”

43. Harvey, “Social Development will not Deliver.”

44. Bebbington, “Extractive Industries and Stunted States”; Blowfield and Frynas, “Setting New Agendas”; Gilberthorpe and Banks, “Development on Whose Terms?”; and Utting, “CSR and Equality.”

45. Dolan and Rajak, “Introduction,” 3.

46. Gardner et al., “Elusive Partnerships.”

47. Blowfield, “Business, Corporate Responsibility and Poverty Reduction.”

48. Banks et al., “Conceptualizing Mining Impacts”; and Bebbington, “Extractive Industries and Stunted States.”

49. Gardner et al., “Elusive Partnerships,” 174.

50. Henderson, “Corporate Social Responsibility and Tourism,” 231.

51. Utting, “Corporate Responsibility,” 378.

52. Jenkins, “Globalization, Corporate Social Responsibility and Poverty.”

53. Utting, “Corporate Responsibility.”

54. Sharp, “Corporate Social Responsibility and Development.”

55. Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine.

56. Blowfield, “Corporate Social Responsibility.”

57. Filer et al., “The Fragmentation of Responsibilities”; and Rajak, In Good Company.

58. Bebbington, “Extractive Industries and Stunted States,” 106.

59. Bebbington, “Extractive Industries and Stunted States,” 107.

60. Bebbington, “Extractive Industries and Stunted States,” 108. See also Blowfield, “Business, Corporate Responsibility and Poverty Reduction.”

61. Muthuri et al., “An Integrated Approach”; and Yakovleva et al., “Corporate Social Responsibility.”

62. Ashley and Haysom, “From Philanthropy to a Different Way.” See also Harvey, “Social Development will not Deliver.”

63. Sharp, “Corporate Social Responsibility and Development,” 221.

64. Eweje, “The Role of MNEs.”

65. See Banks et al., “Conceptualizing Mining Impacts”; Imbun, “Cannot Manage without the ‘Significant Other’”; and Visser, “Revisiting Carroll’s CSR Pyramid.”

66. Bradly, “The Business-case for Community Investment.”

67. Newell, “Citizenship, Accountability and Community,” 543.

68. Sharp, “Corporate Social Responsibility and Development.”

69. See, particularly, Bebbington “Extractive Industries and Stunted States”; Gardner et al., “Elusive Partnerships,”; Sharp, “Corporate Social Responsibility and Development”; and Utting “Corporate Responsibility.”

70. Blowfield, “Business and Development”; and Blowfield and Dolan, “Business as a Development Agent.”

71. Cowen and Shenton, Doctrines of Development, 438.

72. Blowfield, “Business and Development.”

73. See Bebbington, “Extractive Industries and Stunted States”; Frynas, “The False Developmental Promise of Corporate Social Responsibility”; and Shever, “Engendering the Company.”

74. Bebbington, “Extractive Industries and Stunted States.”

75. Blowfield, “Business, Corporate Responsibility and Poverty Reduction.”

76. See Kapelus, “Mining, Corporate Social Responsibility and the ‘Community’.”

77. Banks, “Mining, Social Change and Corporate Social Responsibility.”

78. Groves and Hinton, “The Complexity of Inclusive Aid.”

79. Mauss, The Gift.

80. Kowalski, “The Gift.”

81. Gardner et al., “Elusive Partnerships,” 174.

82. Eweje, “Multinational Oil Companies’ CSR Initiatives.”

83. Anderson et al., “Time to Listen,” 2.

84. Rajak, In Good Company.

85. Harvey, “Social Development will not Deliver.”

86. See also Ashley and Haysom, “From Philanthropy to a Different Way”; Bebbington, “Extractive Industries and Stunted States”; Frynas, “The False Developmental Promise”; and Yakovleva et al., “Corporate Social Responsibility.”

87. Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory.

88. Long, Development Sociology.

89. Ibid.

90. Ibid., 272.

91. Lie, “Post-development Theory,” 132.

92. Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory, 151.

93. Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory, 3.

94. Long, Development Sociology, 50.

95. Strathern, Gender of the Gift; and Long, Development Sociology.

96. Banks, “Mining, Social Change and Corporate Social Responsibility”; Bebbington, “Extractive Industries and Stunted States”; Rajak, In Good Company; Scheyvens and Russell, Sharing the Riches of Tourism; and Scheyvens, Tourism and Poverty.

97. Sharp, “Corporate Social Responsibility and Development,” 221.

98. Idemudia, “Corporate Social Responsibility”; Blowfield and Frynas, “Setting New Agendas”; Frynas, “Corporate Social Responsibility”; and Merino and Valor, “The Potential of Corporate Social Responsibility.”

99. Prieto-Carrón et al., “Critical Perspectives on CSR and Development,” 987.

100. See ICMM, Approaches to Understanding Development Outcomes.

101. Sharp, “Corporate Social Responsibility and Development.”