Reversing the lens: Why corporate social responsibility is not community development

Abstract

Corporate activities have impacts on different groups across societies, and businesses therefore have different sets of responsibilities to these groups. These are increasingly being addressed through corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate community development (CCD) initiatives, and there is now a wide body of literature that highlights the value of CSR for business. However, less attention has been paid to understanding the impacts of these activities from the perspective of communities.This paper "reverses the lens" to explore these community perspectives. We argue that communities see and evaluate CSR/CCD in terms of the broader immanent effects of the corporate presence rather than simply the intentional CSR programs and prioritize relationships over material outcomes. We outline an agenda for corporations that begins with the realization that core business practices can impact profoundly on long-term community development and that effective contributions require corporations to "embrace chaos" and to develop the types of relationships that foreground community goals and priorities.

Challenges to Implementing Socially-Sustainable Community Development in Oil Palm and Forestry Operations in Indonesia

“…Companies have contributed to the resolution of societal problems and to development opportunities. Current thinking in CSR is based on the understanding that business and society are intertwined in ways that exceed a simple economic relationship [88]. This highlights the importance of companies acting responsibly in their operations [26].…”

Gestão De Recursos Humanos Sustentável E Responsabilidade Socioambiental: Uma Agenda Para Debates

“…This first proposition starts from the idea that the legitimacy of HRM as a historically consolidated knowledge area is associated with the search for sustainability by managing relations between people. This requires reevaluating theoretical frameworks in order to overcome their inconsistencies (Caldas, Tonelli, & Braga, 2011;Delbridge, Hauptmeier, & Sengupta, 2011;McLennan & Banks, 2019). Making sure that "relations between people" are at the center of HRM is more appropriate than accepting unitarism, since Management field incorrectly assumes that systematically controlling social relations is possible (Grey, 2004).…”

Public health and corporate social responsibility: exploratory study on pharmaceutical companies in an emerging market

“…Other researchers believe that the local community evaluates companies' CSR practices in terms of their broad effects and not based on the CSR practices transposed into intentional programs designed by corporate management to obtain financial results [14,15]. However, in the literature, few researchers focus their studies on CSR analysis exclusively [16] while most focus on drug prices and licensing [17,18] or on evaluating specific CSR activities [19,20].…”