Citizenship, accountability and community: the limits of the CSR agenda

By P. Newell. 2005

372 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The focus of this article on the relationship between companies and local communities derives from a concern that many accounts of corporate responsibility and citizenship overlook this relationship—in particular, relations with poorer communities—as part of a general neglect of the developmental implications of the CSR agenda. Communities are engaging with corporations more routinely now than previously, a trend fostered by the lowering of barriers to trade through global trade accords, attempts to strengthen the rights of foreign investors and broader processes of national liberalization across many parts of the developing world. Increasingly they do so in ways that assume global significance because of new forms of global organizing and the influence of media and telecommunications, which expose companies’ activities to greater scrutiny, as well as the nature of the claims companies themselves now make about their global operations. While there is a long history of firms in the extractive and plantation sectors, being engaged in conflicts and negotiations with communities, these new factors have exposed many more sectors and regions to these political dynamics. It is often assumed that mechanisms for improving the social and environmental conduct of firms, such as codes of conduct, ethical trading initiatives and certification schemes, provide new forms of protection to poorer groups. However, questions are being asked about the extent and effectiveness of such protection, arising from concerns over whether these tools are sufficiently geared towards the needs of the very poorest workers. Similar anxieties attach to the lack of effective international and national regulation of the private sector, and the inaccessibility and underdevelopment of mechanisms of redress and company liability. 1 The purpose of this article is to add some clarity to the discussion about for whom CSR works and under what conditions.

Subfields: Building and Construction, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/96f69a9b8cedd22493b229c8180d281d1bc2508e

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In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

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Citations in the corpus

Corporate social responsibility and developing countries (2011, background): “The fi rst focuses on contextual analysis of CSR with a view to determine the potentials and limitations of CSR policies and practices in the South (Lund-Thomsen, 2005; Newell, 2005).”
Industrial Clusters and Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries: What We Know, What We do not Know, and What We Need to Know (2016, positive): “In countries with a tradition of multiparty democracy, including regular elections and institutionalized, tripartite dialogue, cluster-based firms should be more likely to engage in institutionalized forms of dialogue with employees and nearby communities about CSR issues (see also Newell, 2005).”
Social licence and mining: A critical perspective (2013, background): “Without the requisite knowledge, skills and resources, poorer and marginalised groups can be excluded from meaningful participation in development decisions (Newell, 2005).”
Transnational power and translocal governance: The politics of corporate responsibility (2018, background): “Discourses of responsibility and corporate citizenship obscure the power of business in setting the CSR agenda while notions of accountability demand a more explicit acknowledgement of the effects of asymmetrical power relations (Newell, 2005).”
Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries as an Emerging Field of Study (2018, neutral): “…2002b) Limitations of national policies and legislation in the context of contracted governments (Abdalla et al. 2013; Boudier and Bensebaa 2011; Newell 2005; Rahim 2013; Rahim and Alam 2014; Raufflet 2009) Political, brutal regimes and country risk conditions (Griesse 2007a; Holliday 2005;…”
Corporate Innovation and Sustainable Community Development in Developing Countries (2012, background): “…shifting consumption patterns, population explosion,5 industrialization, environmental degradation, all of which present new social, political, and economic challenges for companies and their local communities (see Canel et al., 2010) and potentially undermine community development (Newell, 2005).”
An Institution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Multi-National Corporations (MNCs): Form and Implications (2012, methodology): “Supported by suggestions that ‘CSR tools’ used by business did not function effectively outside Western countries (Kaufman et al., 2004; Newell, 2005), these contributions raise important questions about the meaning of CSR and its applicability in different cultural contexts.”