Private Sector and Corporate Social Responsibility: Understandings and Perspectives of Different Stakeholders. Case study of a Mining Company in Laos

Corporations play a significant role in social and economical development globally. They play a significant role in supporting and boosting economic growth and local development as they provide job opportunities, contribute to infrastructure development, and generate income and wealth in societies. However, corporations also bring some negative impacts. Corporations, in particular those in extractive industries, can create a wide range of harmful effects and hazards to human health and livelihoods as well as to the environment. The negative impacts have attracted significant attention from related parties and prompted corporations to take a great deal of care in managing their impacts. As a result, companies are trying to improve their business strategies and corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of these strategies by which companies try to differentiate themselves from others and to mitigate their negative impacts. CSR has gradually emerged over many decades and recently became a focus of discussion among businesses and other stakeholders. However, the consensus on the definition of CSR is still limited. Various definitions of CSR have been created based on the interests, perspectives and expectations of different organisations. This research explores the different understandings and perspectives of different groups of people around the way private sector is implementing CSR in Lao PDR, focusing on a foreign mining company as the case study. The research will also identify how these perspectives and expectations impact the strategies of CSR, especially regarding to rural development and poverty reduction in Laos. The results of this thesis show that CSR is relatively a new concept in Laos but it is increasingly significant with the government and businesses themselves both paying more attention to CSR concerns. There is still unclear and common understanding among key stakeholders namely, government, business and other related stakeholders such as communities and other organisations. Fulfilling the legal obligations seems to be sufficient for the business and the government to claim that they are CSR companies while the community and other organisations expect corporations to do more than what only in the contract. In order to promote and encourage CSR to be effective and efficient, mutual understanding needs to be created, negotiated and agreed among keys stakeholders