Conventionally, many
researches on community engagement and transformation are expressed on
corporate social responsibility grounds. These researches consider corporate
social responsibility as ethical transformation that organizations need to do
as a way of returning back part of the profit to the community. Thus many
organizations engage with philanthropic initiatives such as health, education
and housing just to mention a few. Examples of such researches are (Hamann,
2004; Esteves & Barclay, 2011, Hartmann, 2011).
The motive behind this
engagement is mostly to secure a licence to operate in the community where the
organizations operate and to be relevant in the social context by doing the
right things to the community rather than meeting the shareholders and growth
of the company interests alone. Moreover this type of engagement is easy to
quantify, enhances organization legitimacy, brings trust with the community in
which organization operates and gives organizations competitive advantage than
those organizations that don’t do so (Bowen, et al, 2010)
Whereas these
researches have been advocating the significance of CSR theories, there has
been so much discontentment and dissatisfaction on the part of communities
where organizations (MNCs) operate. The discontentment is always expressed in
the form of riots and strikes. The commotion results into deaths of some
members of the community at times. Example of civil commotion and deaths are
such as Marikana uprising in South Africa and Barrick Gold North Mara Mine
uprisings and killings in Tanzania.
However, the practical
results from these researches imply that the current CSR expressed in
philanthropic initiatives is inadequate and not ideal community engagement
method; further to that it proves that current CSR that goes in the name of
philanthropic initiatives is neither sustainable nor transformational in
community welfare; no wonder one can find rampant poverty, environment
degradation and discontentment among the mining communities. Fundamental
problem for dissatisfaction of the philanthropic community engagement is its
failure in producing results on community welfare, and therefore communities
feel cheated due to persistence of fundamental problems. Thus, there is a need
of linkage between organizational transformation and societal transformation to
solve these challenges.
I support Bowen et al
(2010) and his new theory on community engagement as it emphasizes on
collaborative leadership which insists on making partnership between organizations and communities that share common aim and vision. Similarly I
challenge the philanthropic engagement of community engagement as it is traditional
structure of community engagement and does not advocate win win approach which
is partnership based. Bowen et al (2010) called the current Corporate Social Responsibility
as transactional and transitional mode of community engagement; because it is
not substantive, tit for tat, easy to practice, symbolic and short term
strategy of community engagement. Moreover, it is based on occasional
interaction with the community. It does not change society welfare but talk
about changing the society welfare because it does not involve collaboration
between organizations and community in terms of mutual understanding and
agreement in addressing the real problems facing the concerned communities.
The solution should be
to engage the community differently through transformation community engagement
where there is mutual understanding and agreement with the community in
addressing the real problems facing them. This could involve sharing ownership
of the problems and vision of the solutions of the problem from the start,
rather than giving back to the community through providing information,
donating dollars, time or employee skills; as this is good strategy in gaining
and maintaining firm legitimacy to operate into the community but not to
transform the society to have a better welfare (Bowen et al, 2010).
Therefore in order to
bring community welfare sustainability and societal transformation, there
should be a win win situation between community and organizations(MNCs).In this
new paradigm, there should be equal and enduring partnership that allows equal
risk sharing and formulating solutions to real life problems with the
communities where organizations operate from the beginning of community
engagement and transformation.
