The Philanthropic CSR is old model of Community engagement

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.