Corporate Citizenship as a social phenomena spans a growing body of
corporate initiatives, nascent policy frameworks, and global civil society action.
Corporate engagement with fragile states, and other situations identified as
contexts of conflict and/or weak governance, is the subject of scholarly and
practitioner research by those with an interest in Corporate Citizenship. In this
thesis I represent the corporation as a legal entity with significant political and
socio-economic impacts. Responsibility for these impacts is the subject of
ongoing social critique and contest. I consider the corporate form as a site of
broad protest at the environmental devastation and social dislocation that has
accompanied the globalisation and intensification of neo-liberal economic
activity. My analytic focus is the range of social processes involving actors from
the private, civil and political sphere, through which understandings of
responsible, potentially 'constructive' corporate engagement in fragile states are
created, contested and transformed. Further, efforts to embed Corporate
Citizenship as the normative basis for global business practice broadly reflect
aspirations for greater social justice. In identifying and describing intentions,
aspirations and forms of corporate engagement in fragile states, and the social
process through which these change, I critically examine the discourses of
development, security and governance which underpin Corporate Citizenship
efforts.
In this thesis I offer a grounded theory of Corporate Citizenship in Fragile
States I have developed through an empirical case study of the oil and gas
industry in Myanmar (Burma). Working within a social constructivist perspective
in the grounded theory research tradition, I have employed an iterative analytic
process to develop the theory presented. In this process the sampling of data was
undertaken to challenge and develop concepts in the emerging theory, concepts
identified using a method of constant comparison within and between sets of data.
I continued these concurrent processes of data-collection, analysis and theoretical
development until I judged the theory to be a sufficiently complete description of
the focus of inquiry. A total of seven broad sets of data informed the
development of the theory presented. These datasets include over a hundred
interviews in seven countries with stakeholders in three joint-venture offshore
exploration and production projects in Myanmar (Burma) undertaken from July
2006 to August 2009. The datasets also draw from an extensive body of corporate
and advocacy group publications regarding foreign investment in Myanmar, along
with other secondary data sources.
In this inquiry I have explored the multiple interactions between corporate,
state and civil society actors through which understandings of 'responsible'
corporate engagement in Myanmar are created, enacted and transformed. I have
identified and conceptualised four social processes at work in these interactions,
which I describe in the grounded theories of:
(1) Commercial Diplomacy (describing the use of enterprise as a conduit
for foreign policy by states, particularly as it relates to 'ethical' business
activity)
(2) Stakeholder Activism (critiquing the aims and strategies of
transnational civil society organisations who advocate for 'responsible'
corporate engagement)
(3) Corporate Engagement (explaining variation in the motivations and
terms of corporate engagement, specifically different forms of divestment
or engagement, as strategic responses to stakeholder activism, commercial
diplomacy and other factors which influence the enterprise context)
(4) Constructive Corporate Engagement (a conceptual framework,
grounded in multiple stakeholder-views and drawing from the
international development discourses of state fragility and human security,
for considering the potentially constructive impacts of corporate
engagement).
Working within and between these four theories, I generated an overarching
grounded theory of (5) Corporate Citizenship in Fragile States. From these
theories I offer a critical analysis of Corporate Citizenship as the normative basis
for a new articulation between the economic, social and political spheres in
pursuit of a more equitable global order.
