Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability of Local Community: A Case Study of the Transnational Project in China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

Zhe Sun, Kumar Jai and Liang Zhao
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Zhe Sun: Centre for China Public Sector Economy Research, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Kumar Jai: School of International & Public Affairs, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Liang Zhao: School of Business and Law, University of Agder, 4630 Kristiansand, Norway

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 22, 1-18

Abstract: While achieving great benefits, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has triggered potential problems between the transnational projects and local communities in the participant countries. However, there is still a knowledge gap on how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is adopted, and how CSR affects the local community. Based on a context of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), this research exploits a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to fill the gap. It finds that the CSR activities in the CPEC project are initiated by the long-term CSR initiative. Organized by the professional CSR foundation in an autonomous environment, the panoramic CSR activities are governed in a discretionary way and focus exclusively on the sustainability of the local community. Education, health-care, environment, and employment improve greatly after the implementation of the CPEC project. Theoretically, this research not only provides new insights into CSR research by taking an under-studied context of CPEC into study, but also proposes a mechanism of how CSR leads to the sustainability of local community by building a CSR-sustainability framework.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; sustainability; local community; China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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