Business and Social Peace Processes: How Can Insights from Post-conflict Studies Help CSR to Address Peace and Reconciliation?

Natascha Mueller-Hirth ()
Additional contact information
Natascha Mueller-Hirth: Robert Gordon University

Chapter Chapter 8 in Corporate Social Responsibility, 2017, pp 137-153 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Private sector activities have often been linked to the fuelling of conflict and violence. At the same time, there has been growing interest in the contributions that the business sector can potentially make to peace, both from within academia (for example the ‘peace through commerce’ literature) and in the global institutional realm (for example the Business for Peace agenda). Proponents of such approaches claim that businesses have roles to play not only in contributing to growth and socio-economic development, but also in resolving or preventing conflict. But what is meant by peace? The chapter engages the insights of post-conflict scholarship in order to employ a more holistic concept of peace, arguing that sustainable peace relies on the success both of a political and a social peace process. Social peace processes involves social transformation that goes beyond the ending of violence. The chapter asks how companies’ CSR activities can actively support such social peace processes and address the specific challenges of post-conflict societies, while critically engaging with some of the discourses that are central to the recent business for peace agenda. In reviewing current examples for CSR programming in post-conflict areas, it is demonstrated that social issues around reconciliation and reconstruction are frequently neglected.

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Foreign Direct Investment; Global Compact; Social Investment; Peace Process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:csrchp:978-3-319-35083-7_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319350837

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-35083-7_8

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().