Normative guidelines for addressing project-induced displacement and resettlement have been successful in coercing companies and practitioners to comply with international standards and local requirements. However, good practice has not always been effectively implemented, leading to reduced social wellbeing of people in local communities. We assess how the reciprocal relationships between institutional norms and practitioners’ situated perspectives about company-community interactions can improve social management practice. Drawing on Hajer and Versteeg’s method of environmental discourse analysis, discussions and storylines about a mining project in Mpumalanga in South Africa were assessed against contextualised discursive conventions in the mining industry. It was found that practitioners learn to manipulate legislative requirements, which ultimately perpetuates the impoverishment of project affected communities. The question is not whether or not practitioners understand the requirements of environmental and social management, but the extent to which such understandings are manipulated for corporate gain as opposed to social good. We consider practitioner rationalities about the purpose and function of environmental and social management, and how it is implemented. We suggest that practitioners and companies should construct positive aspirational identity perspectives about social management that would transcend from their current limited view (that achieving minimum compliance is sufficient) to aspiring to achieve better social development outcomes for all, especially the most disadvantaged. This requires a genuine commitment to obtaining and maintaining a social licence to operate, perspective transformation, a commitment to inclusiveness, and increased capacity for critical reflection.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying corporate social responsibility (CSR) factors which trigger consumers’ scrutiny of corporate behavior in the purchasing experience. There is more focus on how the direct effects of CSR can predict consumer behavior than the expression of value-based purchasing habits, especially in relation to how the multidimensionality of consumers’ expectations of CSR indirectly informs such behavior. Design/methodology/approach Mall-intercept survey interviews were conducted with 411 shoppers across five shopping malls in South Africa. Data were based on the emotional, social and functional values consumers derive from the purchasing experience vis-à-vis economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic expectations of CSR and analyzed using the path analysis technique of structural equation modeling. Findings It was found that the relationship between consumers’ sense of value and purchasing behavior is mediated by perceived fulfillment of legal expectations of CSR (a primary redressing tool). Conversely, the fulfillment of ethical and economic CSR expectations (secondary redressing tools) serves as moderators of the relationship. Research limitations/implications The benefit of approaching corporate communication from a value-based perspective is a proactive risk mitigation strategy. Consumers’ sense of value in the purchasing experience is triggered by companies’ adherence to institutionalized law on corporate behavior and reinforced by compliance to code of ethics and financial viability. Practical implications This study offers insights for understanding how consumers redress corporate misconduct during crisis through the buying experience and explains how such understanding can be used to better predict and manage crisis communication. Social implications The findings of this study suggest that CSR and corporate communication practices should be informed by the taken-for-granted assumptions which underpin espoused consumer values, where negligence of unspoken patterns of CSR-based consumer behavior could signal a crisis risk. Originality/value This study offers a model which demonstrates for the first time that consumers implicitly utilize CSR to redress corporate misconduct in the purchasing experience.
This paper investigates the cultural diversity between Africans and Indians in Durban, South Africa, based on marketing communication. While cross-cultural marketing research has been concentrated on Western and Eastern societies, there is a lack of such research in Africa. The study examines the cultural values of Africans and Indians based on the individualism-collectivism cultural dimension, adapted to account for marketing communication-specific cultural values (MCSCV). The study was a quantitative study which used judgmental sampling technique to recruit subjects and analysed data using the t-test. Surveys were completed by 283 African and 92 Indian respondents at the main shopping malls in two of Durban’s renowned African and Indian townships viz. Umlazi and Chatsworth, respectively. The findings of the study revealed that Indian respondents showed more individualistic tendencies toward marketing communication, as compared to their African counterparts. The study highlights that target markets’ indigenous cultural values may not necessarily serve as predictors for market segmentation. The study further shows that directing stereotypical marketing communication strategies toward culturally homogeneous markets based on indigenous cultural dispositions, without investigating the compatibility of both cultural contexts, can be deleterious. The paper builds on current thinking in cross-cultural marketing literature and develops an orientation of MCSCV.
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