Corporate activities have impacts on different groups across societies, and businesses therefore have different sets of responsibilities to these groups. These are increasingly being addressed through corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate community development (CCD) initiatives, and there is now a wide body of literature that highlights the value of CSR for business. However, less attention has been paid to understanding the impacts of these activities from the perspective of communities.This paper "reverses the lens" to explore these community perspectives. We argue that communities see and evaluate CSR/CCD in terms of the broader immanent effects of the corporate presence rather than simply the intentional CSR programs and prioritize relationships over material outcomes. We outline an agenda for corporations that begins with the realization that core business practices can impact profoundly on long-term community development and that effective contributions require corporations to "embrace chaos" and to develop the types of relationships that foreground community goals and priorities.
Medical voluntourism, where health professionals travel to another country to provide medical services is a growing, but under-researched phenomenon. This article, based on qualitative research with medical voluntourists in Honduras, uses Scheyven’s (2001) continuum of voluntourism to explore the complexities of medical voluntourism. The research found that while ostensibly ‘helpful’, volunteer tourism in Honduras is often harmful, entrenching paternalism and inequitable relationships; and that many voluntourists are ignorant of the underlying power and privilege issues inherent in voluntourism. While there are examples of volunteer tourism as both educational and as a form of social action, the article argues that these are not natural consequences of voluntourism but must be nurtured. As such this article highlights some implications for practice, noting that addressing the paternalism inherent in much medical voluntourism requires an honest appraisal of the benefits and harm of voluntourism by sending and host organizations, education and consciousness-raising amongst volunteers, and long-term relationship building.
Growth in the South Pacific tourism industry along with rising demand for mineral resources has led to increasing numbers of multinational corporations operating across the Pacific, particularly in the tourism and mining sectors. Multinational hotels and large-scale mining activities are now frequently located near communities with high development demands, and extractive industries are additionally found in very remote and rural locations. Both hotels and mines rely on local communities for access to resources and have an impact on the well-being of these communities through their presence and activities. In contexts where development needs are high, and where governments may fail to provide services, corporations face increasing demands for both philanthropic contributions and long-term service provision (Hughes and Scheyvens 2016). Thus many businesses now realize that it is in their own interests to look after their host communities, both because this enhances their reputation as an ethical business (Epler Wood and Leray 2005) and because it can decrease the risk of disruption to business operations caused by local communities (Kapelus 2002; Eweje 2007;Kalisch 2002).In addition, companies operating in the Pacific usually have formal obligations to the landowning communities whose land they lease for resource extraction, tourism, or other purposes. This obligation is significant in relation to discussions of well-being as, typically, local communities do not view their land within the narrow frame of an economic "resource."the contemporary pacific • 31:1 (2019)
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