Business in Fragile Environments: Capabilities for Conflict Prevention

Abstract

While normative frameworks proscribing and prescribing company action in conflict-prone environments grow in number, both the practiceoriented and more theoretical literature have been relatively silent on the question of whether and how a company's distinctive organizational capabilities contribute to conflict risk mitigation or conflict resolution in fragile contexts. This article links the practical experience of company managers with conflict management theory to posit that organizational capabilities are a crucial explanatory variable for the gap between desired and observed company performance in fragile contexts. It models a management system for conflict prevention with empirical and theoretical referents. The model provides practitioners with useful diagnostic entry points as they work to improve company operations. At the same time, it brings together diverse conflict management perspectives on company operations in fragile environments so that future case data may be ordered and compared and further theoretical propositions developed and tested.

The changing landscape of business and conflict in fragile states

“…94 Furthermore, attempts to outsource these functions result in a kind of corporate dyspraxia, in which companies fail to act effectively even on known risks to their own security or economic interests, due to governance and management systems failures. 95 The more important disconnect between international policy and practice and business-related conflicts on the groundincluding efforts to restrain predatory international companies, to promote private-sector investment for security and develop- And yet, because of the uncertain timeline for diverse pressures to converge into crisis around business and conflict in fragile states, these developments may take on the characteristics of a so-called 'slow-onset emergency', one that does not 'emerge from a single, distinct event but one that emerges gradually over time, often based on a confluence of different events'. 104 Compared to acute crises, such slow-onset emergencies are particularly likely to be deprioritised by international actors.…”

“Us” and “them”: Corporate strategic activism, horizontal inequalities, and society's capacity to address its grand challenges

“…Implementation of such a framework for corporate strategic activism that addresses horizontal inequalities, reduces intergroup tensions, and thereby increases society's capacity to address its grand challenges—by expanding the lens for its environmental scan, auditing its own impacts within its socio‐political context, and developing a strategic plan centered on the building of sufficient coalitions for positive change—will likely require a degree and nature of external engagement in strategy development with which most companies are unfamiliar. For analysis of complex socio‐political dynamics to be effective and efficient, it must be inclusive (Ganson & Wennmann, 2016); it is the interplay of voices and perspectives in constructive conflict that provides the grist for analysis, and companies protected from the worst impacts of social tensions can have significant blind spots (Ganson, 2014). Furthermore, companies often start on the back foot with social actors who may have—well‐grounded or not—deep seated fears about corporate motives and intentions (Ganson, 2019b).…”

“…Consistent with the growing emphasis on due diligence by business in international human rights law (Ruggie, 2011), the purpose of this next step of analysis is most directly to ensure that the company “do no harm.” It also recognizes that business legitimacy for its interventions on issues of public importance can be positively rooted in business interests (Miller et al, 2019); and that, given the risks, challenges, and resources implicated for a business to successfully engage in a peace‐positive social change strategy (Anderson, 2008; Ganson, 2014), it is unlikely to develop or sustain the requisite capacities without a business nexus. Additionally, it recognizes that at the same time the company is seeking to shape the environment in which it operates, that environment may be meaningfully shaping the impacts of the company's actions, however well intended, making awareness of unintended negative consequences all the more important (Ganson, 2019b).…”

Business, Human Rights and Peace: Linking the Academic Conversation

“…As a result, BHR has a much better developed set of due diligence guidelines that are highly context dependent and specific. 130 B4P, on the other hand, has only a few empirically rooted guidance documents for companies and policy makers 131 and a wide variety of one-size-fits-all prescriptions that, in practice, often have the opposite effect. 132 BHR has similar difficulties dealing with conflict zones, as some scholars 133 have noted that the focus on due diligence among MNCs has led to their being less focused on the different ways they impact conflict zones by their presence.…”