28 June 2006

GPPi invited to present on CSR at Ghana conference

GPPi was chosen to contribute a paper to the conference on 'Is Corporate Citizenship Making a Difference?' to be held in Accra, Ghana from 21-22 November 2006. The symposium is hosted by the United Nations Global Compact, the UNISA Centre for Corporate Citizenship, and the Lindenberg Center for Global Citizenship. GPPi Associate Director Thorsten Benner and GPPi fellow Ricardo Soares De Oliveira will present a paper on "Reformist vs. realpolitik partnerships and the future of CSR: Lessons from the oil and diamond sectors in Africa."

 

The paper seeks to shed new light on the debate on partnerships. It argues that much of the recent work on CSR has concentrated on multi-stakeholder partnerships in which business, NGOs and the public sector collaborate to achieve sustainable development and good governance goals. By focussing on the relative merits of these reformist partnerships, the research has mostly overlooked the persistence of a much older type of partnership: realpolitik partnerships between multinational corporations, host states and often international banks and international organizations which often help to perpetuate bad governance outcomes. A pressing question for researchers and policy-makers alike is under which conditions reformist partnerships can seriously threaten and even supplant realpolitik partnerships. The paper compares lessons from the oil and diamond sectors in Africa to present some preliminary answers.

 

For more information on the symposium see http://www.unisa.ac.za/Default.asp?Cmd=ViewContent&ContentID=18765.

 

The paper will be available in October 2006. For further information please contact Thorsten Benner.

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