Heading towards the end, we now return to the research questions of this thesis: can CSR work as a catalyst for grounding Norwegian companies to local communities in Indonesia, and is the CSR law of Indonesia is part of a “re-territorialisation” tendency in an ever-globalising world? The motivation behind the CSR law is said to be to create a harmonious relationship between companies and local communities in Indonesia. As the power play behind the law shows us, there is also a clear motivation to ensure resource transfer from private companies to local activities, be it geared towards NGOs or as substitute to local public services.
As I have argued in the previous empirical chapters, the motivation behind the CSR activities of Norwegian companies is more geared towards self-serving objectives: pleasing of primary stakeholders in order to safeguard present and future activities, progress and profits of the company. Not to say that companies claiming to have “the poor and needy” as the single target of their CSR activities are hiding their motives, but only to underscore that CSR activities serve multiple purposes, and that a focus on local communities is vital in order to please other primary stakeholders. How is this so?
CSR activities conducted by companies with primary stakeholder management towards government bodies underscore local communities as target groups, but the resource transfer is as much an answer to government requirements and regulations, and thus compulsory for many of the companies in my sample. Similarly, CSR programs by companies with
stakeholder management towards workers are geared towards the local communities and the workers themselves, but is in reality dealing with expectations from local authorities, unions and workers, and CSR activities conducted by companies with client-oriented stakeholder management are to a lesser extent communicating local community support as targets, but at the same time serves the interests of primary client stakeholders.
I will argue that the recipients of the CSR resource transfers are not part of the true power play of stakeholders and firm (maybe with the exception of Company C workers). They are more or less passive bystanders, but anyhow essential to the grounding of the companies, because the stakeholders of the Norwegian companies share a common interest: the support and wellbeing of local communities (see figure 12 and 13 below).
“By the CSR programs, we are expecting that we will have a license to operate from the local community. To us, CSR is a social investment strategy” (Company B, interview 01.11.11).
It is therefore tempting to develop a revised stakeholder triangulation based on Fassin’s (2008, see figure 3, p. 33), introducing the “Beneficiary” as a new category in the middle of the triangle, a more or less passive bystander not truly taking part in the power play of stakeholders, but all the same the beneficiary of the same power play, the centre of attention when companies are communicating about their CSR activities, and the trigger of company grounding and corporate sense of place – corporate citizenship.
In this way, the CSR activities and stakeholder management become truly networked concepts, where pooling of power and influence through more or less conscious networking between stakeholders becomes a resource for achieving diverse ends (Allen 1997, Amin and Thrift 1994). In order to maintain and nurture stakeholder networks of actors with extensive self-interests, there materialise certain groups of beneficiaries in the wake of the power play between the stakeholders and the companies (see figure 11). This phenomenon can be said to be something akin to a result of an assemblage (De Landa 2006) of more or less powerful agents in a location acting as grounding facilitators around the company. Government institutions, workers and clients all contribute to the grounding of the company into its operational area, and thus account for a (re)-territorialisation of international capital, here represented by Norwegian companies. This networked grounding influence can be visualised by a modification of Fassin’s stakeholder triangulation, where the beneficiary being the common denominator of the company stakeholders:
Here, the primary stakeholders of a company issue different kinds of claims of social
investments in local communities. From the company side, CSR activities are geared towards the beneficiaries, but the real power play and motivation behind the activities is found
revolving around the beneficiary, involving the most important stakeholders of the Norwegian companies. If we look at three examples from my sample, we can identify this phenomenon quite clear. For Company B, the primary stakeholders comprise of local government
(stakeholder), upstream regulatory body BP Migas (Stakewatcher) and the national
government (stakekeeper). All these three have different stakeholders, which they in their turn seek to manage in different ways. If we try to make a simplified model of this complex, we find that local communities as either their primary stakeholder, or their primary stakeholder’s stakeholder:
Figure 13: Common denominator and interest (own analysis)
In this way, we are able to assume why the local communities can be the recipients and beneficiaries of stakeholder management of the Norwegian companies despite not being a primary stakeholder. We might assume that the shortest way to the hearts of all primary stakeholders in this example is through the local communities (being the primary interest of local governments). Thus, the beneficiaries of the CSR activities of Company B are the local communities. They are not part of the primary stakeholder pool or take active part in the power play around the company; they are recipients due to the vested interests of other key stakeholders. The two other companies’ stakeholder triangulations follow a similar pattern, though with a simpler stakeholder mix:
Figure 14: Stakeholder triangulation of three companies (own analysis)
For Company C, local communities are the common interest of all its primary stakeholders:
workers, unions and local government. Likewise, for a subcontractor like Company G, local communities are a common interest for all primary stakeholders. The company needs to comply with claims of socialisation from its client, who in its turn is bound by its stakeholders to perform CSR as part of their tender in the area. Company G, by contrast, has only a short-term contract, so the level of grounding effect is low (G = 0,6).