ABSTRACT
Communities expect that a company's presence will benefit some people directly and all people in the communities indirectly that is, they expect that individuals will get jobs or contracts or compensation payments that will be of direct benefit to them. Many local communities also report that they benefit from a sense of connectedness to the outside world when an international company locates in their area. Communities value the intangible benefits from a company's presence as well as the tangible benefits. When a community sees that a company distributes its benefits unfairly, this contributes to negative and deteriorating company-community relations. The benefits distribution issues constitute the first category through which company operations can have a negative impact. A right approach to benefits distribution is based on the principle of fairness. Fairness refers to how people in communities perceive the distribution of benefits and their share of these.
