ABSTRACT
This chapter synthesises the ideas presented in this book on the intersections between corporate social responsibility, public relations and community development within the context of six countries in the Southeast Asian region.
When we began this project, we were operating on assumptions based on our knowledge as communication scholars and our life experience as Asian migrants in developed countries. On one hand, our own ethnic and racial backgrounds provided a nuanced view of the power relationships between corporates, governments at both national and local levels, civil society and local community residents. On the other hand, our ‘Westernized’ view of the world has also influenced our ways of interpreting what we had seen, heard and experienced during our field work.
The emerging economies of Southeast Asia provided a valuable tableau to examining how Western constructs such as CSR and PR may in fact have their roots in eastern philosophies. Our integration of the international and community development, and development communication literature, also enabled a ‘grassroots lens’ to community engagement in non-urban contexts.
We envisaged a book that was thematic, with the assumption that the practice of CSR and PR in Southeast Asia will have commonalities that cut across geographical and cultural lines. Actually, there are and we will discuss some of the various points of cohesion in this chapter. However, upon writing up our results we realized that each country’s interpretation and enactment of CSR and PR need to be considered within the context of their history, politics, culture, economics, media systems and technology. Moreover, a country’s susceptibility for natural disasters also plays a part in how CSR is enacted. In this regard, we summarize the findings of this research through a series of narratives gleaned from the voices of the multiple stakeholders we interviewed during our field work.
In many cases, we observed hope and positive transformations in communities as they exercised their ‘power of community’ in negotiating with corporate representatives. We heard how they leveraged their ability to provide a ‘social license’ to gain certain concessions with the private sector. We also found how corporations are employing former NGO workers to head their community relations and CSR departments.
This chapter will first provide general comments about the findings of the research, identifying key narratives emerging from the data. We will then discuss these findings within the context of the theoretical frameworks guiding this book namely, postcolonial and the critical–cultural approaches. We also propose a model by which to examine corporate social responsibility and public relations within the Southeast Asian context.
