Exploring political corporate social responsibility : a case study in Australian mining

Abstract

This thesis presents a critique of Scherer and Palazzo's (2011) political corporate social responsibility framework (PCSR). This critique is based on a single exploratory case study of an Australian mining company and its relationships with government and community stakeholders. More specifically, this research investigates the extent to which the PCSR framework proposed by Scherer and Palazzo (2011) is adequate to explain the activities of the company in question, and the dynamics with its key stakeholders. The original contribution to knowledge of this thesis is an extended PCSR framework that accounts for civil society perspectives and stakeholder power relations. The case study selected involved a highly politicised mine extension case for a multi-national company operating in Australia. This case was selected for its theoretical relevance as the company had a long and ongoing history of corporate social responsibility. The case study analysed extensive secondary data including media reports, company policy and NGO documentation to produce a timeline of events. In-depth semi-structured interviews were the primary sources of data; these were triangulated with direct observation of community meetings and government hearings. The data were used to produce a thick description of PCSR in action in an Australian mining context. The themes that emerged from data analysis indicated that PCSR as practised in the case study, departs from the theoretical assumptions of the Scherer and Palazzo (2011) framework. While the framework proved useful in categorising macro-level activity related to PCSR, it was unable to fully account for the roles of actors and the impacts of their activities under PCSR at the local level. The analytical framework also did not account for the impacts of PCSR on power roles of stakeholders, despite being a central feature of the theory underpinning PCSR (Habermas 1996). Results indicated the need for an extension to Scherer and Palazzo's (2011) framework. As a result, this study makes two key contributions to the PCSR research. First, this study conceptualises a model for the role of power within stakeholder deliberation, and second, it offers an extension to the framework of Scherer and Palazzo (2011) that accounts for civil society perspectives. The study concludes by considering directions for future research.

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English