- Item type
- Study and report
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Publication year
- 2021
- Geographical area
- GENERAL
Over the past few decades, globalization has spread across a wide range of operations including businesses who have seen their presence expand in many countries. International businesses increasingly started operating through worldwide headquarters and many subsidiaries across different countries. Worldwide networks have not only allowed growing trade to new territories, but also increasing production capacities to different regions. As such, companies have been able to develop relationships with local communities, allowing them to benefit from local savoir-faire and rare resources. Whilst those practices were highly criticized when companies started developing their international presence, with accusations of exploitation and lack of ethics, significant progress has been made as new protective legislations have appeared.
In parallel, there is today a growing pressure on international businesses to comply with a number of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards focusing both on environmental issues and those of ethical behavior. This is where the question of the impact an organization can have on a local community arises. By partnering up with local communities for business purposes initially, some companies manage to help locals construct entire economic ecosystems and bring significant advancements to their daily lives. In some countries, the implication of global companies has allowed significant sanitary improvements to the extent that children life expectancies have improved for example. While many of those initiatives have arisen quite recently, small amounts of research have gone in-depth to try and analyze the actual potential impacts international corporations can have on local communities. The proposed research will to answer this question: How do international businesses provide sustainable social, sanitary and economic advancements by partnering with local communities?
