Stakeholder Management for social License to Operate: Importance of community participation and planning in CSR. Authors: Joydeep Sen, Jhimly Baruah

#Stakeholder management is a critical component in successful completion of any project, activity and has overwhelming influence in social license to operate. Identification, analyzing and managing the expectations of stakeholders are some of the important role expected from CSR team. Hence, one of the main activities of the CSR teams is to design programmes which are focused on stakeholders. It has been observed that often teams have a more reactive than a proactive approach to stakeholder management. Such an approach benefits few influential stakeholders but excludes most needy and socio-economically vulnerable sections of the community. This approach of helping few and excluding majority in most cases is not a sustainable approach. In most cases this approach is counterproductive resulting in powerful influential stakeholder becoming more powerful and they start believing that they have the authority to arm twist and demand ransom from companies with CSR programmes. As a result, despite huge investment in CSR activities there are increasing discontent, disruptions of work by local communities and frequent community unrest.

It behooves well for companies to recognize this and redefine the traditional approach to stakeholder management and make it more inclusive. What is required is a balanced and strategic approach to ensure proactive stakeholder management. Below are some of the points suggested to make the stakeholder management sustainable and provide cushion for business to operate with less disruption.

Participatory planning in CSR activities in stakeholder analysis: Understanding stakeholders including relevant information on their stakes such as interest, rights (legal, regulatory and moral), ownership, knowledge, skills and contribution helps in stakeholder management. Traditionally companies depend on individuals to provide the information which can help in stakeholder management. These individuals can be District Magistrates, influential vendors, Panchayat leaders, company staff, local administrative officials etc. However, dependency on individuals can result in biases and the information for stakeholder analysis will be based on individual’s perception.

In order to reduce the bias and have an inclusive stakeholder analysis, identification and stakeholder management it is important to have a participatory planning approach for CSR activities. The time tested approach of PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal)* where the focus is on process and outcome rather than on output, is an enabling and empowering tool. Some of the tools which will be helpful in stakeholder analysis are timeline, social map, resource map, transact walk etc. These tools help to trace the history, societal intricacies, and resources availability and map the influencers as well as those who are deprived. Participatory planning would help in designing CSR programmes which are based on the local needs, resources, community’s requirements and opportunities to tap government programmes and schemes.

Nurturing community advocates: In this approach of participatory planning of CSR programmes community members would identify stakeholders, leaders, resources and timelines. Their involved from the beginning throughout the implementation process and at every stage will help in increasing the ownership of the community and foster their accountability for CSR programmes being implemented.. This in turn will lead to nurturing of community members as advocate of the CSR programmes when there is negative publicity or when different stakeholders ask for accountability of CSR programmes during public hearing.

Promote community level/based institution/organization (CBO) not individual stakeholder Community Based Organizations like women groups, youth groups, farmers groups have a strong influence at local/village level. Therefore, it is important to invest time, skill, knowledge and grants in these institutions. Strengthening CBOs are necessary to build collective leadership, accountability and ownership of the local issues. This will also help to reduce the influence of individual stakeholder and collective authority will prevail. This is a more inclusive and equitable approach and benefits of CSR can be distributed among the community and not among individuals. Rules and regulation for CSR project implementation can be discussed, debated and agreed with CBOs thus taking into consideration their opinions and perspectives.

Another aspect in this approach is to nurture leaders among various CBOs and create a sense of collective leadership which has a say in CSR activities. . In this way, CSR teams will have more allies as stakeholders with whom business discussions such as business expectations from community, cons of business disruption and positive approach to resolving conflict can be deducted. This will also provide local intelligence and forewarning of any disgruntlement among the communities towards the business approach. Therefore, a proactive engagement with CBO/s will help in creating an enabling environment with ease of finding mutually agreeable solution to challenges in implementation and mitigating community level conflicts.

In summary, participatory process in stakeholder management is a powerful tool for CSR implementers to design, develop and implement CSR programmes which are championed by stakeholders and not just led by the CSR teams. This approach of involvement of stakeholder needs to be tested by CSR practitioners to make CSR programmes more equitable and sustainable.  

#stakeholder #CSR #sociallicencetoopperate

·        Propounded by Robert Chambers, PRA is a global best practice which has been proven successful at the international level and has been applied extensively by Development organizations/ Non Government organizations in India ,