Some troubling precedents get established in the name of CSR. For instance, in Guinea, an impoverished semi-dictatorship in Africa, Canada's Rio Tinto Alcan joined with the United Nations Development Programme to fund a project "to strengthen the planning capacity of elected officials and civil servants" in a region where the company is partnering in bauxite mining with the government. Put aside the question of whether it is up to corporations to help teach public administration in developing countries. Once they are, can they do it in anything but a self-interested manner?
Guinea, where Alcan has operated for decades, is estimated to hold between a quarter and a third of the world's bauxite, the raw mineral from which aluminum is refined. The former French colony remains near the bottom of Transparency International's rankings of world's most corrupt nations—168th out of 179. Its president, Lasana Conté, heads a tiny military and political elite that has gotten rich off the country's resources while most of Guinea's nine million inhabitants live in abject poverty. During a general strike in early 2007, the military shot down scores of protesters.
Rio Tinto Alcan's participation in the UN project is supposed to aid local officials in drawing up plans aimed at helping the country attain the UN Millennium Development Goals on reducing global poverty. The company will also "help elected officials identify financial partners that can provide rural communities with assistance in implementing their plans in areas such as health, education and income-generating activities." It all sounds laudable enough. But the initiatives also appear to ensure Conté's grip on power and provide Alcan with a measure of political stability, both of which are key to its continued access to a vital raw material.
It could be worse, of course. Multinationals are more accountable than ever regarding their activities in developing nations. But it could be better, too—or at least more transparent—were elected governments to reseize the initiative. It's a cop-out to use the globalization argument as a pretext for inaction. Appealing to the "enlightened self-interest" of multinationals is a poor substitute for good policy. Many corporations might even welcome more guidance—even binding rules—from governments regarding their broader social and environmental obligations.
Until they exist, we have a right to know which corporations are trying to avoid government regulation—and how. The bare-bones requirements of Canada's lobby registry are hardly sufficient. "It's striking that [CSR reports] have no information about companies' political or lobbying activities," notes Wayne Norman, a professor of business ethics at North Carolina's Duke University. Though the language of CSR is imbued with notions of corporate citizenship, the Canadian-born Norman adds, "it's a very depoliticized view of citizenship. If corporations are using this language to enhance their profile as members of the community, then it's only fair to use this language to shed light where they may not always want it. What we should be looking for is a parallel amount of transparency about [their] political activities."
It may be impossible to return to the time when a neat separation existed between the profit-making duties of corporations and the society-building ones of governments. But if democracy is to mean anything, corporations must answer to governments, not the other way around. That balance has gotten out of whack. It's not good for democracy, or for capitalism.
