Abstract
While achieving great benefits, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has triggered potential problems between the transnational projects and local communities in the participant countries. However, there is still a knowledge gap on how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is adopted, and how CSR affects the local community. Based on a context of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), this research exploits a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to fill the gap. It finds that the CSR activities in the CPEC project are initiated by the long-term CSR initiative. Organized by the professional CSR foundation in an autonomous environment, the panoramic CSR activities are governed in a discretionary way and focus exclusively on the sustainability of the local community. Education, health-care, environment, and employment improve greatly after the implementation of the CPEC project. Theoretically, this research not only provides new insights into CSR research by taking an under-studied context of CPEC into study, but also proposes a mechanism of how CSR leads to the sustainability of local community by building a CSR-sustainability framework.
Highlights
At the end of 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward the idea of constructing the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR), opening a prelude to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
In March 2015, the Vision and Proposed Actions Outlined on Jointly Building SREB and 21st-Century MSR, issued with the authorization of the State Council of China, stressed that transnational projects should focus on developing the local economy in the BRI participant countries, increasing local employment opportunities, improving local living standards, fulfilling corporate social responsibility (CSR) and protecting the local species diversity and ecological environment [1]
As for the changes brought by the CSR engagement in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, data collected through questionnaires was edited, coded and classified into different components
Summary
At the end of 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward the idea of constructing the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR), opening a prelude to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). An increasing number of developing country companies undertake transnational projects, which is very likely to encounter more complicated and sensitive social and environmental issues in local communities of participant countries In this regard, CSR research is centered mainly from the political economy perspective [7,8], while the CSR initiatives, practices and impact from the micro-governance and management perspective remain largely invisible and unstudied [9,10]. This paper is going to explore two research questions, namely, “what are the initiatives, governance, and implementation of CSR activities involved in the CPEC transnational projects?”, and “what are the impacts on local communities?” To answer the research questions, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted. This paper concludes by detailing our conclusions, contributions, limitations, and suggestions for future lines of research
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