Angol
Multinationals are increasingly important players in global economic development. They offer a rare ability to link local, national and global communities and have the capacity to impact significantly on the quality of social relations within the communities in which they operate. A key way they do this is through their corporate citizenship projects, funded as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes. Such projects may involve, for example, youth training, venture capital funding, free drug distribution or community healthcare. This book seeks to analyse the nature and effectiveness of these projects using the theoretical and empirical insights of recent social capital literature. It does so by examining multinationals operating in South Africa, Mexico and Poland and by detailed case studies of Diageo, Anglo-American, GlaxoSmithKline and Vodafone. The authors demonstrate how multinationals can leverage their community engagement activities to greater effect and play a more significant role in building socially successful communities in developing countries.
