Empowerment as a Key Construct for Understanding Corporate Community Engagement

This article explores the place for empowerment in community relations programs. Descriptions of 97 corporate community programs are analyzed to determine how these companies articulate community engagement and the importance given to community empowerment in their work. Empowerment is proposed as a key construct for understanding a company’s role in the community because it places the community and its members at the center of the process, and allows for the evaluation of how these programs contribute to the long-term benefit of the people who have participated in, or have been beneficiaries of, these programs.