Cannot Manage without The ?Significant Other’: Mining,Corporate Social Responsibility and Local Communities in Papua New Guinea

The increasing pressure from different facets of society exerted on multinational companies (MNCs) to become more philanthropic and claim ownership of their impacts is now becoming a standard practice. Although research in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has arguably been recent (see subsequent section), the application of activities taking a voluntary form from MNCs seem to vary reflecting a plethora of factors, particularly one obvious being the backwater local communities of developing countries where most of the natural extraction projects are located. This chapter examines views of two Papua New Guinea (PNG) local communities hosting large-scale mining operations and explains the demands arising from situational relativities, which are becoming too conspicuous for mine developers not to ignore. The research undertaken with several assertions highlights the perceived imperativeness allowing companies to integrate the CSR into the essential management pursuits of running mines in PNG. The author is grateful to the University of Western Sydney and the Oceania Development Network for seed grants which facilitated the fieldwork for this paper. On the same token, two field assistants and a colleague who aided with the statistical analysis of this work are also acknowledged. However, any failings of the paper remain the responsibility of the author.