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Stakeholder and Community Relations
Stakeholder and Community Relations
Stakeholder and Community Relations
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Stakeholder and Community Relations

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This portable handbook is designed to assist companies and stakeholder relations practitioners to better understand the factors that may influence community and broader support and the impact of conflictual community relations on business operations, initiatives, and projects. It is inspired by the author’s wealth of knowledge, accumulated in various roles in both the public and private sector, as a communications practitioner, a stakeholder-relations consultant, and a corporate-communications, strategy development, business processes improvement, and crisis communications advisor. The book enables the reader to tap into this seasoned communicator’s valuable insights, based on actual events and personal experience in his long career spanning over 20 years.

This is a non-discriminatory book, written to assist practitioners, executives, and company directors in developing and maintaining a positive relationship with their stakeholders. It serves as an introduction to the world of stakeholder management.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 22, 2022
ISBN9781005524920
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    Book preview

    Stakeholder and Community Relations - Meshack Hlongwane

    Stakeholder_and_Community_Relations_-_COVER.jpg

    Copyright © 2022 Meshack S Hlongwane

    First edition 2022

    Published by Meshack S Hlongwane at Smashwords

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

    The author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

    Published by Meshack S Hlongwane using Reach Publishers’ services,

    P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

    Edited by Nikki Burnett for Reach Publishers

    Cover designed by Reach Publishers

    Website: www.reachpublishers.org

    E-mail: reach@reachpublish.co.za

    Meshack S Hlongwane

    simbone@icloud.com

    Acknowledgements

    I would like to thank my colleagues and family for the support during the process of writing, editing, and printing of this work. To my colleagues at the various organisations where I spent many years of my career, I thank each of you for the opportunity to lead and be part of such amazing teams. Thank you for believing in me and challenging my ideas when it was necessary to do so, and for helping me to grow. Lastly, a special thank you to Dr Sizwe Phakathi for taking the time to write the foreword, Aubrey Sambo, and all my CAD colleagues for your guidance and leadership during a season where one had to deal with difficult stakeholders. May you continue to inspire those around you.

    Foreword

    In this book, Meshack Hlongwane tackles one of the important Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues influencing the business affairs of companies. Indeed, building and managing stakeholder and community relations is at the centre of gaining social acceptance by communities in which companies operate. The book highlights the significance of gaining community support by building positive relations with stakeholders and communities, and the social and economic development impact of such relations in achieving sustainable business operations and community development.

    In recent years, many business operations across the globe have experienced a spate of community unrests that have had adverse impact on business performance. The book reveals a number of factors that trigger conflictual stakeholder and community relations. The case studies presented in the book do not only bring to the fore evidence-based pitfalls of poor stakeholder management and community relations, but also provide valuable lessons learnt and solutions aimed at practically resolving the costly and reputation damaging conflictual stakeholder and community relations. The case studies on the Niger Delta, Marikana Massacre, Xolobeni community, and Kangra Coal, highlight a variety of ways in which poor management of stakeholders and community relations manifest themselves in different African business settings. These cases studies are not only useful to understanding the importance of building positive stakeholder and community relations in the extractive industries, such as oil and mining, but also in other business operations and industries.

    Furthermore, one of the important factors in building sustainable and long-lasting relations with stakeholders and communities is trust. The book highlights the devastating impact of trust deficiency in stakeholder management and community relations. Many of the negative stakeholder and community relations have been riddled and plagued with lack of trust. The book clearly shows that where there is distrust, there is often conflictual relations between stakeholders.

    The significant contribution that the book makes, lies in it providing practical solutions to the common mistakes companies make in stakeholder management and community relations. The book offers a useful guide on which aspects companies need to avoid and those that they need to focus on towards building, managing, and maintaining positive stakeholder and community relations. The book will be of great value to companies and organisations seeking to realise the shared value in their business activities through meaningful and long-lasting relations that put at the centre the needs, expectations, views and voices of stakeholders and host communities. The book reveals that failure to build, manage and maintain positive stakeholder and community relations remains one of the key risks that contemporary organisations cannot afford, in the achievement of the planned business performance outcomes.

    Effective stakeholder and community relations is an important foundation for the realisation of all dimensions of eESG issues – that is (economic), Environment, Social and Governance. It is important to add the economic dimension to the ESG issues as it plays a vital role in the attainment of local and socio-economic development in host communities. It is often through the nature of the impact of socio-economic empowerment programmes that companies are socially accepted or not accepted by the host communities. Overall, the book is a great resource, not only in helping companies to achieve the social licence to operate, but also in deepening their responsible corporate citizenship towards achieving some of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as those relating to building inclusive and sustainable communities. This is a must-read book for stakeholder management and relations executives, community development practitioners and other stakeholders who uphold the shared value principles and inclusive participation in the achievement of sustainable business performance outcomes.

    Dr Sizwe Phakathi (PhD Oxford)

    Head: Safety and Sustainable Development

    Minerals Council South Africa

    Introduction

    Common mistakes are made by most international companies when expanding their operations or establishing new operations, particularly in certain developing countries, such as South Africa. One of these mistakes is neglecting the importance of having positive relations with key stakeholders and communities in the areas in which they operate. Most companies carry out due diligence and do their utmost to ensure that all the required regulatory conditions

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