A View of Corporate Citizenship in Latin America

IT IS AS DIFFICULT TO GENERALISE about corporate citizenship, or corporate social responsibility (CSR), in Latin America, as it is to generalise about anything in Latin America. It is actually harder, as there is no generally agreed definition of CSR in the region, and different organisations in various

But, if we are to generalise, CSR in Latin America and the Caribbean has always been more focused on social issues than on environmental issues, perhaps because social issues have always been more acute. Wealthy Northerners look southwards and see rainforests and biodiversity; thoughtful Southerners look around them and see poverty, poor education, bad housing, scarce healthcare and all the rest of that grim list.

A lot of the encouragement of CSR in the region has come from the US and Europe in terms of norms and vocabulary, but more importantly in terms of big companies improving their supply chains in the region or their regionally based projects (such as in mining and oil). This is especially true for companies that export from Latin America, whether they are multinationals or local companies. Many of these have promoted CSR as a risk management tool, decreasing the risks of a scandal in the end market owing to bad behaviour by themselves, their subsidiaries or their suppliers.