Stakeholders on the periphery of citizenship in NGO/corporate engagement
Ruth Phillips
Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney
Contact Email:   ruth.phillipssocial.usyd.edu.au

Drawing on PhD research completed in 2001/02 this paper will examine how the joint strategies of corporate citizenship and NGO/corporate engagement can leave some key stakeholders on the periphery of citizenship and raise some wider questions about international NGO advocacy. Evidence from a case study on the corporate engagement activities of Oxfam (CAA) Australia in their mining campaign, reveals a ‘natural’ exclusion of the least powerful stakeholders – the people the campaign was aimed at benefiting. It is suggested that this exclusion results from the failure of active corporate citizens pursuing their ‘social bottom line’ and NGOs acting as advocates, to take on board a policy of citizenship-based inclusion in their agenda development and decision making processes.

Analysis of the positioning of Indigenous and local peoples affected by Australian based mining companies targeted by Oxfam Australia (CAA) in their campaign reveals a tyranny of economic, cultural and corporate power over the equal participation of those peoples. This raises larger questions about the role of ‘Northern’ NGOs as advocates for peoples or communities in ‘Southern’ states, and what role they can or fail to play in contributing to inclusionary citizenship development for the people whose interests they champion. If inclusive citizenship is to be understood as integral to democratisation then surely it must be a primary policy goal for NGO advocacy, international activism, and global corporate citizenship, thus contributing to a global social policy agenda.

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