Читать книгу Empresas en el Conflicto Armado : Aportes a la Construcción de la paz en Colombia - Mary Martin Beth - Страница 41

While both public and private sector responses to the peace process suggest a balanced momentum for change, a shift in the political climate in 2017, one year into implementation of Havana accords, disrupted this dynamic. On the one hand, it changed the patterns of incentives offered to the private sector and their organization. On the other, growing contestation of the peace deal impacted how companies framed contributions to peacebuilding as they sought to be seen as politically neutral. Corporate enthusiasm for the peace process also faltered when violence surged across the country despite the agreement. A deteriorating landscape for peace, combined with business concerns about preserving political neutrality, hindered corporate willingness to engage and influenced their choice of projects. As one corporate adviser noted: ‘Post-conflict is not a comfortable idea – we are still in conflict especially in some areas. The private sector loves certainty and the environment is not producing enough certainty to move forward’²¹.

Business leaders also found it difficult to obtain clear and straightforward information about how to respond to government incentives. A survey by the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce in 2017 showed that 87 percent of the over 1600 companies questioned thought the private sector should engage with the peace process, yet an even higher percentage – 94 percent – confessed that they did not know anything of the government’s plan to involve them²². Companies are frustrated by the complexity, messiness, and changeability of government programmes and structures related to the peace process. As a result, many are reluctant to associate with the peace process and prefer to talk instead in terms of responsible investing, community engagement, and contributing to local development. ANDI’s peacebuilding strategy referred to above, for example, avoids any reference to peace as such. Their foundation deems the expression too political, so it uses the label of “strategy of inclusive competitivity” (“estrategia de competitividad inclusiva”), which resonates more comfortably with private companies.

Other limitations on corporate willingness to engage include a dearth of reliable data and analysis of economic and social conditions at the grassroots, as well as tools to measure social impact. Some companies are reluctant to work with the government because they doubt the competence of public bodies, particularly at the level of local government. They also worry about the changeability and limited duration of public programmes, as well as the associated risk that public funding may be switched to favour new, more fashionable issues. The most significant inhibition on business, however, is the lack of clear frameworks, rules, and systems for managing the public-private interface. Companies complained of confusion within the state institutions meant to implement the peace process, grey areas of law, the absence of contact points, and the lack of a strategy for handling private sector inputs. Division of roles, the definition of goals, and a sense among officials and politicians of where companies can bring added value are particularly unclear.

The relatively low involvement of companies with programmes on truth, justice, and reconciliation and reintegration of former FARC combatants is attributed to the lack of overarching legislation that could give structure and legal certainty to the private sector’s role in these areas. In taking on a high- profile social role, the private sector is wary of absolving the government of the pressure to act and fulfilling the state’s duty to guarantee services and rights.

The OPI scheme demonstrates many of the problems in this awkward dynamic between the public and private sector. Companies complain of a heavy bureaucratic process and lack of coordination between planning mechanisms and instruments. Both sides – the government and the private sector – face difficulties in making the relationship between them function adequately, thus inhibiting enthusiasm for the scheme. Criticisms of the programme claim it does not do enough to bring the private sector into ‘the dynamics of war and peace’ and make ‘coordination of the business sector with stabilisation more robust’²³.

On the other hand, the scheme offers a glimpse of how policy can encourage different roles for the private sector, make it more open to conversations about peace, blur traditional lines between public and private, and help shift business attitudes away from corporate philanthropy to an idea of co-constructing peace with government. The scheme provides companies with improved visibility for their social investment strategies and the potential for positive reputational impact, also persuading them to think not in terms of marginal efforts through voluntary investment and capacity-building, but through mainstream initiatives that go to the heart of the country’s development challenges.

The Colombian peace process has created opportunities for corporate programmes that contribute to public goods and welfare, thus constructing an idea of shared responsibility between the private sector, government, and civil society. This emergent new model of business engagement links corporate welfare with the wellbeing of people at local level and modifies traditional approaches of corporate philanthropy.

In this chapter we have sought to go beyond the motives which drive companies to engage in peacebuilding, which are often regarded with suspicion and therefore represent a potential block on positive contributions to peace. We build on newer understandings of corporate social, and corporate security responsibility, to question what is happening when the private sector engages beyond its traditional remit, in areas which are normally the preserve of public authorities. What kind of modalities and processes are present which might modify classic conceptualisations of business in a conflict environment, reframe ideas of corporate responsibility and shed light on emerging systems of governance? The findings from the Colombian experience also draw attention to how pressure from public authorities seeking to devolve or share their classic responsibility for peace, security, justice and development impacts on corporate strategies of social investing and community engagement.

As a result we can detect an emerging organisational paradigm in which distinctions between for-profit firms and non-profit entities are blurred to created mixed forms, that modify traditional business models and signal changes in the way not- for- profit and philanthropy strategies are applied by companies. This process involves an increased contribution by private companies to the production of social goods, that can underpin transition and the production of peace. It recognises a relational process which depends on both the state and the private sector to co-construct a new social and economic order.

Although this trend applies to a relatively small number of large companies, initiatives such as capacity-building, supplementing state provision in areas like health and education and active engagement with local people, are increasingly seen as part of a new process of state-business interaction and of building a new profile of corporate responsibility. The spatial limits of corporate engagement are also being questioned. Business no longer necessarily sees itself as limited to undertaking social investments in the vicinity of its own operations.