Corporate Social Responsibility in Afghanistan A Critical Case Study of the Mobile Telecommunications Industry Azizi, Sameer Document Version Final published version Publication date: 2017 License CC BY-NC-ND Citation for published version (APA): Azizi, S. (2017). Corporate Social Responsibility in Afghanistan: A Critical Case Study of the Mobile Telecommunications Industry. Copenhagen Business School [Phd]. PhD series No. 11.2017 Link to publication in CBS Research Portal General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us ([email protected]) providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN AFGHANISTAN CORPORATE SOLBJERG PLADS 3 DK-2000 FREDERIKSBERG DANMARK WWW.CBS.DK ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93483-94-1 Online ISBN: 978-87-93483-95-8 – A CRITICAL CASE STUDY OF THE MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY – A CRITICAL CASE STUDY OF THE MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS Sameer Azizi CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN AFGHANISTAN – A CRITICAL CASE STUDY OF THE MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies PhD Series 11.2017 PhD Series 11-2017 Corporate Social Responsibility in Afghanistan – a critical case study of the mobile telecommunications industry Sameer Azizi Supervisors: Associate Professor Søren Jeppesen Department of Department of Management, Society and Communication, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Professor Dima Jamali Kamal Shair Endowed Chair in Leadership, Olayan School of Business, American University of Beirut, Lebanon Doctoral School of Organization and Management Studies, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark 1 Sameer Azizi Corporate Social Responsibility in Afghanistan – a critical case study of the mobile telecommunications industry 1st edition 2017 PhD Series 11.2017 © Sameer Azizi ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93483-94-1 Online ISBN: 978-87-93483-95-8 The Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies (OMS) is an interdisciplinary research environment at Copenhagen Business School for PhD students working on theoretical and empirical themes related to the organisation and management of private, public and voluntary organizations. All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Foreword This thesis could not have been completed without the encouragement, support and constructive feedback from various people around me. I want to express my gratitude to my supervisors Associate Professor Søren Jeppesen and Professor Dima Jamali for their productive guidance and constructive feedback. You have both been very helpful, patient and supportive in your responses to my numerous questions and enquiries throughout the years. I hope we can continue to collaborate in future. I also want to thank my colleagues from ICM/MSC for showing genuine interest in my research and for making me feel home in the department. In particular, I am very grateful to all my colleagues from the Centre for Business and Development Studies for their support and constructive feedback to my research. I have learned a lot due to your efforts to integrate me into your academic activities. My very supportive PhD colleagues have had an important role in clearing up the confusions over the research process. I want to thank Sarah, Rajiv, Jacob, Kristjan, Kirsti, Frederik, Majbritt and all other colleagues for listening to all my frustrations. It is also worth mentioning that the OMS administrative staff and PhD coordinators have been very supportive in responding to my questions and requests. I could not have conducted field trips to Afghanistan without the support of several people. I want to thank all the informants from the corporations, the Afghan Ministry of Information Communication and Technologies, the NGOs, and the various experts and other informants for taking time to enrich my study. I am also grateful to Dr. Parto and APPRO’s staff for their hospitality during in my stay in Kabul. I have no words for the unconditional support that I have received from my parents, my brother and other close family members and friends. I specially want to thank my wife Moska for sacrificing many evenings and weekends in order to let me spend valuable time on work. Finally, I want to dedicate my thesis to my dearest son Keyaan and my late sister Sadaf for making me realize how privileged I am in life. 3 4 Abstract This doctoral dissertation examines the business-development relations in Afghanistan by focusing on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and other related practices from corporations in the Afghan mobile telecommunications industry. More concretely, the study aims to explore the characteristics and drivers of the various CSR practices in the Afghan mobile telecommunications industry in order to critically assess the relationship between CSR and development in such context. The thesis highlights that the national context of Afghanistan in combination with the global mobile telecommunications industry provides a relevant empirical focus that can enrich the theoretical debates about CSR in developing countries. The study thereby stresses on the importance of context, and integrates both the societal and corporate dimensions to study CSR by corporations in the Afghan mobile telecommunications industry. The study draws from the political governance literature on ‘Areas of Limited Statehood’ (ALS) to conceptualize the national context of Afghanistan, and to problematize the assumptions and claims of the CSR literature by focusing particularly on the neo-institutional, the political and the development- oriented debates on CSR. The empirical data for the study is based on an intensive case study of four large and foreign- owned mobile telecommunications operators in Afghanistan. The case study includes qualitative data from various sources including interviews and observations during fieldwork in Afghanistan, and a study of secondary data from the corporations, Afghan state institutions, civil society and other relevant actors. The findings of the study are presented through Paper 1- 4, which covers one book chapter and three journal articles. Paper 1 ‘CSR in Afghanistan‘ presents the initial exploration of the characteristics of CSR in the Afghan mobile telecommunications industry, and integrates the literature on ALS to explain the drivers of CSR in Afghanistan. The findings highlight that the industry plays an important socio-economic role in Afghanistan, but business-driven CSR agenda fails to grasp the immense developmental potential offered by mobile technology in Afghanistan. Moreover, the published article ‘CSR in Afghanistan: a global CSR agenda in areas of limited statehood’ (Azizi and Jamali 2016) presented as paper 2 further examines the characteristics and drivers of formal CSR through neo-institutional theory, and argues that a multi-level institutional field consisting of corporations and donors rather than local actors, set the agenda on explicit CSR in the mobile telecommunications industry. The two unpublished articles put particular emphasis on assessing the business-development relations. paper 3 ‘Critical exploration of political CSR in the context of anarchy’ highlights that in certain areas the Afghan state is absent and anarchy prevails with non-conventional actors enforcing violent pressures on the mobile telecommunication industry. Such contexts problematize the assumptions and claims of the political CSR literature on boundaries of corporate 5 responsibility/irresponsibility and thereby the political role of business in society. Finally, paper 4 ‘Business as development agent or business as usual’ examines the conditions that enable/constrain business to become development agents in BoP markets. The paper argues that corporate engagements in business-development nexus are not only driven by market-oriented focus innovative solutions, but also philanthropic and integrative engagements that need to be acknowledged. However, the for-profit structures within corporations imply that the business case subordinates the development case regardless of how corporations engage in social development. The study has also produced other working papers and conference papers that are not included in this thesis, but have led to development of the four papers presented in the thesis. The four papers presented are thereby directly responding to the research question of the dissertation, as they explore the characteristics and drivers of CSR in the Afghan mobile telecommunications industry, and critically assess the various forms of CSR-development relations. Capitalizing on the novel empirical case study, the thesis contributes to the CSR literature by problematizing multiple claims and assumptions and suggesting alternative conceptualizations for each debate within the CSR literature. Such contributions call for a future agenda specifically on CSR in ALS to advance the contextualized and critical theorization of business-development