Giving with one hand : on the mining sector’s treatment of indigenous stakeholders in the name of CSR

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the political dimensions in the relationships between mining companies and their aboriginal stakeholders in Australia. Practical applications of stakeholder approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) can overlook indigenous people at the local level of those who are most affected by mining.Design/methodology/approach – Informed by critical discourse analysis, the paper reports on a critical web‐based study that synthesises disparate community and business perspectives to explore the representations of CSR relationships between mining companies and aboriginal stakeholders.Findings – Through their rhetorical manipulation of the CSR discourse, mining companies construct a homogeneous representation of aboriginal peoples, for strategic purposes. Companies maintain a public image as good corporate citizens, while using the rhetoric to divert their CSR activities to less problematic indigenous groups, thus ignoring the claims of stakeholders w...

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