Business and nationalism: foreign policy attribution

Are there potential African analogies to the way that recent anti-Japanese nationalism in China included calls in China for boycotts of Japanese products?

The issue illustrates the potential rapid (and rabid) emergence of a nexus between high geopolitics and the ostensibly apolitical sphere of private firms and consumers:

* So it is that contested Beijing-Tokyo (and Taipei) claims to the Senkaku ('Diaoyu') Islands have led recently to campaigns in China to boycott Japanese electronics, cars and other goods, and indeed to violence targetting such. Moreover, iPhone mapmakers are now more conscious that hosting a map stating one status or another may be taken as a corporate endorsement of a state position.

* So too French winemakers over twenty years ago suddenly found their produce boycotted by Australasians not because of anything relating to how it was made (or tasted) but -- as my colleague Stephanie Hare reminded us -- as a mark of protest against the French government's persistence with South Pacific nuclear tests.

But this blog focusses on Africa. What scope exists for acute periods of high nationalist (or racial) sentiment, stirred up by popular reactions to foreign policy-level / state-to-state issues, to manifest as boycotts or violence against firms and individuals -- not because of any conduct on their part, but only by virtue of their association with the country whose foreign policy actions or positions are seen locally as problematic?

[We can put aside South Africa's recent government regulation compelling vendors to label goods made in Israeli settlements beyond the 1948 borders as made in the 'occupied Palestinian territories'. That is a different case, one of state action, founded in a classic foreign policy position dispute, affecting private commercial conduct.]

Bigger transnational firms may be advised to develop a 'corporate foreign policy' to anticipate or respond, among other things, to cases where they face public pressure in a host state as a result of being associated, in local minds, with the geopolitics of their home state.

South African retail and telecoms firms doing strong business in Nigeria this year experienced a brief period of turbulence as Nigerians responded to a diplomatic dispute between the two countries over visa issues.

But I think that in the main in Africa, future boycotts or violence that we may see targetting foreign firms or businesspeople are more likely to be relatively unorganised (and so possibly more dangerous) and based on local grievances about perceived exploitation or comparative success, than about indignation following the attribution, in effect, of their countries' foreign policy.

The saying that 'all politics is local' is particularly apposite in this sense. In most conceivable African scenarios, a firm or its brands or staff are far more likely to be exposed on the basis of local social, environmental or governance performance than local anger at the Great Games of its home state.

[By 'foreign' I here mean non-African: there is no shortage of intra-African xenophobia, for example against Congolese smalltraders in north-eastern Angola, Somali stallkeepers in South Africa or Burkinabe migrants in Ivory Coast.]

Foreign firms and businesspeople are often vulnerable to being political scapegoats -- especially as economic times get tougher -- but in general, and until the link is explicitly made in some way in some context, it is embassies rather than businesses that will feel the force of any local protest at some state-to-state insult or insinuation.

Jo

Ps - This post ties in with last week's (on dilemmas for CEOs speaking out on politicised policy issues).

It also relates to a recent one on corporate diplomacy in Africa -- briefly discussing the potential, across the continent, for locals to attribute many of the actions of individuals or firms to their government of origin. The example there (Chinese nationals and attribution to Beijing) might create image management issues for the government, although it is also arguable that local perceptions of Beijing's influence might restrain groups from violent acts against Chinese nationals and stimulate greater local government protection. In this sense, being a firm or businessperson attributed to a major power may provide both a shield and a source of vulnerability from organised or spontaneous violence or boycott.

[Speaking of 'attribution', I'd like to acknowledge the recent discussions with work colleagues on which this post has partly drawn].

Public policy, private leadership and social media

Does leadership always involve decisive overt action? When does good leadership by a firm on a issue of significant public interest suggest one stands back rather than steps forward?

We have just ended our annual 'Global Horizons' conference, where one of the most interesting panels looked at leadership -- and the communication dimensions of this -- in a 'wired world'.

Debate included not just social media as a tool of (and something impacting) states' foreign policy, but also the policy of social media firms in dealing with states using their platforms in this way, with censorship / self-censorship on content that affects public policy issues like security or human rights, or firms' policies in designing applications intended to promote popular participation in governance and accountability.

(The recent reaction to a Youtube video deemed offensive to Islam has of course given further impetus to these debates, discussed previously -- here).

The panel at our conference spoke about the risks and limitations of social media platforms, but tended largely to adopt the view that leaders (from whatever sector) who did not use Twitter and other tools risked losing the initiative. Nature abhors a vacuum, went this argument, and if one doesn't fill it with one's position, others could distort or swamp that position.

However, it strikes me that there will be cases where leadership by a private sector executive (or group of them) on an issue that has spiked in public importance might sometimes involve saying less, not more.

That is, contrary to the idea that leaders should 'not just stand there, but do something!', might there not be circumstances where the better position is 'don't just do something, stand there'...?

What do I mean?

I was running the Africa discussion group where some participants were interested in discussing South Africa's recent mining sector unrest. One issue that corporate leaders continue to grapple with in that country is how far and when to raise their head (singly or as an industry) 'above the parapet' on hotly-debated, highly-politicised issues.

I don't purport to have any particular insight or experience on the tricky question of how CEOs of big mining firms should show leadership on issues that appear to rise above labour relations and become part of national debates about livelihoods, access to essential services, free expression and so on. Business leaders played a central role in facilitating government-ANC negotiations that led to the end of apartheid and democratic elections -- how's that for 'private sector, public world' -- but this was principally a behind-the-scenes role. The mining (and wider business community) in South Africa has been internally divided on the utility of entering public debates on issues such as proposed mines nationalisation in that country.

There is a role for business leadership on public policy issues in Africa, especially (as my last post intimated) where governments are unable or unwilling to address, for example, social issues that perpetuate injustice (and might potentially disrupt business activity). Indeed, I can imagine writing many a post decrying the lack of private sector leadership on some issues. Moreover, CEOs are often entitled and probably well advised to put their side of a story that has entered the public domain in an acute or serious way.

However, I can envisage many circumstances where 'leadership' by corporate actors involves saying less, not more, on an ongoing issue.

The main issue in corporate leaders speaking out on public debates -- whether through loudhailer or Twitter -- will be credibility.

If that is so, most of the leadership that firms could show might amount to deeds, not words. So while big business in African settings may need to ensure its contributions and constraints are better appreciated in the wider community, I do not think this necessarily means an over-active media profile on hot, hard case debates. Often it may be more appropriate -- and safer for firms -- that officials lead on politicised policy issues.

I think of these lines in Rudyard Kipling's great poem on leadership, 'If':

'If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you ...

... And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise...'

Talking too wise can have difficult consequences for firms grappling public policy dilemmas (some social media platforms may not be amenable to wise talk ... ).

In the regions I cover, credibility will remain at a premium in the content of CEO communications -- whatever their medium -- on issues at the intersection of business, politics and society.

Jo

Reluctant regulatees -- or reluctant regulators?

As many who follow Africa continue to take in the near- and longer-term 'meaning' of the events at Marikana mine last month (see the last post), I'm thinking about the tendency to cast the private sector as a set of reluctant regulatees, eluding well-meaning policymakers at each possible turn.

In many cases, what we have are reluctant regulators (not to mention incapable, captured or other ones -- another time).

A lay person could read the stories on South Africa's mining sector, especially labour relations, health and safety, and social investment issues, and develop the impression that the government has dragged firms, kicking and screaming, to deliver on wider development imperatives and aspirations.

This is not necessarily the story. In many cases, major firms (perhaps from self-interest, but at least 'enlightened' self-interest) have seen the longer-term risks for example from HIV levels in the workforce, and not waited for government directives. On some issues, business leads government in South Africa -- tho of course it is an elected government's prerogative and duty to ensure private actors meet public goals.

Consider the excellent doctoral work by researchers in this town like Gus Selby and later Charles Laurie into the vexed question of land reform to address historic injustices in Zimbabwe: I'm loathe to over-simplify, but one neglected dimension to that story -- often portrayed as ZANU-PF dragging recalcitrant white farmers to negotiate land redistribution -- is how the Commercial Farmers' Union saw the long-term risks of inaction on this issue and tried to get a reluctant / distracted / whatever government to move on the issue gradually and sustainably.

Rather than an apologia for the private sector, its worth noting that the story is less often as one-sided as it seems.

I think, incidentally, of my colleague Andrea B's comments on the regional tourism outlook in east Africa. While it is probably in all East Africa Community (EAC) countries' net interests to work quickly on helping enable more seamless travel for foreign tourists (eg by devising a common tourist visa), on this and many other issues, it is private operators who are forging ahead.

As Richard Dowden noted at our conference last year, in Africa so much of the stories of innovation and progress happen despite the state, not because of it (this is not an argument for weak states, much less a contribution to the US presidential 'what-role-for-the-government' debate!).

Moreover, as an early post ('Who regulates who?) noted, much of the safety and other regulation that we value and that is likely to run with the grain of commercial realities started life off not as public prescription but private initiative between members of an industry. The risk of spaces that might nurture self-serving cartels must be balanced with acknowledgement that not all the regulation that matters comes down from above or takes legislative form.

Anyway, the basic point is that in hard cases -- land reform in southern Africa is such one -- it cannot be assumed that the narrative is one of enlightened regulator and reluctant regulatee. The challenge, as the mentor-esque John Braithwaite has shown, is in catalysing virtuous circles of regulatory dialogue that involve suasion and persuasion as much as stipulation and resistance; or regulatory neglect.

Jo