مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Business and politics are linked to the extentthat one cannot be extracted from the other. Since the colonial days of the British East India Company and Cecil Rhodes, large companies have engaged in political activities away from their home country. With the spread of globalization, this linkage has only grown more common. Yet with the increasing roles of the private sector in global politics come increasing challenges and opportunities. One of those includes conducting businessin pre- and post-conflict environments. Corporations are increasingly recognizing the challenges posed by operating in conflict-prone environments (Kolk & Lenfant, 2010). As exit from environments experiencing conflict is not always desirable or feasible, corporations are increasingly being called upon to proactively engage in collaborative practical action to advance peace. For example, in 2013, the United Nations Global Compact launched Business for Peace as a leadership platform to assist companiesin implementing responsible business practices that contribute to peace in conflictaffected and high-risk areas. There is a proliferation of advice and practical guides for companies operating in such environments, such as the UN’s (2013) Global Compact, OECD’s (2011) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, International Alert’s multitude of country specific publications, as well asstakeholder and industry-led initiatives. These suggest that corporations have the desire and capability for action f given the know-how (Ganson, 2011). Indeed, risk management firms spend significant resources predicting and preparing for possible violence (Aon, 2015; Haufler, 1997). While there are cases when corporations have succeeded in preventing conflict from erupting (such as Tesco’s mechanisms for addressing labor grievances in South Africa) and helped to solidify peace (as in the transformation of the coffee industry in Rwanda), some corporations remain bystanders to atrocities and human rights abuses (as in Talisman Energy’s experiences in Sudan). Fort (2007) shows corporations need not be removed from the peace process, as there is a positive correlation between commerce, peace, and engagement. Capitalism, according to a Forbes report on corporate responsibility, can now sit side by side as a partner with the peace movement (Guthrie, 2014).

The Swedish Institute of International Affairs distinguishes among the phases of conflict during which third-party actors may help to promote peace: peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding (Andersson, Evers, & Sjo¨stedt, 2011). Peacemaking involves efforts to separate the warring parties and find ways for them to work out their disagreements, such as the U.S. and EU-led mediation of the peace conference that generated the Dayton Peace Accords. Following such agreements, peacekeeping seeks to maintain truces among factions after a peace accord has been adopted. Peacebuilding activities are preventative in nature, helping address the various social and economic causes of conflict and creating an atmosphere for peaceful dispute resolution. The focus of this article is on the first of these categories: making peace after violent conflict has arisen. While public and private third parties have roles to play in each stage of creating peace, the literature on peacemaking within politicalscience is one ofthe more robust and developed areas of research. This is also the arena where we are likely to be able to observe third-party engagement as well as the greatest costs for inaction. As Fort(2015) highlights, however, we must not think only actors in conflict zones deal with the issue of peace, since technologies and practices can spread and can have a broader impact on peacebuilding than we might initially think.

While practitioners have embraced the concept of corporations working for peace and the business literature discusses the work these actors can do to reduce tensions in conflict zones (Getz & Oetzel, 2009; Oetzel, Getz, & Ladek, 2007), the role of these actors is notably absent in studies of conflict resolution. In this article, I offer an overview of the findings on conflict resolution processes by scholars in the field of political science. I then draw from business scholarship and offer an overview of the positive contributions the private sector can and does make toward peace. I conclude by highlighting the problems of having disjointed approaches and offering a conceptual framework for how these distinct approaches can be combined to generate a more comprehensive understanding of conflict resolution.