Towards a Relational Understanding of the Impact of Organisational Pro-Social Activities

In this chapter, we offer a relational understanding of the impact of pro-social activities by organisations such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs or development projects by social enterprises. So far, research and practice on pro-social activities have tended to focus on the immediate, mostly surface-level, outputs and outcomes that are more easily assessed and measured than longer-term deeper, relational impacts. We argue that pro-social activities additionally entail relational work as they shape relationships between the actors involved. As a result, social relationships can be sustained, modified or disrupted by pro-social activities. We build on two case study illustrations – a sustainability program in rural Côte d’Ivoire by a large chocolate manufacturer, and a work integration social enterprise helping mental health patients in Southern Italy – to show how different types of social relationships, between the firm, beneficiaries and other community members, are affected, sometimes unintendedly so, by pro-social activities. Hence, we demonstrate that pro-social activities can sometimes reify social inequality and, in other cases, positively enhance social capital in communities.