Australia Awards in Indonesia

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12 Mar 2016

Enactment of Corporate Social Responsibility and Public Relations Practices: Case Studies from the Indonesian Mining Industry

Gregoria Arum Yudarwati, July 2011
RMIT University

Abstract
This study aims to better understand the process in which public relations practitioners and top managers of Indonesian mining companies develop perceptions about the organisational environment and how these perceptions shape the enactment of corporate social responsibility and public relations. This is an interpretive qualitative study involving three case studies: an Indonesian private mining company, a multinational company, and a state owned company.

Using enactment theory, this study found that their CSR and PR practices are constructed through an interactive and cyclical process involving organisational members’ interpretations of their organisational environment. There were two processes involved: (1) the process to select the interpretation towards the ecological changes and (2) the process to decide how to act upon the interpretation chosen. Two significant ecological changes, and perceptions of these changes, were identified as contributing to the shaping of CSR and PR practices among research participants: (1) the social and political changes in the post Suharto era and (2) the emergence of the international CSR movements. This study found that the participants’ interpretation towards these two factors was influenced by the company’s ownership. This study also confirms the notion of self-fulfilling prophecy where one’s beliefs, whether true or false, affect the construction of one’s social reality.

This study contributes to the scholarship of international public relations. The study demonstrates how environmental, organisational and individual factors interact to influence CSR and PR. These findings will be valuable for educators and practitioners in their understanding of the organisational role of PR as well as in their development of curricula and CSR programs respectively.

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