Corporate social responsibility of mining companies in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

The article analyzes the emergence of and practices related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies of the mining industry in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The study draws from an analysis of publicly available CSR reports and additional interviews with the stakeholders of the mining industry in these countries. The forms and emergence of corporate social responsibility policies with relevance to the mining industry and the post-socialist context are first reviewed. The roles of the national and local contexts in the formation of the CSR practices are then investigated. The differences of the emergent CSR models in these two countries are analyzed, as well as the underlying factors for the differences or similarities. It is concluded that despite the shared Soviet legacy, the CSR policies of the mining companies have clearly been diverging in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The difference emerges from the ways in which the mining companies adapt their CSR practices to the different sets of stakeholders. The CSR practices are influenced strongly by the national context in which the mining operations are conducted. The study shows that CSR activities of the mining industry should be analyzed as consisting of global commitments on the one hand, and varying forms of national and local scale implementations on the other hand.