Creación de camada

Although government incentives, voluntary legislation (industry-based ethical codes), and legal regulation are not yet applied in Zambia as CSR drivers, managers of hotel and lodge companies in Livingstone recognised them as important drivers for CSR. Some managers proposed the introduction of these drivers and made suggestions of the relative importance of each one of them to CSR practices in the area. The views of managers on incentives, voluntary and legal regulation are interconnected. Therefore, the three will be presented and discussed in this section together starting with legal drivers.

Legal compliance was interpreted by both company managers and senior government officials in the Department of Tourism as making CSR compulsory for all tourism companies through government legislation. The two groups of participants are opposed to mandatory legislation of CSR. They explained that companies in the tourism industry were the most taxed companies in the country, being subjected to too many licences and permits already. Studies conducted on Zambia’s tourism licensing regime also confirm these sentiments (Hamilton et al., 2007; World Bank, 2003, p. 183; World Bank & DFID, 2011). Their common view was that making CSR compulsory through

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legislation could only hurt the industry. A specific review of managers’ responses revealed that all the eight hotel and lodge managers in Livingstone, except one are opposed to mandatory legislation of CSR. Therefore, they gave legal compliance the least priority position among the seven possible CSR drivers. Even community participants supported the positions taken by the officials and managers. They argued that mandatory regulation of CSR by government will just create antagonistic relationships between government and companies and will end up dampening the enthusiasm of companies to invest more in CSR, and could narrow down opportunities for communities to benefit from tourism development.

Going back to the issue of licensing, the eight tourism senior government officials disclosed that a process to streamline licences and licensing procedures was underway at the time of the research. They explained that the aim of the process is to reduce the licensing burden on companies. Therefore, they all felt that making CSR a legal requirement would be counterproductive to this licence review process. To this effect, the Chief Tourism Standards Inspector (CTSI), who deals with tourism licensing, stated the following:

“…The reason why Government would not want to come up with a legislation to compel tourism companies to do CSR is that it does not want to overload companies with too many legal demands. It is wary about the practice of tourism companies to always pass on costs to tourists… Already there is a perception among both tourists and companies that Zambia is an expensive destination. So, government is mindful not to exert too much pressure on companies…I should emphasise, the concern is that if government tries to regulate CSR, companies will find a way to pass the cost of doing CSR to guests instead of this coming from their profits…” (CTSI, 9th_{July, 2014).}

Another official, also dealing with licensing stated that Government made a decision to comprehensively review tourism legislation in Zambia:

“…The whole purpose why government decided to review/overhaul its tourism legislation is with the intension to reduce the cost of doing business which has been the cry of the private sector in tourism. Government has taken the concerns of companies seriously and has

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decided to take steps to improve the situation. The concern by companies is that there are too many licences in the tourism sector and the licensing process is cumbersome and long…” (PTSI, 2ndJuly, 2014).

These sentiments confirm that senior government officials are not in favour of making CSR a legal requirement for companies in the tourism industry. Thus, there was a general consensus among the three groups of participants that CSR should remain voluntary. However, two of the senior officials suggested that Government should work with, or through tourism associations, to build a strong tourism industry-based regulatory system for CSR practices and to generate an agreed code of ethics for companies. In this regard, senior officials supported the views of managers on voluntary regulation of CSR. The eight managers fully endorsed the suggestion for a partnership between government and the tourism industry players. They also supported the idea to jointly generate codes of ethics to regulate CSR in the industry. This was re-echoed by the chairman of the Livingstone Tourism Association (LTA) who made the following remarks:

“…CSR must remain voluntary because it is something that comes from your heart, something that you are passionate about…it should not be forced by legislation…if compelled it could infringe on the business performance of companies and end up killing the industry especially smaller players… So, for me I would say let it remain as it is, we just need to find better ways of encouraging companies to look at the welfare of communities where you are operating, to let them feel that you are part of them and they are part of you…I speak on behalf of our members…” (LTA Leader, 26th_{August, 2015).}

The LTA chairman stated that companies operate at different levels and capacities. Therefore, differentiating companies in connection with their involvement in CSR would be better understood only if tourism industry associations are the ones leading the regulation of CSR. However, he admitted that LTA lacked capacity to undertake this task. In this regard, he acknowledged the need to initially partner with Government for the purpose of building capacities. According to him, the best option is for Government to support capacity building of all tourism associations in the country without necessarily getting involved in the whole process.

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In comparison, findings show that hotel and lodge managers had put more emphasis on voluntary regulatory of CSR than on incentives, philanthropy, moral, social contract and legal compliance. As stated earlier, their lowest rating was government legislation (legal compliance). The main reason for putting more emphasis on voluntary regulation of CSR was the need for more flexibility because of the fragility of the tourism business:

“…The performance of the tourism industry is dependent on the ever changing customer preferences and trends. This can be a serious limitation for a government-based regulatory system to understand. Therefore, an industry-based regulatory system would work better and be able to detect and respond to changes in tourist source markets and to how these changes affect the ability for companies to do CSR far better and faster than government...” (Tourism resort managers, 15th July - 30th November, 2014).

Managers argued that government legislation inherently lacks flexibility. Therefore, the eight tourism resort managers gave the second highest priority position for an industry- based system of regulating CSR. Most senior government officials made similar observations:

“…an industry-based regulatory system is more flexible than a government-based one. [You] are aware that Government uses a “one-fits- all” approach which lacks flexibility…an industry-based regulatory system has more advantages, it would easily take care of industry dynamics, encourage participation of its members, and determine when two or more companies could partner together to do a bigger project or programme…” (Tourism Department Officials, 15th_{July - 30}th_{November, 2014).}

“…government regulation tends to cut across all levels without differentiating which could be unfair to some companies, especially smaller ones. In contrast an industry-based regulatory system would be able to tell to what extent a resort that has only 20 rooms can engage in CSR and differentiate it from those with 300 rooms or more…” (PTSI, 2nd

July, 2014).

These sentiments explain the reasons of the seven Government officials for supporting tourism industry-based CSR regulation as opposed to government regulation (legal

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system). However, although the Director of Tourism (DoT) supported these views on voluntary (or industry-based) regulation of CSR, he was concerned about the lack of transparency that was reported among tourism companies regarding their CSR as reflected in his statement below:

“…Although Government cannot compel companies to engage in CSR at the moment the proper way of doing it is to establish transparent boards to allow for community involvement. The biggest problem I have seen in the tourism industry is lack of transparency among the private sector…companies should show what they are investing in communities, and say to Government: this is what we have done and this is how we did it; it went to action-A, action-B, action-C and so forth, and here are the records;….we had a governing body which included communities in making financial decisions and plans for community projects, this is how we involved them. If there is that kind of transparency, Government cannot fail to appreciate the CSR efforts of tourism companies…” (DoT, 10thJuly, 2014).

The issue of lack of transparency highlighted in these sentiments is commonly raised in CSR literature as concerns about companies and their CSR practices. These views indicate Government’s main concerns about the claims of companies about what they say they are doing and achieving in local communities in terms of CSR. These concerns cover not only the tourism industry, but also other key sectors of the Zambian economy, such as agriculture, tourism, mining and the services industry. Because of frequent reports of lack of transparency and limited community participation in CSR, some senior government officials in the Ministry of Tourism advocated for the need for Government and other stakeholders to get involved in CSR processes with a view to neutralise some of these bad practices before they take root and bud.

These concerns brought to light the fact that, although there are more advantages in supporting an industry-based CSR regulatory system to promote CSR in Zambia than going the legislative way, the lack of transparency among hotel and lodge companies can undermine potential benefits for communities. Nevertheless, all senior Government officials in the Ministry of Tourism still considered an industry-based CSR regulatory system to be more suitable for the Zambian situation because of its potential to improve

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relationships between government and hotel and lodge companies, and to encourage transparency and community participation in CSR. According to the officials, by pairing the industry-based CSR regulatory system with appropriate policy and non-policy

incentive strategies, more benefits can be achieved and directed into communities. They considered additional benefits would include using incentives to boost private sector participation in CSR and to create opportunities to align the impacts of CSR towards long-term community development outcomes. However, they also recognised that all these benefits are possible provided the CSR regulatory system is jointly designed and managed and incentive strategies are carefully designed, implemented, monitored and evaluated by Government to ensure progress.

Thus, all the participants recognised “incentives” as possibly another important driver that could offer good prospects for community development in the area (see some suggestions in Chapter Seven). Seven managers gave incentive drivers the second highest priority position same as voluntary (ethical) regulation. This finding on incentives shows some consistency with findings of a study conducted by Merwe and Wöcke (2007, pp. 6-7), in South Africa where the majority of tourism companies (that is, those who did not take part in CSR) cited the lack of incentives as the main reason for their behaviour. Based on findings by Merwe and Wöcke (2007) and the findings of this research, there is a strong assumption that if incentives are appropriately applied, they can be an important driver for promoting appropriate CSR practices for community development, including, to increase participation of companies in CSR and aligning the impacts of CSR to long-term outcomes for community development.