EDUCATING COMMUNITIES THROUGH CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE ROLE OF COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE IN COMMUNITY CAPACITY BUILDING

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility is increasingly framed as a community education and capacity building strategy rather than short-term assistance. Collaborative governance is crucial in shaping participation, learning continuity, and sustainability. This study examines how CSR is enacted through collaborative governance and how it influences community capacity building in Padang Lawas Regency. Using a qualitative case study approach, data were collected through in-depth interviews, field observation, and document analysis involving corporate actors, village governments, public service providers, youth organisations, educational institutions, and community members. Analysis focused on governance dynamics and community learning processes within CSR practices. CSR implementation remains predominantly assistance-oriented, emphasising charitable and infrastructure programmes that reinforce transactional relations and limit sustained social learning. Collaborative governance is weakly institutionalised, with centralised corporate decision-making, administrative village roles, and beneficiary-based community participation. As a result, community learning is fragmented, short-lived, and weakly institutionalised, while collaboration with public health services produces only ad hoc learning effects. The study conceptualises CSR as a CSR-Based Community Learning Ecosystem dependent on facilitative leadership, institutional design, and sustained collaboration. Strengthening CSR as community education requires deliberative spaces, locally grounded learning pathways, and measurable capacity outcomes to support durable community capability.