Stakeholder Roles in Community Development: Multinationals, Government and Citizens Roles

This article focuses on the development of the Huasco Valley in Northern Chile, a region largely impacted by multinationals and governmental decisions, assessing the roles that citizens expect governments, multinationals and themselves to play in their development. Citizens were surveyed and interviewed using role theory as a theoretical framework, finding that they expect themselves to play the most important role in reaching sustainable development for their community, leading its future and supervising businesses' operations and the government's decisions. To accomplish sustainable development, they want to oversee economic development through growing the tourism and agricultural sectors and tackling social and environmental issues. More importantly, low trust levels must be addressed to achieve sustainable development. While role theory supports the view of expected roles based on what stakeholders represent, this research shows that although citizens understand stakeholders' roles, due to a conflicting history over their territory, they aim to restrict multinationals' and government's roles and for them to follow their lead towards community development.