Business for Peace: The role of businesses in warzones

The intentions and actions of private businesses are often regarded with suspicion, and they are nowadays held under close scrutiny for their role in polluting the environment and flouting human rights. Less attention, however, is paid to their role in warzones, but the topic is more nuanced than one might first suspect.

Can businesses help to provide the conditions for long-lasting peace in fragile states and zones of military strife and conflict around the world? This is just one of the questions being asked in the fast-growing but highly debated academic field of Business for Peace.

Business for Peace is all about understanding how businesses, including both local and international companies, can promote the conditions for peace in war zones and conflict zones such as Ukraine, the Middle East, Ethiopia, Myanmar, the DRC, and Afghanistan.

At the end of 2022, experts from around the world working in the field of Business for Peace gathered at the University of York for a workshop organised by the School for Business and Society. Many of the biggest names from this growing community of researchers came to speak in York to provide different perspectives on the topic, including Tim Thornton, the American academic who coined the term “Business for Peace”.

Professor Christopher Williams of the University of York explains more about this intriguing topic. “The Business for Peace question is an interesting one because, at the end of the day, private sector companies want to make money. In a fragile situation such as a warzone, they can end up being heavily criticised if they get things wrong, perhaps by doing something which sides with one of the competing areas of groups. Carrying out business while maintaining credibility is therefore a real balancing act.”

“But what we want to examine is, can they also play a positive role in these situations? For instance, one of our speakers, Mark van Dorp from LSE, spoke about Heineken and its strategy in Mozambique. He has been advising them about the security of their breweries and spoke about the increasing awareness of the need to move from legal compliance and do no harm/conflict-sensitivity to a more proactive approach of business with regards to potential peace-positive impact."

“In other words, it’s not just about putting up barbed wire around the perimeter of the business – it’s also about managing relationships with local communities.”

Jason Miklian from the University of Oslo has been re-examining the topic of Business for Peace in light of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. Firms are increasingly willing to recognise the importance of their role in social responsibility and human rights, but few work significantly on the activity that has the highest correlation to peace: the strengthening of democracy. 

But when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a host of multinational companies took action in a surprising way. They went beyond the minimum required by sanctions and shuttered operations in Russia, at significant short- and long-term cost. They coupled these actions with strong statements in support of Ukraine and global democracy. So is it possible that businesses are truly moving from passive democracy actors to a more active frontline stand, or is this simply a one-off outlier that will morph back to 'business as usual'?

While the concept of Business for Peace has developed and grown over the past decades, less is understood about the leadership behaviours and practices of those running businesses and engaged in the delivery of services during and after conflict. This is often a hidden story of individuals and teams leading and managing through and beyond sustained violence. 

Organisations themselves can inadvertently reinforce and recreate the conditions that sustain conflict through micro and miso level interactions. However, by better understanding these interactions and leadership strategies that can avoid them, it is possible to shift behaviours and practices to allow organisations to act as active peacebuilders - rather than managers of division by default.

Joanne Murphy from the University of Birmingham has looked at the experiences of those leading in public, private and third sector organisations in Northern Ireland, the Basque region and Bosnia Herzegovinian and has underlined that in very many conflict afflicted regions, organisations and their leaders are already acting as peacebuilders, but often in isolation and considerable personal risk to themselves.