We examine three business-related initiatives designed to achieve peace positive impacts in the Cape Town township of Langa. Each was seemingly straightforward in its purpose, logic, and implementation. However, their positive intent was frustrated and their impacts ultimately harmful to their articulated goals. Understanding why this is so can be difficult in violent, turbulent, and information-poor environments such as Langa, confounding progress even by actors with ethical intentions. To aid in sense making and to provide insight for more positive future action, we develop from 125 interviews conducted for this study causal loop models for these initiatives within their conflict subsystems. These explain the perverse impacts of these initiatives by illuminating their (lack of) salience to key conflict factors, their (in)sufficiency to effect positive change in light of competing systems dynamics, and their (in)attentiveness to interdependencies with the intentions and actions of others. We thus contribute to understanding of the factors required to achieve positive social outcomes in more extreme contexts. More generally, we demonstrate the value of systems analysis both for scholarship related to business and peace and for reducing blind spots that can inhibit sound planning for ethical business action amidst complexity.
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Introduction
Langa is the oldest township in Cape Town. It was born of forced resettlement of black citizens pre-dating Apartheid. It continues to grow as poor South Africans move nearer to the city center in search of work. It, like other historically black townships, is characterized by pronounced and endemic poverty, unemployment, hunger, the lack of basic water, sanitation, and electricity services, substandard housing and education, and violence (Brown-Luthango et al., 2017). In response, any number of business-related initiatives in Langa attempt to help the community to move away from destructive conflict and toward greater economic and social development—that is to say, to achieve peace positive impacts (Miller et al., 2019). As explored in this paper, examples include government incentives to create more employment opportunities in the private sector for residents. Enterprises operating in the community form coalitions to enhance the business environment across social divides. Civil society actors intervene to address conflictual relationships between groups competing for what they perceive as their fair share of limited private sector opportunities.
Despite their ethical intent, these actions are not reported to add up to significant positive change. They are rather contributing to unintended negative social and economic outcomes—for example, reinforcing cycles of violence and increasing the unemployment rate. These perverse effects are poorly explained by the extant management scholarship on business and peace. In that literature, the job creation and provision of developmental opportunities (Fort & Schipani, 2004; Oetzel et al., 2009) and improvement of intergroup relations (Ganson et al., 2022a) described in Langa would be expected to address root causes of conflict in ways that contribute to peace outcomes (Miklian, 2017).1 Furthermore, the reasons for these perverse outcomes are obscured for actors working in violent, turbulent, and information-poor environments such as Langa (Charman & Piper, 2012; Svensson, 2013). Delving into these realities in ways that enable more ethical and effective business-related action is therefore challenging.
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To aid in sense making and to provide insight for more positive future interventions, we turn to tools of systems analysis. We note that the constructs of intended and unintended consequences, balancing and reinforcing loops, time delays, and systems boundaries (Wolstenholme, 2003) have been widely adopted in peacebuilding theory and practice (Gallo, 2013; CDA, 2016; Oliva & Charbonnier, 2016). These have been adapted from their management roots (Forrester, 2007) to better understand the frustrations and perverse outcomes of peace initiatives. We develop three causal loop subsystems models with respect to business-related initiatives in Langa intended to advance peace positive impacts. Such systems modelling requires context-relevant insight that can emerge most prominently from the experience of agents within the system (Loode, 2011). We thus build from 125 interviews conducted for this study.
Our analysis illuminates how these business-related actions interact with, and may be constrained by, prevailing dynamics of conflict and cohesion in Langa. The causal loop subsystems models bring to light the dominance of key conflict factors, competing forces that strengthen or weaken these, and the interconnected actions of various actors in response. It thus has significant explanatory power for the frustration of the initiatives. This has broader implications for ethical business-related action in peacebuilding contexts. Contributing to theory, we address “a lacuna in the extant literature on conceptualizing the emergence, the dynamics, and the outcomes of organizational phenomena in extreme contexts” (Alvi et al., 2019, p. 279) by highlighting the barriers to—and leverage points for—change within complex conflict environments. For practice, we demonstrate the value of systems analysis to help leaders from business and other sectors to meet the imperative “to better appreciate the complexity of the context in which they operate” (van Tulder & Keen, 2018, p. 315) by reducing blind spots and supporting sound planning for ethical and effective business action.
From Linear to Systems Analysis of Peace Positive Impacts
Three decades after the transition to a democratic South Africa, impoverished urban dwellers in townships such as Langa experience few of the promises of the new Constitution. They face “precarity in spaces that ought to have afforded them dignity and hope” (Mavengano & Nkamta, 2022, p. 1). Government is often experienced as predatory rather than developmental: for example, many of those aged 18–25 in Cape Town name state agents as the primary instigators of violence and extortion (Cechvala et al., 2021). This results in communities “mainly shaped away from the processes organizing production, consumption, and official political representation in a society” (Tournadre, 2020, p. 320). Gangs and other, “less stable forms of power, in which violence becomes a necessary resource to wield” (Nkonki-Mandleni et al., 2021, p. 2), emerge. Community members “excluded from the city’s opportunities” and “physically, politically and economically “marginalized” … are particularly vulnerable to crime and violence” (U.N. Habitat, 2011, p. 1). In Langa, this results in a murder rate that may exceed 100 per 100,000 inhabitants, making it one of the most violent suburbs in the country (SACN, 2019), if not the world. The result is growing hopelessness and anger (HSRC, 2023) among the township’s citizens.
In response, ethical business-oriented actors may be motivated to take constructive action. The business and peace literature invites them to “contribute to the existence of those societal attributes” less like those found in Langa and more consistent with “nonviolent and stable societies” (Fort & Schipani, 2007, p. 359). Substantively, promising efforts are theorized to include the leveraging of the private sector to reduce deprivation (Fort & Schipani, 2004; Oetzel et al., 2009), or ethical leadership (Getz, 1990; Kolk & van Tulder, 2002) that can change parties’ calculus of the benefits of violence (Katsos & Forrer, 2014). It is also argued that business-related action can improve intergroup interactions (Ganson et al., 2022a) in ways that build shared understanding of the context (Anderson & Zandvliet, 2009; Miller et al., 2019). Together, substantive and relational interventions are expected to make more likely a virtuous cycle of economic outcomes (Joseph et al., 2021), improve working relationships (Ganson & Wennmann, 2016; Miller et al., 2019) and advance norms and principles in support of peace positive impacts (Miklian, 2017).
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Each of these assertions from the business and peace literature implies a cause-and-effect relationship in which ethical business-related inputs will predictably lead to more positive social outcomes. Yet, a more critical strand of the literature cautions that such linear causal models cannot account for the many documented cases in which such action is not only ineffective, but also has unintended negative impacts on conflict risk (Anderson & Zandvliet, 2009; Bardouille-Crema et al., 2013). This proves true even where there is an explicit intention to positively influence peace (Miklian & Schouten, 2019). In brief, the linkage between business-related action and peace outcomes is far more multifaceted than a linear, input–output model can capture (Chigas & Woodrow, 2018). These observations are congruent with the frustrations and perverse outcomes of business-oriented initiatives experienced in Langa.
This invites attentiveness to the broader social relations and systems of power that exist within conflict environments (Hoffman & Lange, 2016). Because status quo systems and institutions “are functioning to achieve some purpose—protecting the power and authority of a particular elite, for example—they are highly resistant to change” (Ganson & Wennmann, 2016, p. 192). “A place experiencing entrenched conflict” therefore “needs to experience profound shifts in power relationships and institutional arrangements in order to unleash peaceful development” (Ganson, 2018, p. 195). Consequently, a discrete intervention by or with respect to business actors is unlikely to be a central factor in transitions from conflict to peace (Austin & Wennmann, 2017). The impacts of business-related action will rather turn on its interplay with the broader social and institutional dynamics of the context (Muhammad et al., 2016; Spedale & Watson, 2014).
It appears that business-related efforts must move beyond “drops in the bucket” assumptions (Chigas & Ganson, 2003; Ernstorfer et al., 2015) that at least implicitly assert that every incremental job, coalition built, or improved relationship makes a contribution to peace. It is increasingly understood that discernible impacts on conflict and peace rather require moving beyond discrete corporate citizenship activities (Gitsham, 2007) or isolated initiatives (Ganson, 2019) toward a coherent set of efforts with sufficient cumulative impact for positive change (Chigas & Woodrow, 2018). This more nuanced understanding has been codified in good practice guidelines for effective peacebuilding such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Assistance Committee guidance on evaluating peacebuilding activities in settings of conflict and fragility (OECD, 2012).
Such a coherent approach requires an ability to model the (in)appropriateness or (in)effectiveness of extent or proposed change efforts within complex conflict systems such as Langa. To do so, peacebuilders have adapted from management the tools of systems analysis (Wolstenholme, 2003) to gain insight into how the elements within a conflict system relate and evolve in multifarious interactions. This can illuminate the dynamics that create conflict and that would need to be addressed to achieve peace (de Coning, 2016).
In a peacebuilding systems model, factors represent the tangible or intangible features of the conflict that can vary positively or negatively (Ricigliano, 2003)—in Langa, for example, the availability of jobs or the quality of relationships between groups. These are also referred to as stocks (Meadows & Wright, 2008). Causal connections between factors are modeled to exhibit how the increase or decrease in one factor increases or decreases another factor. These causal connections are also referred to as flows (Meadows & Wright, 2008). Feedback loops describe entrenched flows emerging from a closed string of factors linked through their causal connections (Liebovitch et al., 2020; Gear et al., 2018; CDA, 2016; Meadow & Wright, 2008), typically at the level of a subsystem of the broader system delineated by a particular key factor of conflict.
While conceptually rigorous, the approach need not be overly complex in its application. Indeed, its promise is the straightforward generation of actionable insights from the grassroots to elite levels of engagement across diverse contexts (CDA, 2016; Chigas & Woodrow, 2018). We provide a brief illustration in Fig. 1. In this real-world example, the lack of educated workers in a township was identified as a key causal factor impeding business investment and thus job creation. This led a well-intentioned business to provide training to upskill residents. However, once trained, these residents preferred to leave the township in search of better employment opportunities. This increased brain drain and failed to increase the stock of educated workers to attract new investment.
Fig. 1
Example of subsystem: Job Training intervention to upskill workers. This figure is a subsystem in a context in which lack of education impeded business investment. It shows how the intervention of increased training programs had the unintended impact of newly educated workers leaving the community. (Color figure online)
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In rumor-rich and information-poor contexts (Ganson, 2013) such as Langa, such analysis will not provide incontrovertible proof of complex dynamics, or the specific values of stocks and flows. However, a cogent narrative emerges that explains how actors have understood, and acted within, a complex context (Ricigliano, 2003; CDA, 2016). Change agents may identify chains of dependencies between factors that can lead to unanticipated consequences; or they may see patterns of intervention that might shift the broader systems (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003). This occurs as part of an emergent and iterative process of reflection and action (Burns, 2007) in which the goal is not more precise modeling but more actionable insight. For example, the understanding emerges from Fig. 1 that the business providing training may not have sufficiently considered the intentions and actions of other agents in the system (Hendrick, 2009)—in this case, the workers themselves. This dynamic can be tested, for example, by proceeding with training and job creation initiatives in tandem to observe the effect on educated people remaining in the community.
Such systems analysis tools were developed by management scholars at the organizational level and applied by peacebuilding scholars and practitioners at the societal level. More recently, they have begun to cross back into business and peace discourse. Scholarship argues for the value of a systems perspective (Grewatsch et al., 2023; Monat et al, 2020; Ganson, 2019; Luiz et al., 2019), and some case examples utilizing systems analysis are emerging (e.g., Cechvala & Corpus, 2016). However, Sterman’s observation that “a systems view of the world is still rare” (1994, p. 2) appears still largely true in the domain of business and peace. To gain insight on the perverse outcomes of three well-intentioned business-related efforts in Langa, we thus use systems analysis to model them within the broader landscape of factors and dynamics that enable or inhibit more peace positive impacts. In doing so, we probe the contribution of systems analysis to business and peace scholarship and to ethical business action in conflict environments more generally.
Methodology
We use a case study qualitative methodology (e.g., Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1994). Inquiries were designed to elicit information about intentional efforts to improve social, political, and economic conditions in Langa, with a particular focus on those pursued by or with small businesses. Case study methods offer scholars a strong methodological fit for understanding the intersection of business and society (Bass & Milosevic, 2018), here three business-related initiatives designed to advance peace positive impacts in the Cape Town township of Langa.
Data Collection
Data were collected using a “perspective” approach to qualitative case study (Donini, 2007). This methodology ensures that interviews are longer, iterative, and open-ended. This affords time to investigate a broad range of perspectives as they relate to the primary research question: the interviewees understanding of violence in their context and the role of business-related action in that violent context. Importantly, rather than relying on prescriptive assumptions, our lines of inquiry explored what does and does not work, and why, in terms of business actions on issues of peace and conflict. This approach generated questions that explored emergent and often unexpected topics determined by the interviewees, allowing us greater understanding of topics of significance to them. Often, insights from prior interviews were carried into emergent discussions as points of reflection and triangulation. This iterative approach brought into conversation a diverse range of perspectives and experiences (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). This mimicked the value of focus group discussions through individual interviews (Morgan, 1997) in a context in which low levels of trust and high levels of conflict make such an approach inadvisable.
We conducted 125 semi-structured interviews in two stages. The selection of the 42 informants for stage one was opportunistic. It began with outreach to Stellenbosch Business School Small Business Academy2 (SBA) students and alumni who are drawn from different townships in the Cape Town metropolitan area. From there, a snowball approach (Morgan, 2008) was employed, with follow-on interviews arranged through SBA members. They represented a wide range of business types as well as locations within the Western Cape. This took into account the need to locate members of a difficult to reach population (Spreen, 1992), here people willing to talk openly about the specifics of conflict and violence in a context in which they live and work. It also recognized that the purpose of this stage of research was not to establish a cohort that was representative per se, but rather to listen carefully to the narrative that emerged from an in-depth and contextualized “exploration of a central phenomenon” (Creswell, 2005, p. 203)—in this case, issues and dynamics salient to questions of business and peace in Cape Town townships.
Selection of the 83 informants in stage two focused specifically on community members from Langa. Introductions were facilitated through local contacts living and working in Langa familiar with the people there. We interviewed small business owners, community members, government officials, public and private security providers, conflict actors, faith leaders, community organizers and development organizations, and other relevant role players who live and work in the township.
During stage two, we applied an embedded research approach. This is a contextually specific method for undertaking ethnographic research grounded in immersive fieldwork. It is responsive and adaptive to collaborators as a way of developing novel outputs (Lewis & Russell, 2011). The intention is to simultaneously contribute to both research and community agendas, and in doing so, to limit, or at least overtly acknowledge, normative biases through collaboration under shared goals (McGinity & Salokangas, 2014). This approach is also attentive to ethical imperatives for longer-term, equitable research relationships in resource-constrained environments (Pennington, 2018).
Quality control was undertaken through follow-up discussions with key informants (Tremblay, 1957)—people within the community who hold formal positions, have and are willing to share critical knowledge relevant to the research agenda, have strong communication skills, and are able to provide an unbiased viewpoint or reflect upon their own biases. These people serve as windows on the community and represent “cultural experts” in explaining the community to an outsider (Bernard, 1995; Mckenna & Main, 2013). Key informants included community members in Langa, and also members of similar communities across Cape Town, other business operators, and both national and international experts on topics such as urban violence, business, and conflict systems.
We triangulated our research findings through numerous visits and conversations with key informants. We also reviewed secondary data from pre-existing research studies. Thus, our findings were tested across multiple sources of data in order to capture a comprehensive picture of conflict in Langa (Creswell, 2012) and to understand the degree to which our research accurately operationalized the theoretical constructions under study (Agle & Kelley, 2001). This afforded greater reliability in our findings (Stavros & Westberg, 2009) and helped to circumvent the possibility of bias toward any subset of actors or interviewees. We determined saturation of data at the point when additional interviews provided few new insights as related to our research questions (Guest et al., 2006). Further, we confirmed that multiple methods of external analysis regarding the dynamics of violence in Langa and in other townships across the Cape Town metropolitan area provided similar findings and outcomes (Fusch, 2008; Holloway et al., 2010).
Informants were anonymized and information about their location and category of actor were generalized to ensure their protection. Relevant quotations from informants are presented throughout the research findings to demonstrate how they viewed the dynamics of conflict and how their actions or activities interacted with those dynamics. We acknowledge that generalizability in this case may present concerns (Ritchie & Lewis, 2003). To ensure robustness, we used the COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qualitative research (COREQ), the PLoS ONE standard for qualitative studies (Tong et al., 2007). This helps to ensure transparency and replicability of findings of the research study. (See online supplementary materials for the COREQ framework and the interview guide.)
Systems Analysis
Deploying a visualization technique called conflict systems modeling (Liebovitch et al., 2020; Meadows & Wright, 2008), we used the qualitative data collected in stages one and two to model three conflict subsystems of Langa. Conflict subsystems are “small parts of a larger system” that all the same “also have goals” (CDA, 2016, p. 13). In these cases, the goal is defined by the change agents: to create more employment opportunities, to enhance the business environment, or to address conflictual relationships between groups. Each subsystem thus represents a bounded set of issues and actors with respect to a business-related intervention that was intended to advance peace positive impacts in Langa.
The modeling used causal loop diagraming (Maruyama, 1963, p. 1982), which presents the causal connections among factors as discussed above. We inductively open coded data (Glaser, 1978) gathered from interviews. We then undertook a thematic analysis (Gower et al., 2020) to disaggregate causal dynamics among factors driving conflict in Langa. Once grouped as factors working for and factors working against positive transformation, we applied axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) in order to see cause-and-effect patterns among the factors identified in the thematic analysis. This process captures the perceptions of respondents as to whether a causal relationship is positive (in the sense that the originating factor increases the value of the target factor) or negative (meaning that the originating factor decreases the value of the target factor) (Liebovitch et al., 2020). It also captures the relative strength of the causal relationship, defined in terms of its ability to affect meaningful change in the factor to which it contributes.
Once data were coded and reflected the cause-and-effect patterns among factors, we mapped inflows and outflows. From this, we identified feedback loops (defined as recursive cycles arising from a closed chain of linked factors that eventually lead back to the originating factor (Liebovitch et al., 2020; Gear et al., 2018; CDA, 2016; Meadow & Wright, 2008) within the three subsystems. We coded each feedback loop to illuminate its fundamental properties: in particular, whether trending toward greater conflict or peace, or, since conflict systems tend to self-organize and resist change, maintaining existing structures and dynamics (Holland, 1992; Coleman et al., 2007) as experienced by respondents. This was done with reference to generic subsystems archetypes in both the organizational (Wolstenholme, 2003) and peacebuilding literature (CDA, 2016). These were used as a launching point to understand potential relationships by “‘collapsing’ down insights from models” (Wolstenholme, 2003, p. 8; Wolstenholme, 1999). Finally, we applied the business-related intervention to its respective subsystem. This permits tracing of its impacts to achieve better understanding of why various outcomes were experienced, verified by the patterns that emerge from the collective experience of diverse respondents.
We reflected upon alternative explanations relating to conflict subsystems models that emerged from our analysis. We considered the possibility of inaccurate data, unrepresentative data, or that interviewees told us what they believed we wanted to hear. To minimize these possibilities, we first undertook a large number of interviews to reduce the likelihood of inaccurate representation. Second, the emergent conflict subsystems models were triangulated and validated with a diverse group of key informants to ensure validity across a wide range of perspectives and experiences. Third, we considered data from published sources in addition to that collected through the primary interviews. This process helped to test outcomes and to ensure that a comprehensive picture was created (Creswell, 2012). Given this process, systems modeling worked as a heuristic tool (Liebovitch et al., 2020) into which we can trace the impacts of various actions and from which we can extract additional meaning as to why various outcomes occurred.
Findings
Our inquiry into Langa highlighted three intentional efforts to advance peace positive impacts. In the first two analyses, we explore individual and collective business agency within broader conflict dynamics. In the third, we model the impact of intervention by civil society actors on business dynamics. In each case, results emerge that are unintended—not in accordance with the planned outcomes of the intervention—and perverse—contributing to negative rather than positive peace outcomes.
Langa Conflict Subsystem I: Structural Barriers to Advancement Undermine Economic Opportunity, Increasing Willingness to Engage in Violence that Reinforces Structural Barriers
Apartheid established structural barriers that separated people based on racial lines to inhibit the advancement of many for the benefit of others. For those educated under Apartheid, the impacts persist. One informant explained, “There were … serious historical differences on spending on schools and what subjects were taught in the schools for each race. For example, for an urban center, I have always thought it interesting that agriculture was taught in Langa but not math. But now this leaves people very far behind.”
Additionally, informants in Langa described inadequate and unequal education systems as a principal feature continuing to entrench the various inequities between black and white South Africans. They explained that schools in the area were underfunded, with poor instruction and often courses not suited for the student body. Many noted that wealthier families living in Langa send their children outside the community for their education, leaving the poorest at the greatest disadvantage and with fewer resources to respond to and improve the schools within the community. These perceptions are echoed in a recent report that suggests that South Africa has one of the most unequal school systems in the world (Amnesty International, 2020).
Structural inequalities in education lead to a heavily unskilled labor force and a localized market economy that offers little opportunity and even less upward mobility. Labor statistics indicate that in 2021, 46.3% of South Africa’s youth (age 15–34) were unemployed (Statistics South Africa, 2021), with a large majority living in townships and informal settlements (De Lannoy et al., 2018). Low-skilled (those with no primary education) and lower medium-skilled workers (those with primary or lower secondary education) suffer the most (Duval et al., 2021). In Langa, it is a common feeling that, “High levels of unemployment fuels so many problems here. People have become disengaged and feel hopeless like nothing will change, and this is passed down from parents to their kids.”
Additionally, those with better education increasingly opt to make their lives elsewhere rather than invest in community upliftment. One informant explained, “Right now people are working their way up in the township and soon people will leave when they make it. When that starts to happen in 10–15 years and then the townships will collapse.”
Nearly all key informants suggested that unemployment underpinned many challenges in Langa, including substance abuse, criminality, and violence. One informant explained, “Poverty is manmade, it is unemployment driving issues of violence and crime, but there is not an easy way out.” Many scholars link the root causes of crime to poverty and unemployment among black South Africans (Demombynes & Özler, 2005; Nleya & Thompson, 2009; Palmary, 2001; Shaw, 2002), and the economic benefits associated with criminal activities is often an attractor for people to commit crime (Brown, 2001; Demombynes & Özler, 2005; Manaliyo, 2012). This was echoed by many informants who equated the lack of economic resources as a reason for violent crime: “Violence is created by poverty. People think: ‘I am doing what I need to do to survive because I am hungry.’” The interlinkage between these factors is not lost on many: “Violence is a legitimate way to solve problems here. This combined with high levels of unemployment and an ineffective state can make things like a pressure cooker.”
People in Langa also reflected on how the shocking level of violence—confirmed in official statistics by a 100 per 100,000 violent death rate in Langa (SACN, 2019)—unfolds in the shadow of Apartheid. Said one informant, “This continues in our life as we as black people were forcibly divided by tribe, class, education, status etc. and we perpetuate this.” Another noted, “We have an entrenched history…. We as people were categorized by race and put against other races. So, education and advertising, everything in life, taught us that we were less than and that there were differences between groups.” These perceptions contribute to the acceptance of chronic violence as normal (Faull & Bruce, 2023). Said one informant, “The context [in Langa] is often unimaginable. We have completely normalized violence within society.”
In turn, increased incidents of violent crime strengthen structural barriers to advancement in Langa. Specifically, the government rationalizes limited interventions by highlighting security risks or the expectation that new community investments will inevitably end up in the pockets of criminals. "Political parties and gangsters just need a share of the money, that is all they care about. We scream and shout and nothing changes” said an informant. Further, crime as a more viable pathway for economic advancement means that youth drop out of school earlier, and criminals steal from the already weak education and healthcare systems, undermining service delivery. One informant noted, “We are simply at a point where we are just recycling poverty. We don’t have a system of uplifting people individually and we don’t have the resources. The government doesn’t have the will to change the life of the people here. So, in the next 50 years I sadly can’t say things will be different.”
This dynamic completes the cycle, modeled in the first conflict subsystem feedback loop in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2
Langa Conflict Subsystem I: Structural barriers to advancement undermine economic opportunity, increasing willingness to engage in violence that reinforces structural barriers. This figure is a subsystem of Langa, which shows how entrenched structural barriers—such as poor education, healthcare, and security— inhibit the advancement of people within in the community. This leads to fewer economic opportunities. Because of this, there is an increase in violence and crime as a means for survival
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Job Creation as an Intended Positive Intervention in Langa Conflict Subsystem I
Job creation was consistently noted as a key feature that could enable significant change within the community. Many informants asserted that businesses have a critical role to play in augmenting economic opportunity within the community, helping to break the cycle of poverty and violence. One business owner in Langa explained:
We need to find ways to improve our community. I grew up in this community and there were problems that the previous generation helped with and now it is our turn to help our community and to take things forward for the next generation. And if we don’t these issues [criminality and violence] will affected us even more.
Businesses are supported in their efforts by government policies that emphasize the need to “facilitate the country’s economic growth, wealth and job creation” and “improve the quantity and quality of youth entrepreneurship and technical knowledge, reduce poverty and unemployment among young people” (Gwija & Iwu, 2014, p. 10). Various initiatives provide support to private sector actors to grow the work force and to offer new employment opportunities. These interventions proved successful in their goal of creating a greater number of jobs, in Langa and elsewhere. We note that this aligns with the proposition in the business and peace literature that job creation is a contribution to peace (e.g., Fort, 2008; Fort & Schipani, 2004).
However, given Langa’s attractive geographic proximity to the city center (roughly 14 km), low-skill jobs developed to accommodate the high levels of unemployed youth in Langa has led to others settling in the community. The Government explained that the prospect for greater employment opportunities created a “push factor” for in-migration to the Western Cape (Posel, 2010; Statistics South Africa, 2018). These new arrivals apply even greater pressure on already feeble infrastructure and social structures. As the number of jobs created are limited, and unemployment already high, many economic migrants arrive in Langa but are unable to find opportunities. They are therefore more easily recruited by criminal gangs. As one informant said, “It’s obvious, we could say ‘let’s add jobs’ but the increase of people with no skills won’t help and will only create more unemployment.”
Thus, the “successful” job creation programs have had little impact on the prospects for youth overall (Fatoki & Chindoga, 2011; Gwija & Iwu, 2014; Mkoka, 2012). Rather, they have perversely increased the rate of unemployment and poverty in Langa, contributing as well to related challenges of poor infrastructure and criminality and violence. As one informant explained, “Everyone comes down here because … jobs are better here, but this creates problems for the community.”
We model the impact of the job creation interventions in Fig. 3, allowing us to visualize the unintended consequences of positive action that undermine the original intended outcome. In this case, job creation initiatives represent a control action that failed to consider the significant increase in incentives for in-migration. This ultimately creates a system “out of control” (Wolstenholme, 2003, p. 12) as new job seekers outnumber new jobs. Thus, action undertaken to resolve the symptom of a problem that is not commensurate with that problem’s scale and scope can create “fixes that fail” (CDA, 2016, p. 45). These provide temporary relief, but in the longer term only worsen the problem.
Fig. 3
Job creation as an intended positive intervention in Langa Conflict Subsystem I. This figure shows the impact of the job creation program on the subsystem relating to economic opportunities and increased violence. Here, a job creation program had the unintended negative impact of drawing in economic migrants also seeking work, which increases the number of people facing unemployment. Many join gangs when they are unable to find jobs, which increases crime and violence within the community. (Color figure online)
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Langa Conflict Subsystem II: Structural Divisions Between Groups Leading to Othering that Underpins Violent Confrontation, Reinforcing Structural Divisions
Apartheid was not only a system that provided economic benefits to white South Africans at the expense of the majority; the regime undermined opposition and maintained power through the intentional separation of other groups in society. One informant explained, “During Apartheid it was all about divide and rule and ultimately how far can we divide them.” Hierarchical dynamics were established between groups to instill and entrench those dynamics (Ndinga-Kanga et al., 2020). For example, it is relatively well known that black Langa residents (along with other black citizens of the country) were long required to carry passes in white areas of cities; but it is less well known that black migrant workers from other areas of the country living in hostels in Langa required passes even to enter other commercial and residential areas of the same black township. One informant explained, “Apartheid was a disease. It has been embedded in South Africa and your sense of you and how you relate to others.” Said another:
Where are you from here? What’s your name? Are the first questions people ask. They listen for your surname. This is definitely a division. It is the mentality that came from Apartheid, where people belonged to certain areas spatially and people needed to stick with their own. It really impacts the community nowadays because it is just another form of discrimination.
Another noted, “Here [Langa] the challenge is a lack of cohesion because people are divided by so many different categories from race, class, gender, tribe, location, etc.”
Community members describe significant and specific divisions between groups: “Cape Borners”—people born in Langa or elsewhere in the Western Cape—“Backyarders”—people renting informal shacks in the back of people’s more established homes, typically not from the Western Cape—and “foreigners”—people from other countries. Many of these categories of people relate to the waves in which people immigrated and moved into the urban area. In particular, those whose families have deeper roots in Langa—the township is now 100 years old—are perceived to have a sense of entitlement. “Langa is the oldest township in Cape Town, and parts of it used to be part of the middle class,” said one informant. “But when informal dwellers came it disrupted the social cohesion of the area.”
These divisions are further exacerbated in Langa by its small geographic size and the physical barriers–surrounded by highways and a rail line–that do not allow the community to grow in size or much in population. Notably, “Langa is a small society where everyone knows each other. They know who is originally from here … and they want to exclude people coming from the outside.” Another explained:
Langa is an island, without a single black neighbor [meaning that the communities that surround Langa are predominately white and coloured3]. This made the people of Langa look inward and think about what they have in comparison with others. This is the biggest contributor to the dynamics you see here. The divisions are cutthroat.
Where one is born also dictates where one lives in Langa, with whom one can work, and roles one can take on in the community. Nearly all informants discussed these fault lines in society. One explained: “In Langa, this othering between groups further limits people’s ability to collaborate as it provides a hierarchy among people which creates a dominate group—‘Cape Borners’—and others.” Another explained, “We see each other as competitors.” And another, “Challenge with not being born in Langa is pulling the community apart.”
The othering between groups often manifests in conflict: over territorial areas or the entrance of new resources into the community. As one informant explained, “This divide is a constant problem because people want power and resources for their own. There are a lot of gatekeepers who want access to resources and how those resources are distributed, which breaks down our ability to collaborate.” Another explained, “Oppression is maintained between us.” Concluded another: “There is a lot of jealousy here. I have never seen anything like it. They [people in Langa] will take food out of your mouth to feed themselves.”
These territorial and social divides have escalated into violence. As one informant explained: “People are stuck in Langa and they fight for space, for recognition, for everything and so they fight each other.” Said another, “There are warring gangs from each side of Langa, which split the community. We, as kids, couldn’t go to school without getting beaten because it was on the other gang’s territory.” Further, clashes between groups is also seen in sabotage or acts that undermine each other’s ability to grow and advance. This was discussed by nearly all informants. Explained one, “Apartheid thrived on these divisions, it pronounced them and made them bigger. Now, people fight each other and don’t focus on the structures or injustices, but on each other and on petty issues.”
This fighting among groups in turn strengthens structural divisions among groups. This dynamic completes the cycle, modeled in the second conflict subsystem feedback loop in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4
Langa conflict subsystem II: Structural divisions between groups leading to othering that underpins violent confrontation, reinforcing structural divisions. This figure is a subsystem of Langa that shows how entrenched structural divisions between groups within the community leads to greater levels of othering between people, creating “in” and “out” groups within society. Increased division between people generates fighting (including violence) and competition between these groups, which further entrenches structural divisions
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The Langa Development Forum as an Intended Positive Intervention in Langa Conflict Subsystem II
The Langa Development Forum is an initiative intended to bring people together, including business owners. In its early conception, the group provided a platform to help to improve business conditions as well as to strengthen community cohesion in ways that could lead to community betterment. One informant explained, “There is division everywhere across race, politics, location, etc. but we are missing things because there is no platform to come together.” Another suggested, “SMEs [small and medium enterprises] have a role to play in the regeneration of the township, through jobs and the reinvestment of money.… But no one is championing this, we need to make these initiatives a reality.” This was one manifestation of a broader community perception that there is a pressing need to find ways to come together and improve divisive dynamics.
Notably, the approach of the Forum was consistent with studies finding value in shared platforms for action by business in peacebuilding contexts (Ganson & Wennmann, 2016). At first the Forum was a success, growing in membership and attracting resources and investments from the outside. However, new investments to enhance business conditions in Langa became entangled in the very dynamics that the Forum was meant to address. One informant explained that this should not be surprising in the Langa environment:
Organizations and platforms fall apart over resource fights. You can start something and then the next minute everyone is looking for themselves. Everyone wants a piece of the pie and therefore we are not working together for the community; and this creates really intense competition.
Said another, “Collaboration brings exploitation with its big investments. People exploit each other and steal ideas to control the resources.” Another informant used a traditional Africa proverb to describe this dynamic: “‘When elephants fight the grass gets hurt.’ Meaning that when we divide ourselves and fight we only end up hurting our people.”
We model these dynamics in Fig. 5. The Forum sought to bring different factions together to improve business conditions for all. But with the entrance of new investment into a resource-constrained environment, the pre-existing power structures and competitive fault lines were reinvigorated in ways that led to self-seeking behavior within groups. As predicted by Wolstenholme (2003), this created a zero-sum game in which advances to one group came at the expense of another. In Langa, this worsened rather than improved deep-rooted pre-existing dynamics by entrenching the cycle of one groups’ dominance over another (CDA, 2016).
Fig. 5
The Langa Development Forum as an intended positive intervention in Langa Conflict Subsystem II. This figure shows the perverse impact of the introduction of resources by the Langa Development Forum. While intended to better business conditions in the community and bring people together, new (but limited) resources created greater competition and further divided groups. (Color figure online)
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This underlines that interventions intended to change negative systems dynamics must be attentive to the root of the problem—in this case, the structural divides between groups. Interventions must also be of a sufficient scale, speed, and duration to address and overcome the dynamics that led these conditions to emerge in the first place. These include both material conditions and the social, political, and cultural structures that underlie them (Chigas & Ganson, 2003). Absent careful planning and implementation, the relative success or failure of the intervention will be predicated on initial conditions, in this case structural divisions and hierarchies among groups within Langa, as opposed to the merits of the intervention itself (CDA, 2016).
In Langa, the lack of sufficient measures to address these dynamics led to a significant weakening of the Forum, which today is largely viewed as an ineffective entity among the business community. This outcome has resulted in some shame by community members. They had intended Langa as the oldest township in Cape Town to be an exemplar to other communities; but instead, they watched initiatives flourish in other areas while their own withered. Explained by an informant, “Langa was the first township with a development forum. Khayelitsha [another and much larger and newer township in the Cape Flats] came to learn from us. But it’s now gone in Langa and Khayelitsha has a flagship forum.”
Langa Conflict Subsystem III: Intergroup Violence Fed by Cycles of Economic and Social Separation Leading to the Perceived Need to Defend Against the Other
One form of violence experienced in Langa relates to the deteriorating relations between Somali immigrants and South African nationals of Xhosa heritage, the latter of whom are both the majority and the founding group of Langa. This has inter-related economic and social dimensions.
Somali immigrants have a near monopoly on spaza shops—small corner stores—in Langa. There is some appreciation that “Foreigners are able to successfully run businesses in our community because they work hard and put in the effort.” But these dynamics are also the result of the robust communal networks that allow Somali store operators to access economic resources and business support from other Somalis. One informant explained, “The Somali community is killing it with the spaza shops because they don’t divide and fight each other. They help one another, they are united, they work like a spiderweb.” This is in part because their networks are tightly controlled: “The majority of foreigner-owned spaza shops are either owned by wealthy individuals who operate multiple stores, or more commonly by groups of Somali investors” (Charman & Piper, 2012, p. 92). Often paying substandard wages to refugee store operators who are clansmen, they can also leverage their scale to procure goods for sale at lower cost.
Current and prospective business owners of Xhosa heritage have been marginalized within the South African economy in ways that make it difficult for them to compete. They cannot rely on their networks for financing, and they do not have access to the supply chain benefits of the Somali’s much larger and more integrated operations. With many Somali store operators living outside of Langa, “There is a clear division between groups. People here [Xhosa in Langa] feel that you are an outsider and you come into their space, and you are taking their jobs or the jobs from their kids.” Another informant said that there is “a feeling that they are pushing us [Xhosa] out. So, there is a large divide between Xhosa people and foreigners.”
The perceived unfairness of immigrants displacing nationals in an important sector in the township economy fuels animosity toward Somali immigrants. There is a willingness to countenance criminality, extortion, and violence toward Somali business operators. Criminal networks in Langa therefore tend to extort from the Somali businesses and require them to pay protection fees to ensure their safety in the community. One shop operator explained that he pays a large protection fee monthly to avoid attacks on himself, his family, his staff, and the shop. He noted, “It is tough to run a business here, but we do okay financially and support our own.” A Xhosa business owner explained, “Being from here helps. Gangsters only extort the foreign nationals, and they can be brutal.”
Thus, while Xhosa people commonly frequent the Somali operated shops out of necessity, there is very little social interaction outside of this. “It is a mentality that came from Apartheid. It is a feeling that people belong to certain areas spatially and that people need to stick to their own to survive,” said one informant. Another explained that it is less about where people are from because the bigger problem is that “there is a lack of interconnection among people socially” within Langa. Rising tensions have led to further spatial segregation and limited social interaction between the groups, as well as to xenophobic violence that reinforces the intercommunal separation.
We model these intertwined social and economic dimensions of conflict in Fig. 6. The intergroup violence reinforces both social and economic separation, with the former leading to heightened mistrust and the latter exacerbating disadvantages for those of Xhosa heritage that cannot access Somali business networks. These dynamics in turn feed further violence, completing the cycle.
Fig. 6
Langa Conflict Subsystem III: Intergroup violence fed by cycles of economic and social separation leading to the perceived need to defend against the other. This figure presents the dynamics between foreigners and Xhosa people within Langa. It shows how intergroup violence and conflict emerges from economic and spatial separation of the two groups. Given the unequal access to resources between the two groups, historical marginalization felt by the Xhosa community in Langa (Group B) further fuels violence
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Dialogue as an Intended Positive Intervention in Langa Conflict Subsystem III
As xenophobic violence (driven by a variety of dynamics) increased across South Africa, civil society groups in Langa organized activities to address deteriorating relations between Somali immigrants and South African nationals of Xhosa heritage, including business actors. Interventions have been primarily psychosocial, appealing to Ubuntu and Pan-African values to bridge linguistic, social, and cultural divides through dialogue and joint activities. Explained one, “When I came here [Langa] I was surprised that this township is not integrated. I don’t see my race staying here, the community needs to come together around shared values.” These activities to some extent improved interpersonal understanding and willingness to engage on a personal level among participants.
However, the interventions did not address economic structures that were at the heart of intergroup separation. One informant explained, “So much of the money in Langa is controlled by the outside. We see this, the money comes in and then leaves Langa, and this creates frustrations.” Somali residents who still resent being treated as outsiders by many Langa residents of Xhosa heritage and who still fear for their safety continue to retreat into their own community and its closed network of business connections. “It is so dangerous, and people here [Langa] constantly remind you that you’re not from here, and that they will never accept you here,” said another. Residents of Xhosa heritage saw this as continuing evidence of the extractive nature of the Somali businesses, justifying increasingly brutal measures to contain them. Violence in the system continued along this economic feedback loop even though interpersonal connections in some cases improved. This is modeled in Fig. 7.
Fig. 7
Dialogue as an intended positive intervention in Langa Conflict Subsystem III. This figure presents the impact of a psychosocial intervention seeking to address intergroup violence. By failing to address unequal access to economic opportunity, violence continues along the economic feedback loop (R1) even if some interpersonal relationships improve along the social relations loop (R2). (Color figure online)
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The failure to address the whole of the conflict subsystem has further entrenched suspicions and divisions in ways that mean that they have become increasingly challenging to address. The dynamics of “othering,” the strengthening of group boundaries, and growing disincentives to cross them lest one be perceived as a traitor to one’s own group have taken on a life of their own (David et al., 2018; Hino et al., 2018). One informant explained, “People who are not locally from here are seen as outsiders. People in Langa do not view them as integral or part of society.” These dynamics render the psychosocial interventions less potent, as the failure to address economic divisions reinforces perceptions of an insurmountable divide. At the same time, economic cooperation becomes even less likely.
These dynamics are consistent with insights from conflict systems with respect to dominant groups becoming “addicted” to exclusion. Divisions among groups grow, making even well-crafted interventions unable to provide lasting resolutions (CDA, 2016). These explanations play out in Langa, where the civil society actors focused on interpersonal relationships failed to acknowledge or engage the economic structures underpinning violent intergroup relations. They thus gained little traction toward systemic change: they were at first ineffectual, and then increasingly fed the pre-existing conflict dynamics.
The Confounding Inter-relationships of Conflict Subsystems
In peacebuilding systems analysis, discrete subsystems are understood to bind together to create a broader conflict system comprised of interconnected causal factors (CDA, 2016). We therefore also consider the intersection of the three Langa conflict subsystems and the business-related interventions within them. This provides a fuller picture of inter-related conflict dynamics. This is modeled in Fig. 8.
Fig. 8
Figure presents the three interconnecting subsystems (represented by R1–R3). It shows the interventions in red circles and traces the impact for the interventions across factors (shown with the red arrows) from one feedback loop to another as described in the text. (Color figure online)
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The example modeled in Fig. 8 illuminates how easily an action that occurs in one subsystem can generate a perverse impact within another subsystem. In this case, the impact of the advertised jobs program not only had a negative effect on unemployment rates through in-migration (within its own subsystem). It also negatively impacted the psychosocial initiatives to address intergroup tensions and violence (a neighboring subsystem). In order for Langa residents to cross-group boundaries in the presence of significant distrust, fear, and violence, they require intense support as well as the engagement of community leaders who give permission for community members to participate. However, waves of young men in-migrating in the hope of a better future have not been part of the psychosocial interventions; nor are they embedded in community structures that support them. Thus, in the absence of economic opportunity, they are susceptible to recruitment into gangs that prey on local businesses, overwhelming the impact of even well-designed intergroup work.
We do not argue that the agents in Langa who are embedded in the conflict subsystems are necessarily consciously aware of, or act upon, these inter-relationships. On the contrary, our myriad interviews suggest that intervenors may be consumed by the complexities of their own work and limited by the blinders of their own points of reference. This is consistent with work on complex adaptive systems that finds that systems outputs are not the result of discrete actions (Smuts, 1926). Rather, they are the “consequence of the holistic sum of the myriad behaviors embedded within” them (Turner & Baker, 2019, p. 5) that may not reflect the intentions or interests of individual actors.
Discussion
We developed three conflict subsystem models with respect to business-related interventions intended to have peace positive impact in Langa. In the first, we model the perverse outcomes of employment creation initiatives that attract more new migrants (an unintended consequence) than they create new private sector jobs, increasing rather than decreasing the unemployment rate and related violent crime (the intended consequence). In the second, we model how the development of a coalition that sought to improve business conditions in Langa did not account for the key factors of social incohesion, benefitting one group over another and entrenching existing conflict dynamics. In the third, we model how failures to address the economic marginalization underlying growing intergroup tensions directly, and on its own terms, allowed intergroup conflict to continue its downward spiral despite cross-group efforts to manage it. We then show how these dynamics are further complicated by interconnections between subsystems.
Contributions to Theory
Our analysis answers calls within the business ethics literature for greater engagement with the global south and with the issues relevant to the most marginalized to address the “grand challenges which, notwithstanding noble attempts … are proving very resistant to our collective efforts” (Spence, 2022, p. 830)—here the reduction of violence and increase in economic opportunity in the fragile and conflict-affected contexts in which the majority of the world’s poorest citizens live. It also answers calls to draw on a wider range of critiques in doing so (Babalola et al., 2022) through the use of more interdisciplinary approaches (Greenwood & Freeman, 2017)—here the use of peacebuilding systems analysis to illuminate the perverse impacts of business-related interventions intended to have peace positive impacts, and to articulate the factors required to achieve such outcomes in more extreme contexts.
We demonstrate how, in Langa, the ethical intentions of a business-related initiative interact with other factors of conflict and responses by other actors to them. Diverging from the linear logic predominant in the business and peace scholarship, we show that the intervention’s peace positive impact is thus contingent: on its salience to key factors of conflict (exemplified by the failure of the Langa Development Forum to take into account its impact on social cohesion), on its sufficiency to effect positive change in light of competing systems dynamics (exemplified by the dialogue process overtaken by the dynamics of economic competition), and on its interconnection with the intentions and actions of others (exemplified by the inflow of new migrants instigated by job creation programs). We thus help to answer calls for more attention to “the vectors through which, in theory, business actors can affect the prospects, intensity, etc., of peace or conflict” (Ford, 2015, p. 452). We do so with particular focus on the structural (Idemudia, 2017) and systems (Ganson, 2019) dimensions of conflict.
Our peacebuilding systems analyses have significant explanatory power for the failure of three business-related interventions in Langa to meet their intended goals, even though they were well-intentioned and directed toward acknowledged drivers of conflict. We thus challenge assumptions in the classical business and peace literature (explored in Miklian (2017)) that positive business action will predictably contribute to peace positive impacts (e.g., Fort & Schipani, 2004; Oetzel et al., 2009). Our work adds empirical support to the assertion that, within complex conflict systems such as Langa, systems dynamics that may frustrate efforts or lead to perverse outcomes must be considered if ethical actors seek to have peace positive impact (Woodrow & Chigas, 2009; Ganson, 2019). We thus contribute to emerging scholarship that challenges overoptimistic interpretations of the business and peace literature (Ganson et al., 2022a; Joseph et al., 2021).
Our findings are consistent with work on protracted conflict, defined as complex, dynamic, non-linear systems comprised of a set of interconnected factors (e.g., Christie et al., 2001; Diamond & McDonald, 1996; Lederach, 1997). As illustrated in Langa, this work establishes that cycles of conflict are often entrenched and reinforcing (Coleman, 2003). They are thus resistant to change (Loode, 2011) as social systems revert to negatively reinforcing cycles (Coleman, 2011; Vallacher et al., 2013). Often these cycles are constructed from persistent patterns of behavior. Even if disrupted, the system only has a limited number of pathways to follow, with feedback loops tending to push the system back toward its pre-intervention state (Liebovitch et al., 2020). Our work therefore reinforces within the business and peace domain the peacebuilding systems proposition that, “attempts to change a state of destructive relations that neglect the mechanisms that continually reinstate the conflict are likely to be futile, resulting only in short-term changes” (Coleman et al., 2007, p. 1458).
More positively, our work suggests systems analysis as a meeting point for the myriad analytic lenses on the ethics of business-related action in conflict and peace. These span academic domains and areas of inquiry, including the role of elite bargains (Dercon, 2022); impacts on horizontal inequalities (Stewart, 2000); economic growth and development more generally (Collier, 2000); changes in networks of relationships engendered by business (Ganson et al., 2022a); the emergence or non-emergence of coalitions for positive change (Ganson et al., 2022b); corruption (Treisman, 2007) and the criminal economy (Sanchez, 2014); hybrid political orders (North et al., 2009); statebuilding (Berdal & Zaum, 2013); human rights (Katsos, 2020); and many more. Their discourses have tended to unfold within silos. Rather than competing with these perspectives, systems analysis presents the potential for better integration. Our work suggests how scholars working from diverse theoretical and empirical foundations can, together, examine the inter-relationships among disparate factors and dynamics within complex conflict systems (Burns, 2007).
Limitations
While we believe that these contributions are substantive, we acknowledge limitations to our work. We do not explore the nature of the agent or how its profile—for example, its sector, group identity, or stakeholder orientation—may moderate its ability to facilitate change within the system (Gray & Burns, 2021). While demonstrating why positive change is facilitated by coherence and cumulative impact of efforts, we do not explore the key conflict factors for the emergence or non-emergence of change coalitions, nor the factors influencing the agency of business-oriented actors to catalyze them. Furthermore, we consider these three subsystem models but acknowledge that they are neither exclusive nor comprehensive. In particular, we focus on ways in which negative dynamics entrench conflict or inhibit change efforts, without developing models that better explain cases of positive change despite complex conflict dynamics. More generally, we acknowledge Wolstenholme’s observation that “[a]ny abstraction of a model in either stock-flow or causal loop terms must always be a compromise between simplicity for communication and completeness for validity” (Wolstenholme, 2003, p. 8).
Contributions to Practice and Future Directions for Research
Though bounded by these limitations, our contributions have important and actionable practical implications. Most profoundly, we demonstrate the risks of business actions in conflict environments premised—whether implicitly or explicitly—on overly facile input–output models of causation. One can easily imagine that a business association or public–private partnership engaged in the interventions described in Langa would be pleased with their work: creating jobs, networking business actors, or contributing to intergroup understanding. As the intention is to improve economic and social conditions in ways that reduce violence in the townships, they might very well hold themselves out as ethical actors making contributions to peace (Fort & Schipani, 2007).
However, our systems analysis demonstrates that such initiatives—even if they are beneficial to discrete individuals—will have scant impact on the entrenched conflict system in light of competing factors and dynamics that operate with greater strength and vigor. As illustrated in all of the Langa conflict subsystems, actions can be predicted to have few discernible positive impacts on conflict and violence, and indeed risk causing unintended harm. They thus cannot be reasonably assessed as meaningful business-related contributions to peace.
Our work thus adds empirical support to the proposition that ethical businesses wanting to avoid harm and do good will require “greater sophistication around questions of nonmarket strategies, systems, and institutions than most companies currently demonstrate in their social initiatives” (Ganson, 2022b, p. 16; Ganson & Wennmann, 2016). This underlines that well-intentioned action is not necessarily ethical if it is not also well informed, well planned, and properly managed. Arguably, had these systems analyses been carried out by those taking business-related action in Langa before and during their interventions, the perverse impacts could have been avoided, or at least exposed and remedied at an earlier juncture.
Second, we give content and structure to international policy frameworks, including the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (OECD, 2011) and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (U.N., 2011). These call on actors to understand the socio-economic and socio-political contexts in which they operate, both to avoid harm and to maximize potential positive impacts (van Zanten & van Tulder, 2018). We provide business actors (and those who partner with them) practical approaches to strategic analysis within a systems framework. By applying systems analysis, they can understand both the dominant dynamics of conflict and peace as well as the factors that reinforce the status quo and resist positive change. Future work related to such analyses should therefore help in “placing … peace actors in relation to the factors that they affect and affect them, and for identifying gaps, overlaps and synergies among efforts—all of this important for understanding cumulative impacts” (Chigas & Woodrow, 2018, p. 33). It can help in identifying leverage points for positive change (Ricigliano & Chigas, 2011; Senge, 2006), and in making business-related efforts “accountable to the bigger picture” of conflict and peace (CDA, 2013 p. 21; Oliva & Charbonnier, 2016).
Finally, we offer tools to increase the coherence of business-related efforts in peacebuilding contexts. Given the interdependence of business action with the intentions and actions of others, ethical business leaders must engage more deliberately with a broader range of actors in society. Within complex adaptive systems, their individual ability to control the outcomes of the conflict system will be limited. With each agent’s actions changing the context for other agents in the system (Anderson et al., 2012; Hendrick, 2009; Mitchell, 2009), each agent’s reactions will impact the others, creating a series of new interactions (Schelling, 2006). Business leaders should all the same not conclude that effective change is impossible; a “system can be influenced, nurtured, and exploited by a group of actors” (Turner & Baker, 2019, p. 5). However, they do so within a network of agents acting in parallel and in competition and cooperation with one another (Bovaird, 2008; Meadows, 1999; Meadows & Wright, 2008). Consistent with Coleman (2011), scholars and practitioners can explore how systems modeling can be not only a tool for analysis, but also act as a platform for coordination of efforts and catalyzation of sufficient coalitions for positive systems change.
Declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Ethical Approval
Ethics clearance for this research was received from the Research Council of Norway.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all interviewees.
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We note that there is no consensus within or across literatures as to the definition of peace (or conflict). For the purposes of this paper, we define “peace positive impacts” or “contributions to peace outcomes” as efforts that either (a) stop violence and destructive conflict, and/or (b) address the political, economic, and social grievances driving conflict (Chigas & Woodrow, 2018; Miller et al., 2019). Conflict drivers or contributions to conflict by implication increase the risk of violence and destructive conflict or exacerbate these grievances.
Population groups are defined by Statistics South Africa as “a group with common characteristics (in terms of descent and history), particularly in relation to how they were (or would have been) classified before the 1994 elections. The following categories are provided in the census: Black African, colored, Indian or Asian, white, other.” (Statistics SA).