Should Business Play a Role in Refugee Crisis Asks LBS Professor

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A London Business School (LBS) professor has questioned whether business should be playing a role in the ongoing refugee crisis caused (most notably but not exclusively) by continuing instability and conflict in Syria.

Although this crisis has been felt most keenly by countries in Europe, the reverberations have been felt as far afield as Latin America and Japan, where governments have taken differing stances on matters of asylum, ensuring its status as an issue of truly global proportions. But, is responding to the demands of those in search of a new home solely a question for politicians?

Ioannis Ioannou, a strategy and entrepreneurship professor at LBS, implies that business’ power in the modern world necessitates involvement in both the short and long-term debate over how to address a refugee crisis such as that which has seen nine million people leave Syria since 2011, according to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“In an era in which the world’s largest corporations are becoming ever more powerful, it is high time that societies established a conversation about two key questions: should the business community share responsibility for dealing with the refugee crisis in the short-term as well as the long-term? If yes, what are the boundaries of its potential responsibility?” asks the London Business School professor.

The UCL Institute for Global Prosperity’s Henrietta Moore, writing in the Guardian, has gone one step further and pointed to the responsibility of business interests in fuelling the conditions that lead to crises such as that in Syria:

“While Islamic State (IS) and other regional groups must take responsibility for the sickening atrocities we are now witnessing, the continuing destabilization of Syria appears to have a lot more to do with Western-backed strategic gas pipelines in the region than any concern for democracy.”

London Business School professor outlines long-term possibilities

Yet, any business involvement in the refugee crisis thus far has been limited to the short term, in Ioannou’s view, with the London Business School professor pointing to charitable donations made by BT and Goldman Sachs aimed at supporting relief efforts for refugees arriving in Europe.

However, it is over the long term that business could yield a greater impact. By providing employment, businesses can not only relieve a refugee crisis, but the often-forgotten benefits of immigration (were the refugees to remain) could also be reaped by host countries over the long term, says Ioannou:

“Employed migrants, whether skilled or unskilled, could generate a healthy income to sustain their families, contribute to economic growth, establish a home and perhaps, in due course, and through generations, they might be able to integrate with their host communities through shared language and culture.”

Having said that, Ioannou recognizes that political decisions, such as that of Hungary to shut its border and effectively close a route into the EU, hold the key to enabling companies to take on a greater share of responsibility for addressing the human displacement brought on by ongoing conflict in Syria.

If business can play a greater role, any ensuing initiatives could also provide an important platform from which to respond to anticipated waves of migration (forced or otherwise) in the decades ahead. For instance, the Environmental Justice Foundation believes that the pressures brought on by climate change will have caused 150 million people worldwide to migrate by 2050. Indeed, the way in which large numbers of businesses have been actively engaged in the debate over climate change and committing to reducing carbon emissions is a point of comparison in the London Business School professor’s rationale. By extension, should businesses not also look to play a role in coming up with solutions to migration pressures, both now and in the future?