Abstract

There is corporate commitment to poverty alleviating in activities that include: sustainable development, servicing bottom of the pyramid markets, issues management, aligning with the Millennium Development goals of the United Nation, and partnerships with Government/NGOs together with other firms. The study develops an integrated theoretical framework for the identification of poverty alleviation strategies of firms using Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) markets, partnership with other organisations, issues management and sustainable development. The Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations (MDG) aligns with these concepts in the development of an integrative theoretical framework. The paper links the concept of business case for Poverty Alleviation Strategy (PAS) with sustainability practices, issues management, partnerships with other organisations and the bottom of the pyramid marketing activities of corporations. The major contribution of this study is to develop a theoretical framework which enables a strategy for poverty alleviation to be identified. A Theoretical construct is proposed that suggests corporate strategy includes Social Responsibility Strategies (SRS) and that poverty alleviation is a subset of SRS. The paper shows that poverty alleviation can be hidden in the SRS and that the new framework proposed in the paper helps to isolate and identify the PAS as a distinct strategy. The integrated framework developed in this paper assists researchers to identify corporate PAS which may not be so clearly and overtly stated in annual reports or in other corporate/media reports of the firm.. The framework can be useful in investigating whether corporations do formally promote the social concept of poverty alleviation in what has been termed in the literature “business case for alleviating poverty”. Moreover, the theoretical framework developed in this study provides a method of assessing the extent to which corporations embrace alleviation of global poverty and more importantly whether they view it as a strategic priority.