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AbstractHow can we better understand the complex interaction effects that are triggered when businesses and international government agencies become partners in social development? To answer, this article presents field experiences of Heineken in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, and the United Nations Global Compact in Dubai, to show the impact of key multi-stakeholder business-development policies as experienced by millions of people. These cases help us understand business and sustainable development interactions by exploring existing research gaps regarding issues of discourse, guidance, and legitimacy. This article has four aims: (1) to show that business-development interactions are much more complex than most case studies are able to encapsulate; (2) to explore how unintended ripple effects of even the most promising "win-win" business-development policies can carry catastrophic consequences; (3) to illustrate the potential benefits of a novel methodology for future research on business, global governance, and sustainable development; and (4) to show how business and development concerns interconnect across and through the macro- and meso-levels of analysis down to local livelihood interactions and impacts. I contextualize these experiences to emerging scholarship, opening avenues for building theory and improving policy on business, development, and peace.

After Myanmar ended military rule in 2011, significant foreign investment arrived to facilitate a profitable transition to an integrated regional economy, and under the promise that foreign actors can help facilitate peaceful long-term development. However, these firms have also tacitly supported an ethnic cleansing committed by the government that most have partnered with or funded. This article builds theory on economic opening, development and conflict, using research from Myanmar to forward three arguments about business actions in fragile, at-risk countries. First, international-led regulatory reform has had little impact on endemic corruption at the micro- or meso-levels, as local elites and international businesses remain the primary beneficiaries. Second, 'development' is a contentious topic, defined locally not as broad societal growth but the unjustified picking of winners and losers in society by foreign entities. Third, business ventures are exacerbating ethnic tensions through a liberal peace-building mentality that is unresponsive to either local conflicts or local communities. The article closes by offering three ways that these findings open future research avenues on business engagement as peace-builders and development agents in developing yet fragile states.

The Gujarat Mail is just another red-eye train. Twelve powder-blue passenger cars crisscrossing, like so many hundreds of others, India's northwestern breadbasket through the dark of night. At five minutes past two, the Mail begins its four-hour journey, lumbering south from Surat to Mumbai. Inside, the third-class cabins are equal parts scurrying roaches and dangling unwashed feet; fading monsoon rains that bleed through the iron-barred windows grant only fleeting mercies. A few hundred unwilling insomniacs are sandwiched together, helplessly sweating on filthy vinyl benches as the shrieking of the rails splinters dreams along every gentle bend. In this part of the world, it's an utterly unexceptional journey. Aside from the $25 million or so in freshly polished diamonds on board, that is. The diamond world has changed, however, and cheats have found new ways to game the system. The real laundering begins in Surat's Mahidharpura diamond market. Adapted from the source document.