Understood as a market-based approach, CSR seems to work best where public governance capacity and institutions are strong and civil society well developed. In countries or regions where public governance is weak, stakeholder demands for corporate social responsibility create uneasy dilemmas for businesses. Many large companies have expressed worries about the extent to which CSR has led to demands that they deliver public goods to communities where they work (such as healthcare, education or infrastructure) in areas well beyond their core competences. These issues can be particularly acute for businesses in the extractive sectors which are used to working in remote parts of the world where host country government casts only a
weak shadow. Weak institutions of civil society or public governance can in turn
mean that the best- intentioned business programmes fail to realise their potential.