For the Chinese, the nineteenth century was a period of waking up and realizing why the Middle Kingdom had fallen behind the West in economic growth. Not only had this large and once prosperous country fallen behind economically (with its apparent failure to industrialize), it also fell prey during the two Opium Wars to the same country that first embarked upon the Industrial Revolution – Britain. Consequently, a long period of autarky came to an end. While initially China was forced to open up only several “treaty ports” for trade and commerce, eventually the entire country was subjected to the influences of the West, and in spheres that went far beyond trade and commerce to also include industry, education, and even politics. By assembling data from a variety of previously untapped historical sources, this chapter attempts to analyze the Western influences that shaped the economic trajectories of late imperial China.

Several sources of today’s pressure on managers operating in developing and emerging economies (DEEs) are arguably more associated with social issues than profit-making concerns. Managers are thus faced with understanding and embedding solutions to societal challenges in their core business strategies in order to be sustainable. Consequently, solutions that go beyond the traditional focus of the CSR discourse on philanthropy in DEMs have become much more imperative as companies strive to use CSR to re-engineer their value chain. As lack of adequate human skills remains a major problem to firms and society, the existing challenges of human capital in many DEMs present businesses (both small and big firms) with the opportunity to use CSR to increase the knowledge, skills and abilities of both their workforce and the society in general. A firm that is able to invest in human capital development across the entire spectrum of its several stakeholders is more likely to achieve a higher competitive advantage and sustainable growth. In this chapter, we present case studies of two different approaches to using CSR as a tool for human capital development in Africa and given the success of the companies, it is recommended that firms operating in DEMs should place emphasis on developing and utilizing CSR policies and strategies for human capital development.