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Profiting from a social
conscience
By Raja M
MUMBAI -
The mind in its purest state focuses on universal
welfare, and even if global corporate motives throb some
distance from such selflessness, a globally increasing
attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR)
includes Asia in its interesting sweep.
So Mercedes-Benz partners with the Chinese government
to reduce road-accident deaths, Credit Suisse helps South
Asian children in Hong Kong and Metrobank wins the Asian
CSR Awards in 2004 for its educational work in the
Philippines. India's Gujarat Ambuja Cement also won a
CSR Award for rural poverty alleviation and retailing
major Hindustan Petroleum won for "Best Workplace
Practices". It's a fast-growing CSR list in Asia.
Credibility-high Asian companies such as India's house
of Tatas entered this CSR list quietly, decades ago, as
reflected in a Tata Steel (US$381 million in profit last
fiscal year) television commercial in the 1990s that
said: "We make happy workers. We also make steel."
Take charity, work-life balance, public
relations, human-resource development, advertising,
community development, corporate governance,
profitability, ethics, goodwill, street-smartness and
club them. You get a single, expanding umbrella called
CSR.
"Corporate social responsibility should be
part of the corporate DNA, not just of the PR [public
relations] department," Shalini Mahtani, founder and
chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based CSR
consultant Community Business, told Asia Times Online. A
former banker and accountant, Mahtani's breed of
pioneering CSR professionals help corporates see the
business sense in a basic law of nature: we get what we
give.
With an office on D'Aguilar Street on the
edge of Hong Kong's Central District financial hub,
Community Business has garnered 19 clients in its
18-month life. These clients pay Community Business a
moderate, annual "corporate citizenship" fee ranging
from $3,590 for a company with more than 1,000 employees
to $385 for a workforce of up to 20 for advise, research
and information on CSR.
Propelling the CSR thrust in Asia are networks such as
the nine-nation Asia-Pacific CSR Forum and seminars such as the two-day
Asian Forum on CSR that Kuala Lumpur hosted this month
with the theme: "Driving Forces for CSR - Altruism or
Economics?"
CSR means both altruism and
economics, according to a worldwide study released on
September 10 by leading consultants APCO Worldwide. Some
72% of those polled in the study said they purchased
products and services of a company after receiving good
CSR news about the company and 60% ditched a company's
products in response to bad CSR news. Similar tones ring
from the stock market, in the Dow Jones Sustainability
Index.
The big difference is not so much companies
donning a "ho-ho-ho" Santa Claus attitude but,
as CSR professionals across various continents told Asia
Times Online, the compulsions of a global economy forcing
companies to see the big picture, or be lost in it.
The key shift in understanding is seeing CSR not as some
high-flown ideology but as a practical strategy that
does more good to the doer. CSR consultants talk delightedly
of the positive change they see in employees directly
involved in community development projects, of their
improved communication skills, ability to listen, empathize,
be committed and suffer a less self-centered world
view - traits that reduce stress, enhance
relationships and increase productivity and profits.
"For me, CSR is a highly personal agenda," said
Malini Mehra, founder and director of the Center for
Social Markets, an independent CSR organization with
offices in India and the United Kingdom. "There ought
not to be a lack of consistency between one's personal
and professional lives." Mehra blames the hypocritical
gap between personally held values and public posturing
on the "inability of institutions - be they companies,
NGOs [non-governmental organizations], or the public
sector - to enable the individual to act in a moral
way".
Last year, the Center for Social Markets
teamed up with Transparency International to focus on
corporate corruption in India. "Our consultations in
Delhi and Mumbai revealed a deep-seated cynicism about
anything ever improving in India," Mehra said.
"Corporate rhetoric was seen as just that - empty words
and hot air."
Which is why corporate social
responsibility starts with corporate individual
responsibility. Farsighted companies such as India's
satellite TV giant Zee Network and automobile major
Mahindra & Mahindra take CSR to its fundamental
core: changing the mental habit-pattern of the employee.
These companies send employees to Vipassana meditation
courses, an ancient powerful truth-realization technique
to purify the mind. Vipassana enables the individual to
experience both the self-destructive effects of an
immoral thought process and the far-reaching benefits of
a wholesome way of life.
Wiser corporate
leaders see the dangers of a dysfunctional mind. During the
2000 World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, a leading
Indian industrialist told Satya Narayan Goenkaji, the
principal teacher of Vipassana and a former
industrialist himself: "I'm willing to give away half my
wealth if only I can get rid of my anger."
Perhaps fittingly, "What should you do when you
are angry?" was one of the principal questions
discussed by participants at the Economic Forum. "The
law of nature is such that one who generates anger is
its first victim," Goenkaji told political and corporate
leaders from more than 40 countries. He explained how
the simple technique of Vipassana, which involves
objectively observing bodily sensations with the
understanding of their impermanent nature, helps one to
come out of anger and other mental defilements.
Society changes if the individual changes. And
the individual cannot change without a practical,
scientific method to purify the mind. Rapid social
change comes when the benefits flow from the top down,
which is why CSR has potential to be the most
significant human force this century.
Otherwise,
CSR lacks credibility when companies that dodge taxes,
bribe politicians, exploit employees, cheat customers,
play dirty with competition and poison the environment
are allowed score PR points by saying they contribute to
the community. Mahtani's Community Business, for
instance, refused to take on tobacco companies as
clients.
"If a company does not integrate
social responsibility throughout their corporate practices
and culture, philanthropy is simply window-dressing,"
said Christina Siun O'Connell, director of CSRwire,
an exclusive CSR news service based in
Brattleboro, Vermont. O'Connell told Asia Times Online that
India and Japan are the two Asian countries where
CSRwire has the highest number of readers.
In
Japan, Sho Ikeda, president and chief executive officer
of Tokyo-based Sunrise, says CSR-related talk about the
"triple bottom line" often ignores that economic basics
are the single most important social responsibility that
private enterprises can achieve. "By increasing sales
and profits, paying taxes and social expenses, hiring
and retaining employees, stimulating the local economy,
developing new technology - all of these contributions
are the essential part of social responsibility." Ikeda
told Asia Times Online.
Nandan Nilekani, CEO and president of India's Infosys -
one of Asia's largest software companies - agreed: "As
long as we can be fair and transparent to all
our stakeholders, show long-term thinking and follow
every law of the land, we have done our work well. The
softest pillow is a clear conscience." His company puts 1%
of its profits ($271.48 million post-tax last fiscal
year) into Infosys Foundation, which promotes health
care, rehabilitation, education, arts and culture in a
drive that adds nation-building to the task of corporate
governance. Infosys Foundation runs orphanages, hostels,
hospitals, libraries, relief shelters and homes for
destitute and mentally retarded women, and invests in
tribal welfare.
"Greater public leadership needs
to be shown by those at the top so that talk of CSR can
be met with credibility, not cynicism," said Center for
Social Markets' Mehra. "Walking the talk is harder than
mouthing the slogans. We need good walkers."
Raja M is an independent writer based
in Mumbai, India.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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