Are Corporate Social Responsibility acts really the way corporates portray it? Not really! A. SANDEEP, EDITOR, B&E does a reality check...
No wonder that stinkingly fraudulent companies like Enron (biggest contributor to Bush’s campaign in 2000), WorldCom (CEO Ebbers got the maximum sentence in corporate history; 25 years... Enron’s Skilling missed the record; he got 24 years 4 months), Tyco (wiped off the most wealth ever) et al gregariously top the CSR contribution lists too.
Umpteen reports, like the definitive PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Sustainability Survey Report, have year after year vindicated that ‘providing contributions to society’ does not even find mention in the “Top Ten Reasons Companies Are Becoming More Socially Responsible”; or Stanford University’s Social Innovation Review that benchmarked the finding that CSR “is just a placebo” where investments are “particularly unlikely to pay off...”; or Michael Porter, the father of strategy, who blasted CSR as being just “a PR game.” And it’s not that intelligent social spokespersons were ever confused. Even Paul Gilding, Executive Director (formerly) of Greenpeace International, spoke up, “CSR, despite its emotional appeal, is and always was a bad idea. It’s intellectually weak, and doesn’t work anyway.” Oh yes, before I forget, with an operating income exceeding a mind-boggling 5.1 billion taka, and a net profit exceeding an eye popping 1 billion taka (a thunderous 20% profit margin), this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, isn’t too hell bent on CSR either, but on profits! Social development was, in reality, never the job of corporations, but of governments; to whom firms pay incredibly huge amounts of taxes. It is incredibly outrageous that governments can even think of forcing capitalist corporations to undertake CSR; a strategy that is clearly now being used to hide the government’s lamentable achievements – including the example of the absurd move in India to force private players to undertake the superficial ‘affirmative action’ by providing non-merit oriented quotas in employment.
CSR should never be forced, but should be a matter of personal democratic choice. With more than 400 million Indians living below the poverty line (UNDP statistics), successive Indian governments have magnificently embraced CSR in the only way they have ever known – by being ‘C’alumnious (abusive) ‘S’currilous (shameless) ‘R’apscallions (rogue scoundrels)! So the next time your CEO comes up with the hallowed CSR sermon, you could fulfil your social responsibility by taking him on a memorable date to show him the classic strategy documentary ‘The Corporation’, where the late Peter F. Drucker snaps, “If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him... Fast!”
No wonder that stinkingly fraudulent companies like Enron (biggest contributor to Bush’s campaign in 2000), WorldCom (CEO Ebbers got the maximum sentence in corporate history; 25 years... Enron’s Skilling missed the record; he got 24 years 4 months), Tyco (wiped off the most wealth ever) et al gregariously top the CSR contribution lists too.
Umpteen reports, like the definitive PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Sustainability Survey Report, have year after year vindicated that ‘providing contributions to society’ does not even find mention in the “Top Ten Reasons Companies Are Becoming More Socially Responsible”; or Stanford University’s Social Innovation Review that benchmarked the finding that CSR “is just a placebo” where investments are “particularly unlikely to pay off...”; or Michael Porter, the father of strategy, who blasted CSR as being just “a PR game.” And it’s not that intelligent social spokespersons were ever confused. Even Paul Gilding, Executive Director (formerly) of Greenpeace International, spoke up, “CSR, despite its emotional appeal, is and always was a bad idea. It’s intellectually weak, and doesn’t work anyway.” Oh yes, before I forget, with an operating income exceeding a mind-boggling 5.1 billion taka, and a net profit exceeding an eye popping 1 billion taka (a thunderous 20% profit margin), this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, isn’t too hell bent on CSR either, but on profits! Social development was, in reality, never the job of corporations, but of governments; to whom firms pay incredibly huge amounts of taxes. It is incredibly outrageous that governments can even think of forcing capitalist corporations to undertake CSR; a strategy that is clearly now being used to hide the government’s lamentable achievements – including the example of the absurd move in India to force private players to undertake the superficial ‘affirmative action’ by providing non-merit oriented quotas in employment.
CSR should never be forced, but should be a matter of personal democratic choice. With more than 400 million Indians living below the poverty line (UNDP statistics), successive Indian governments have magnificently embraced CSR in the only way they have ever known – by being ‘C’alumnious (abusive) ‘S’currilous (shameless) ‘R’apscallions (rogue scoundrels)! So the next time your CEO comes up with the hallowed CSR sermon, you could fulfil your social responsibility by taking him on a memorable date to show him the classic strategy documentary ‘The Corporation’, where the late Peter F. Drucker snaps, “If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him... Fast!”
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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