Quiet, But Growing Optimism For CSR

By Chironjit Das
with additional material by Daniel Chandranayagam

The Second Annual CSR Conference 2009, organised by OWW Consulting, carried an air of optimism, despite the negative market outlook. Themed “Responsible Recovery from the Global Crisis”, the conference brought together representatives from academic, corporate and governmental institutions.

To be sure, the optimism was cautious. Stefan Stern, columnist for the Financial Times and a speaker at the conference, noted that while there has been skepticism toward the idea of CSR, the issue was slowly proving to be more than just a passing trend. He, however, remained cautious in branding CSR the thing to change corporations into responsible entities. Of the growth of CSR in the Asia Pacific region, Stern says that the intentions are often good, but that social responsibility is a big claim.

“Businesses are complicated,” says Stern. “There are many considerations: their supply chain, how their employees are treated. There is a danger that businessmen might announce they run a responsible company, but they might not actually be going deep into the organization and doing the hard work that might lead to being genuinely responsible. That’s not to say everyone has to be perfect, but it is a lot harder and more complicated than most businesses realize.”

This year’s conference had a more broad, yet in-depth, focus on CSR-related issues. Granted, the event was stretched to five days from the three of the previous year. Three days of this year’s event was exclusively for focused workshops. While the main thrust of the two conference days was on corporate responsibility and socially responsible investment, speakers from non-profit entities were also shared their perspectives.

Matthew Spacie MBE, Founder and CEO of Magic Bus India, highlighted the need for community projects to have a strong foundation, especially for longer term efforts. This is in light of companies focusing on continuous support for projects as opposed to one-off mock cheques. Such mock cheque-giving is often criticised as being mere corporate “greenwash.”

A new phrase brought to the conference was that of venture philanthropy. Deval Sanghavi of Dasra India emphasised the need for NGOs to have solid management expertise and capacity-building capabilities to ensure credibility and sustainability of their projects. The trend for philanthrophy is moving towards select giving based on tangible criteria much akin to venture capitalism, he argued.

The worry that the global meltdown has slowed down the flow of funds to socially responsible investments (SRI) was one that the conference organisers and speakers were keen to address. Dr James Gifford, the Executive Director of the UN Principles for Responsible Investing (UNPRI), noted that there has been a growth in the number of signatories to the PRI despite the economy. Dr. Geoffrey Williams, managing director of OWW Consulting, indicated that the flow of SRI to Asia has not halted.  He cited the recent success of  USD50 million in SRI funding flowing into Malaysia as a prime example.

Participation from Malaysian government agencies has notably increased.  Standards Malaysia conducted one of the workshops on the upcoming ISO 26000 standard on social responsibility. The jury is still out on whether this standard will be effective as, unlike the ISO14000 standard for the environment, the ISO 26000 standard will not be made mandatory. CSR is about going beyond legislation, but even the ISO14000 standards languished in its early years until legislative and market pressures pushed it forth.

While CSR is maturing in Malaysia and South East Asia, there is still some way to go before such efforts show long-term benefits. What is evident from the conference is that there is no single way to go about getting social responsibility ingrained into society. Maybe then, that is the goal. In Japan, the intricate balance of legislation, societal expectation and urgent need is what drove CSR efforts in the nineties, and this is what all nations might try to emulate.◊