Spoiling the Broth? A Look at CSR Awards

By Chironjit Das

The news that two major advertising agencies will not be participating in this year’s Kancil Awards, the nation’s premier advertising award, was a bombshell that many had not foreseen. It was not merely the reputation of the companies that created the stir but also the fact that these two agencies were the previous year’s winners. What’s more, they pulled out due to disagreements on the selection of juries.Disputes and controversies in award-giving are not new, yet it is still accepted as being one of the most prominent ways to recognise and reward good performance. It can easily be branded as mere fanfare, but people like to be recognised for their achievements, and what better way to be recognised than in a grandiose public manner?

Awards  serve as good benchmark that companies can aim for. It is certainly not uncommon for winners to tout their trophies as evidence of their excellence –  excellence that has compelled an independent committee to recognise it.

When it comes to CSR awards, there is an added advantage of giving visibility to the cause. The Malaysian public tends to overlook corporate issues such as CSR. An award such as the Prime Minister’s CSR Awards does add a public face to what is often behind-the-scenes activity. As the former prime minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, romanticised, “We are masyarakat penyayang (a caring community) and the corporate sector demonstrates this through its corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda”.

There are two sides to a coin, nonetheless, and award-giving for CSR initiatives are not spared such problems. The biggest issue is the subjectivity of the judging criteria, as well as the judges. As was the case with the Kancil awards, even the method of selecting the juries can be disputed.

Then there is the issue of standards. If such awards were to be used as a benchmark for performance, then there should be proper and transparent guidelines. As its stands, the majority of awards, CSR and otherwise, do not publish such information. Of course, the questions arise:  Who has the right to determine the guidelines?  And what about transparency on the guidelines and judging criteria?

An issue that is unique to CSR awards and one which does not have an agreed solution is multi-discipline performance. Companies often perform well in some areas, such as workplace ethics but lack sufficient efforts in others, such as environment. That usually is not a big problem, but what if a company gets embroiled in an environmental scandal?  Should it still be in the running for an award for having the best workplace? In Malaysia, this issue has garnered much debate as awards winners from Sime Darby to Petronas and even multinationals such as Nestle all suffer such issues to some degree.

There are also the usual arguments of greenwash, the misuse of the awards as a publicity tool, and questions on impartiality. These, unfortunately, will be present with or without CSR awards, and so including those criticisms would make this an effort expounding on why we should not have such awards. There is nothing wrong with giving out awards for excellent performance in CSR. The supporters behind Malaysia’s multitude of award organisers should, however, band together and have one major coherent ceremony. After all, does it really require five separate CSR awards to give a corporation the proverbial pat on the back? ◊

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