AFCSR announces awards for best CSR projects -- By Paul Wedel

President Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines Wednesday presented the 2011 AFCSR awards for the best corporate social responsibility programs in Asia .

It was great to see there were again lots of entries in the competition – 175 projects from 14 countries and 129 organizations. The only unfortunate part of the awards presentation is that more of the projects are not recognized. As one of the judges this year, as well as in past years, I know that there are lots of good projects in each of the categories and that there was not that much difference between the winning projects and some of the rest.

Sill it was gratifying to see awards going to a wide variety of companies and projects, with two winners from Thailand, a country that typically has few candidates.

The Health Enhancement award went to a project by Pfizer (Thailand) for a project that provided micro loans, economic empowerment and integrated HIV prevention services for people living with AIDS.

The Link Management company of Hong Kong won the environmental award for a project revitalizing an old city market.

In the Poverty Alleviation category, the prize was share by Citi Pakistan for a microfinance project and Double A (1991) of Thailand for a project helping poor people and rural schools earn extra income by planting a fast-growing variety of tree.

Abbot (Singapore) won the Education Award for a project on science education and the Shangri-La Tanjung Aru Resort won the Intel-AIM Corporate Responsibility Award for integrating environmental care into its core business.

This was the tenth year of the award and it has been good to see not only an increase in the number of award submissions but a general increase in their quality. Hopefully, this is an indicator that more companies are becoming serious about CSR and are making it a part of their overall approach to business.

AFCSR votes against legislating corporate social responsibility -- By Paul Wedel

After a lively debate, the more than 500 participants at the 10^th Asian Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility Wednesday voted overwhelmingly against governments trying to legislate CSR regulations.

In a departure from previous practice, the AFCSR staged the debate and informal vote to highlight questions over the nature of CSR and the approach that governments should take to it.

Debating in favor of the proposition that governments should regulate CSR through legislation were Ms. Catherine Coumans, the research director of Mining Watch Canada and Prof. David Grayson, Director of the Doughty Center for Corporate Responsibility of the Cranfield School of Management.

Opposing the proposition were Dato Timothy Ong, Chairman of Asia Inc. Forum and Mr. Ramon R. del Rosario Jr., Chairman of the Board of Advisors of the AIM-Ramon V. del Rosario Center for Corporate Social Responsibility.

Ms. Coumans led off by citing evidence that while some companies were doing a good job of CSR, others in the mining sector were failing to protect the environment and human rights.

“Clearly,” she said, “CSR is an inadequate response to these abuses.”

She noted that voluntary CSR codes were weak and that enforcement, partners and measurements were up to corporate managers. Communities in mining areas were “commonly denied the right to information” on company activities, she said. Therefore, she said, the power of government regulation was needed to ensure company responsibility to the communities in which they operated.

Mr. del Rosario insisted that legislation enforcing CSR was not only unnecessary, but “would stifle, rather than enhance, the development of CSR.”

Left unregulated, CSR has already progressed in sophistication, range and impact since the 1960s and would continue to become more effective in future through the efforts of business managers and civil society.

“There is no substitute for the judgment of the CEO and the board of directors in deciding how a company can best do good,” he said.

Remaining problems, whether labor or environmental, should be addressed with specific legislation on those particular problems rather than trying to legislate overall CSR standards, Mr. del Rosario said.

Prof. Grayson countered by saying that governments are already regulating business behavior and that further legislation that required reporting on CSR made sense.

Ms. Coumans argued that some CSR concepts such as transparency were already becoming embedded in legislation.

“CSR is helping to develop societal norms that began as voluntary, but are then seen as important enough to enforce through legislation,” she said.

Dato Ong agreed that legislation on specific issues might be needed, but not legal requirements on overall CSR programs.

“CSR is what companies do beyond the maximization of share value or compliance with the law,” he said. Legislation on some values and norms might be needed, “but law cannot cover everything – so we need voluntary responsibility to cover the rest,” he said.

CSR legislation, he said, would unnecessarily extend government power into areas that companies are quite competent to handle and bureaucrats are not.

“The countries that most need CSR,” Dato Ong said, “are precisely the countries where the governments are least competent to deal with business.”

The intrusion of government into CSR would lead to mandating outdated forms of CSR, add to government and company expense and increase opportunities for corruption, he argued.

Dato Ong said that instead of trying to control CSR, “governments can best assist CSR by encouraging companies to use CSR approaches to make choices that are good for the company and good for society.”

In an informal poll before the debate, 63% of the 545 AFCSR participants said that CSR should not be legislated while 26% felt that it should be, with 11% undecided. After the debate, a second poll showed that support for CSR legislation had dropped to only 17% with 83% opposed.

How would you have voted?

More information on the AFCSR can be found here.

Giving Voice to Values – ethical education for business students - By Paul Wedel

If business schools are teaching ethics, why are there so many business scandals and why are the culprits so often MBAs? These questions troubled Dr. Mary Gentile, a teacher of business ethics now a professor and researcher at Babson College. They were questions, she said, that had caused a crisis of despair in her own professional life.

But they were questions that sparked her to begin research into the ethical dilemmas faced by business people and the failure of traditional teaching to prepare them for those dilemmas. The result of that research has led to a new approach to teaching ethics she calls “Giving Voice to Values (GVV).”

Dr. Gentile, speaking at a workshop at the Asian Forum on CSR (AFCSR) in Manila, said that traditional teaching focuses on awareness of ethical situations, often through case studies, and analysis of ethical reasoning, often based on traditional philosophical approaches to ethics.

Although both awareness and analysis were needed, she said, they were insufficient to make much change in the way business was conducted in the real world outside of the classroom.

“We needed to shift from the question of what you should do to be ethical to how do you get it done, from moral judgment to implementation,” Dr. Gentile said. She said the practical questions of how to act in ethically challenging situations were the focus of the GVV teaching curriculum and materials. Instead of ending a case with deciding what would be the right thing to do, the GVV cases challenge the students to figure how to do it effectively – “what should be said to whom, what data should be collected, how to push back against unethical actions, how to create coalitions, how to voice action on ethical conduct,” she said.

This approach not only gave students the tools with which to deal with ethically difficult situations but also challenged the brightest students to use their knowledge of business and human behavior to come up with innovative ways to take action on ethics, she said.

“We are not trying to change people, but to help them do the things they already want to do,” she said.

The GVV approach gives students the tools, the practices, the coaching and most importantly, the rehearsal of ways to implement ethical behavior in difficult situations, Dr. Gentile said.

She said her work at Babson has begun to help large corporations, including a major US defense contractor, to use the GVV approach in their internal staff development training and that the feedback has been encouraging.

“We are showing them that taking effective ethical action is just another part of doing business – you have to be strategic and smart about it because ethical issues are not a special case, they are a regular part of business decision-making,” she said.

Dr. Gentile said that the GVV curriculum and materials were available free online to anyone interested in using them at http://www.babson.edu/faculty/teaching-learning/gvv/Pages/home.aspx

She said that while there may be differences in values between different cultures, there were some “hyper norms” that apply in all countries. In any case, she said, the approach starts with the students own values and concentrates on teaching them to put those into effective action within a company.

Dr. Gentile said that more data across cultures was being gathered by professors using it in countries such as India, China and Ghana and that this learning was being used to further develop the materials and cases available on line.

You can see videos of Dr. Gentile talking about the GVV curriculum here and here.

The Global Learning Village – a public-private partnership for community education in Australia – By Paul Wedel

The first plenary session of the Asian Forum on CSR (AFCSR) presented an example of cooperation among corporations, government and community organizations to improve education and employability in a once neglected suburb of Melbourne, Australia.

Frank McGuire, the member of Parliament for the area called Broadmeadows, said this cooperation, dubbed the “Global Learning Village” has made a major impact by creating using communications technology to provide widely available online learning programs.

McGuire said the core philosophy was “each child must be globally connected.”

He said the project had to work through typical obstacles of government – the silo mentality, institutional egos, and bureaucratic inertia. He described how corporate buy-in gave credibility to the project along with financial resources and management expertise.

They key to getting corporate buy-in, he said, was creating projects that were a “good value fit” with corporate brands. He cited the examples of the local newspaper financing a community library and ICT companies including Microsoft, Intel and CISCO getting behind the rollout of a high-speed broadband network and an “ideas lab” that will provide the basis for future development of community learning.

The Global Learning village, he said, had helped make Broadmeadows a more prosperous community and a key driver of economic growth in Victoria.

In response to a question, McGuire said he was developing a handbook to developing such projects elsewhere that he called “Global Learning Village in a Box.” Those interested could contact him at Frank@GLV.org.au for details.

Participants at the opening session of the AFCSR

This was followed by a presentation by Edita A. de Leon, senior vice president for Nestle (Philippines), who described what she called “creating shared value.” She presented this as a new twist to CSR introduced by Harvard professor Michael Porter.

In fact, however, shared value has always been a key element of effective corporate social responsibility program. Without benefit to both society and the company any program claiming to be CSR would be short-lived and ineffective. K.I.Asia has taught this “strategic CSR” for nearly a decade in its CSR training program for corporate executives.

Ms. De Leon correctly noted that effective CSR programs that are strategically aligned with corporate business interests are likely to be continued even through market downturns and financial crises. “They cannot be cut because they are integral to the sustainability of the company.”

She cited three ways to increase shared value:

• Developing new products, markets or value propositions that provide social benefits along with a financial return to the company.
• Dealing with social or environmental issues that cause problems in the company value chain, such as workers ill-prepared for high-tech employment, inadequate water supplies or unhappy employees
• Creating “community cluster” in which suppliers, service providers, government agencies, community organizations, educational institutions and corporations work together to “drive competitiveness.

She said Nestle programs were examples of creating shared value and described efforts to improve farm productivity and extend the Nestle supply chain to reach small community stores at the so-called “bottom of the pyramid” by hiring motorcycle deliverymen.

Ms. De Leon said the closer the program was to the company’s core activities the more likely it was to get significant funding and corporate attention.

In conclusion, she said that a crucial element of such shared value CSR programs was to be able to measure their impact on both society and the company.

The Asian Forum on CSR – improving the ways that companies contribute to sustainable development - By Paul Wedel

This week I will be attending the annual Asian Forum on Corporate Responsibility (AFCSR) in the Philippines and will be blogging on the talks, workshops and discussions at the forum. This is the 10^th year that the AFCSR has brought together leading thinkers on AFCSR from the corporate, government, academic and non-profit sectors in Asia. 

The theme this year is “Strategic CSR: Creating Shared Value” – promoting the key idea that CSR is not something additional to regular business, not something done for short-term PR value, but is an integral part of the long-term corporate business strategy. The forum this year will have five core topics:

• Assessment of the firm – its internal culture, objectives and capabilities – and the external environment – government regulation, public perception and industry structure
• Implementation of CSR – focused on the ways that companies best carry out activities connected with its environmental and social responsibilities
• Monitoring and evaluation – looking at ways that companies track and evaluate their CSR activities for accurate reporting and continual improvement
• Embedding CSR within the corporation – making it a permanent and integral part of the company’s approach to business
• Moving forward – learning from past experience to improve CSR performance in the future

These topics will be covered in a two-day series of plenary speeches, small group workshops, panel discussions and debates. I will blog on the highlights of the sessions that I attend as well as the presentation I will make on CSR partnering among corporations, government agencies and non-profits.

Another key part of the annual forum is the Asian CSR Awards Program that recognizes Asian companies for outstanding, innovative and world-class CSR services, projects and programs. Awards will be given in four areas of social responsibility:

• Poverty Alleviation
• Health Enhancement
• Environmental Excellence
• Education Improvement

As one of the judges for the Poverty Alleviation award, I reviewed a large number of corporate programs that indicate growing integration of company strategy with CSR. Many of these programs made clear and significant contributions to employment and income for poor people. It will be interesting to see which companies win the other awards and whether there has been progress in the development of CSR programs on health, environment and education.