Partnering for Development – Talking about K.I.Asia’s Experience at the AFCSR – by Paul Wedel

After enjoying the many useful workshops at the 2011 Asian Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility (AFCSR), I held my own workshop for about 100 participants on K.I.Asia’s experience with the tricky business of partnering.

I started with the comment by Prof. Jim Austin:

 “The challenges our society faces cannot be met – nor our opportunities fully realized – by any one organization or sector alone. Effective collaboration with other nonprofits, government agencies, and businesses is an imperative.”

The workshop participants, in a show of hands, almost all agreed that developing and maintaining effective partnerships was critical for their success. The problem, they complained, was that partnerships took lots of time and energy to maintain and often fell apart.       
                      
I outlined the four phases that we at K.I.Asia usually go through in a partnership. These are:

·       Phase 1 –  Finding a strategic fit – Asking questions such as: How does do missions, objectives and values fit? How do we help each other?

·       Phase 2 – Developing an operational fit – Identifying roles, planning together, and agreeing on management details for funding, reporting, accounting and assessment.

·       Phase 3 – Managing the partnership – documenting agreements, connecting at the right levels, building trust and communicating consistently and effectively

·       Phase 4 – Appraising the partnership according to results achieve, problem resolution and changes that may have taken place since the start-up. This phase leads to decisions on whether to renew, rework or exit the partnership.

I illustrated these four phases with details from a variety K.I.Asia’s partnership projects, both successful and unsuccessful and concluded with the “Seven Cs of Collaboration”:

1. Congruency of missions, strategies and values of both
2. Clarity of purpose
3. Connection between purpose and people
4. Creation of value – for both partners
5. Consistent communication
6. Continual learning – about each other, about project
7. Commitment – to the project and the partnership

Other participants spoke up about their own experiences with partnership. There was particular interest in the difficulties of public-private partnerships. This discussion was enlivened with questions about what to do if government officials wanted kick-backs. Speaking up from the government side was the mayor of a large town in the Philippines who rejected the idea that partnering with government usually created ethical issues. Some of the corporate and NGO leaders present agreed to disagree.

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.

Thailand ready to change its SME support policies --- by Paul Wedel

The Thai government is rightly worried about the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to survive the growing competitive challenges they face. Rising labor costs, fast-changing technology, free trade agreements and the globalization of markets mean that many small companies will be hard-pressed to survive the next five years.

Since SMEs make up more than 99% of all enterprises in this country, employ 78% of the workforce and generate 43% of non-agricultural GDP, these changes pose a challenge to the entire Thai economy.

Difficulties in meeting this challenge led the Thai government to become the first in Southeast Asia to invite the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to review its SME and entrepreneurship policies. Earlier this month the Office of SME Promotion (OSMEP) conducted a seminar and brainstorming session with senior government officials, and in recognition of K.I.Asia’s long experience in assisting SME development, I was invited to participate as moderator for the discussion.

Mr. Pak Tongsom, the deputy director-general of OSMEP, said the policy review showed that urgent changes were needed.

“There is no time to waste in making the policy changes needed to help our entrepreneurs with the funding, skills and knowledge to overcome the challenges and seize the opportunities confronting them,” he said in opening the seminar.

Dr. Jonathan Potter, the senior economist in the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Local Development who headed the policy review, said his team had identified a number of weaknesses. These included a lack of policy coherence among the many government agencies dealing with SMEs, failure to develop enough middle-sized enterprises, lack of technological readiness, inflexible financing for SMEs and a business environment burdened with unnecessary red tape and corruption.

For anyone working in the Thai SME sector, these findings revealed no surprises.

The tendency of government agencies to work in silos, often competing with one another for budget, is a common problem. The OECD team recommended reinforcing the role of OSMEP as the central body for SME and entrepreneurship policy formulation and coordination. This is a good idea, but I expect it will take a strong stand at the cabinet level to induce powerful ministries such as Industry and Commerce to cede their policy leadership roles to OSMEP. Sharing and improving the various SME statistics and databases maintained by different agencies are also needed to provide better management information for policy implementation.

Dr. Potter said policy implementation could be improved by moving to flexible, rolling program budgeting, away from the current system of fixed annual budgets. He also called for independent, results-based evaluation of all projects and programs in order to pull funding from ineffective activities.

Technological readiness is another difficulty. Dr. Potter told the seminar that although Thailand has a high rate of entrepreneurship, some 30% of Thai entrepreneurs were forced into business out of necessity, rather than because they had a new technology or a great business opportunity. This compares with developed economies where, on average, only 4% of entrepreneurs are in business because they have no other choice. Dr. Potter warned that Thailand’s high proportion of “necessity SMEs” means they will have difficult competing in a crowded low-tech market, leading to slow growth and poor employment conditions.

The OECD team recommended that government support focus more on technology-driven SMEs with the capabilities to grow quickly into medium-sized enterprises, as these companies could provide a much bigger boost to the economy. Research has shown that as few as 6% of a nation’s companies can be responsible for 90% of new job creation.

OSMEP agreed. “Even giants are born small,” Pak said. “We need effective policies and sufficient nurturing to help our baby giants grow to their full potential.”

The OECD recommended the creation of an "SME Toolkit" website similar to one used in Singapore that would provide information and software to help SMEs with issues such as accounting, finance, business planning, marketing and technology.

The officials at the seminar said that the findings of the OECD policy review were already being incorporated into the country’s Third SME Promotion Master Plan (2012-1016), due to go into effect shortly.

If that plan and the proposed policy improvements win approval and strong support from the government, Thai SMEs will be in a better position to compete in the challenging decade ahead.

“One tablet per child” – hardware is hardly enough By Paul Wedel

 The work of K.I.Asia in helping Thai schools make better use of IT has taught us that far more important than any hardware is the software provided with it and the management that supports it. If tablets are to be really useful in Thai schools, much work needs to be done before the goodies are handed out.

Thai teachers in K.I.Asia’s One Computer Classroom program, now supported by Boeing, learn how to incorporate video into their teaching and how to encourage students to use the computer in group learning projects.

.Here is my list of the ten most important steps to take before 800,000 tablets are bought and distributed to Thai schools.

 1.     Study the research on use of laptops elsewhere in the world as well as Thailand’s own experience in using computers in the classroom

2.     Decide which parts of the Thai curriculum, for each subject, at each grade level, are best taught using the tablet and which are best taught by other methods

3.     Develop specific teaching methodologies and lesson plans that will enable teachers to make effective use of the devices for those parts of the curriculum

4.     Digitize existing textbooks and load them onto the tablets

5.     Identify, review and select available teaching software for the tablets, encouraging development of Thai-specific learning software, if necessary, and load the software onto the tablets

6.     Identify additional reading for the advanced student and the slow learner for each subject at each level, digitize it and load it onto the tablets

7.     Launch a pilot program in at least 100 schools to test the devices, teaching methodologies, support systems and digitized materials. Small, poor and rural schools should be the focus of the pilots because everything that works in these schools will probably work even better in the larger, richer schools.

8.     Train pilot school teachers in the tablet methodologies, software and materials

9.     Train pilot school administrators on the best ways to manage, technically support and evaluate teaching with the tablets

10.  Evaluate the experience of the pilot schools and adjust materials, methodologies, software, technical support systems and management accordingly and roll out to other schools in a systematic way

Clearly, there is much work to do to convert a catchy campaign promise into a viable educational program, but it doesn’t have to take years. A pilot program could begin in 2012 and a phased roll-out started a year later. Success or failure will depend on how well the program is planned and implemented, not on which hardware is bought or how quickly it is handed out.

These are my thoughts. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on how best to introduce tablet computers to Thai schools so they can help make a real and much-needed improvement in learning.