Dr. Michael Hopkins CEO and Chairman of MHC International Ltd. (London & Geneva).
He is a part-time Professor of Corporate Responsibilty
Business Performance (VRBP) at Middlesex University Business School
Visitng Professor at Brunel and Geneva Universities.
But
NGO interventions are based on a
scatter gun approach and are spotty.
They can intervene wherever they
like. Governments, on the other hand, have to intervene everywhere
or nowhere. Better, much better, for a
company to assist a government in
making its contributions either
nationally, or internationally, more
efficient and appropriate. This then
ensures widespread and even
coverage.
But what about all those good
causes? I can see that my words will
irk many readers who may accuse
me of undermining good people and
good causes. But this is not my
point, I want sustainable actions that
do not depend on the whims of,
albeit, good natured people. But,
what about all those charities that
depend on companies for financial
support? Should these be
stopped? Obviously this is
unreasonable and many hundreds of
millions would suffer if corporations
suddenly stop contributing to
charitable organizations.
Yet, there is a structural problem
here. Governments mainly
encourage charitable giving, often
through tax breaks, since it takes the
responsibility away from
them. Govern ments are also
corporations and must act in a
socially responsible manner. My
suggestion is that charitable giving is
phased out over a long term, say ten
years, so that both existing charitable
organizations and governments can
adjust. Corporations can help in this
transition period not only with
managerial and technical advice but
with cash too.
In conclusion, here are some
actions that could be considered:
Companies should abandon all
philanthropy which is outside of a
CSR framework.
Companies should work hand-inhand
with governments to promote
economic and social development.
Governments should help those
people who cannot be helped to help
themselves through a subsidy. They
should look after vulnerable groups
and not just await the whim of
corporate philanthropy: if a charity
fails because a company fails then
this is a disaster for all the vulnerable
groups and people concerned.
What is CRITICS? How do you
measure CSR using CRITICS?
CRITICS (Corporate Responsibility
Index Through Internet Consultation
of Stakeholders) is a questionnaire
that MHCi uses to assess the CSR of
companies. It is available on my
company website http://www.mhc
inter national.com/rate your
company. html and invites anyone to
assess their own company or
institutions level of social
responsibility in a few minutes. In
fact it is a subset of questions that
MHCi has developed to assist
companies in their quest to become
more socially responsible. The
questions follow the definition given
above for each stakeholder group.
The longer questionnaire takes much
longer and hence we have only 20 of
the key questions on the site
essentially because who would want
to answer more than 20 questions on
someones website? Nevertheless,
the results have been quiet valuable
and as well as the user of the survey,
we also get a copy of the results
which allows us to conduct analysis.
For instance, we can find out trends
over time and look at whether size of
company (see below) influences a
companys CSR.
We give a score to each question
answered, add the scores up and
divide by 20. The final score is
between zero and one, where one
means excellent CSR and zero
implies very poor CSR. To date
hundreds of companies have filled in
the questionnaire and we have also used the questionnaire in seminars
and workshops to discuss the whole
issue of CSR measurement. To date
Shell and BP have received the
highest scores while institutions
such as the UNDP or ILO have fared
less well. The questions have not
been changed since 2001 and,
consequently, may look a little dated
today. But changing the questions in
any way would lead us to be unable
to look at trends; so we bite the bullet
and continue to use the same
questions.
Is there any distinction between
Corporate Responsibility and
Corporate Social Responsibility? Is it
correct to presuppose that, most of
the times the distinction between
Corporate Responsibility and
Corporate Social Responsibility gets
blurred resulting in, at such times, an
undue credit for the companies?
As noted above, I am reluctant to
drop the term social in my
definition simply because the word
social conveys what CSR is all
about. Dropping the term does lead
to blurring as the question rightly
implies. I include economic and
environmental issues in social,
thereby avoiding the problem of only
looking at social issues that may
simply be a cost, not a business
benefit; eg, paying above market
wages for social not economic
reasons. But, it is true, that some
companies prefer to use the term
"Corporate Responsibility" rather
than "Corporate Social
Responsibility". My above
postulated cigar chomping CEO in
Dallas mistakenly believes that
including the word social means
introducing socialism through the
back door! Therefore, my own
feeling is that better to use "corporate
responsibility" as a term than not
caring about the issue at all. A
deconstruction of the term corporate
responsibility that includes all stakeholders will, eventually, lead a
company to CSR.
