Separating fact from fiction on CSR

It is no longer a buzzword, but an important tool that can help chinese businesses grow

Corporate social responsibility has become an important part of mainstream social and political discourse.

In China, an important prerequisite for an idea to evolve into a social thought is for it to first become an important part of the mainstream political discourse system, usually marked by attracting the attention of the leaders of the Chinese government and being advocated in public.

CSR has succeeded in this aspect in many ways until now. President Hu Jintao stressed during the recent 16th informal leadership meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that the current financial crisis has revealed that enterprises should include the concept of global and social responsibility into business strategy, comply with the law of the land and international business practices, improve the business model and pursue the unity of economic and social benefits.

There are two reasons why the government has attached great importance to CSR. The concept of CSR inherently aspires to make commitments to individuals, society and the environment, and to achieve harmonious development between enterprises and the environment. China has vigorously advocated the scientific outlook of development and building a harmonious society, which is consistent with CSR.

In addition, CSR has become what is now accepted internationally as the moral high ground, and China needs to strive to comply with those standards if it wants more say in global politics.

CSR in China is now booming, and the rapid expansion of its influence has continued to increase. But the business community and society have until now had a rather one-sided, narrow concept on CSR, which might lead to hidden danger and regressive risks.

Some enterprises regard corporate social responsibility as "simply supporting the public welfare", a corporate donation. But CSR should be born in the process of business operations.

Another misleading concept is to treat CSR as just good deeds and selfless dedication. Enterprises advocate all their employees to act morally, but such superficial, formal advocacy "projects" cannot be sustained over the long term. They may also be unable to guide enterprises to think deeply about how to give full play to the creation of their own social values, not to mention that it is practically impossible to require their employees to be moral models.

A third distorted practice is to make CSR the equivalent to a "fat report", or constantly issuing reports saying the enterprise has added a number of new posts, and organized many CSR training programs rather than implementing CSR in real business operations to make the corporate behavior ethically transparent.

The fourth malpractice among many enterprises is to strive to meet a variety of so-called social responsibility standards at home and abroad. In fact, CSR is in essence voluntary behavior.

The fifth abuse of CSR is to regard it in terms of specific social responsibility issues such as environmental protection, safeguarding the rights and interests of employees, protecting the interests of consumers and strengthening social communication. All these do is to identify specific social responsibility content and report on their implementation.

Some Chinese enterprises that object to CSR do so on the basis of a conspiracy theory. This theory holds that CSR is in fact a disguised trade barrier aimed at thwarting Chinese business. What they ignore is that CSR provides an important opportunity for changing the ways in which these enterprises develop. There is no contradiction in pushing ahead with activities internationally while promoting corporate social responsibility domestically.

The author is a researcher at China Center for Corporate Social Responsibility & Culture, Xiamen University. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of China Daily.