Written by Cresencio T. Meneses I, 05 June 2008
This coming July 1, the PricewaterhouseCoopers global network will mark its 10th year of existence, after the merger of Pricewaterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand in 1998.
Instead of the usual manner of celebrating this important milestone — with balloons, banners and festivities — the global leadership has decided to embark on the initiative of raising money to build educational facilities in Chad for refugees fleeing the conflict in Darfur.
As noted in a message of Samuel A. DiPiazza, the network’s global Chief Executive, "[W]e have achieved much in the last ten years and when we work together as a team we have enormous power. Therefore, it seemed fitting that we mark this occasion in a way that celebrates PwC at our best — by harnessing the power of our organization to make a meaningful difference to the global community in which we live and work."
This picture of a global professional services firm using its network to push for something worthwhile is an epitome of the current mood in the global business community that being good corporate citizens not only impacts on the ethical well-being of companies, but it also impacts on the financial well-being as well, since organizations tend to work better if these organizations have a purpose, or to put it in more meaningful terms, if these organizations have a "soul."
In this respect, this column has continuously espoused in several previous articles that companies should adopt activities that foster corporate social responsibility (CSR).
In the Philippines, the extent of what business organizations can achieve working together has already been clearly demonstrated countless times through such initiatives as the Gawad Kalinga program.
The difficulty, however, at times, is that many of these initiatives are not sustained, and therefore the time and money spent in implementing the same do not bear fruit and the activity becomes "ningas kugon" in character. Luckily, the Gawad Kalinga program is not among these as it is a sustaining program.
More importantly, in the Philippine setting, we have to overcome as a people our fractious character, and this rears its ugly head even in the business community. While business organizations can continue to remain competitive, there is no sense in being fractious about CSR since in the end we are all affected by the environment we live in. Thus, rather than singly adopting an initiative, business organizations can team up for CSR activities.
For example, the biggest professional services firms in the country may team up together and adopt one single initiative that can be sustained for the next five to 10 years (like adopt a small river and ensure its ecological sustainability). If the initiative succeeds, it should be recognized as a common achievement of the industry and not of the individual efforts of the professional services firms. This is probably something worthwhile to be looked at by every industry so that if there can be 30 initiatives from different industries, then there will be 30 less concerns that the country will be facing.
One CSR area that can be seriously looked at is sustainable development. Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that aims to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
As set forth in the United Nations 2005 World Summit Outcome document, the "interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars" of sustainable development are economic development, social development, and environmental protection.
In formulating guidelines for sustainable projects, the 2005 Report of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development recommended that business organizations:
- Should articulate their own vision of accountability and sustainability, and embed it within core business strategies to create value;
- Should use accountability report cards as tools to change mind-sets about the relationship between value creation and sustainable development — not simply being reactive for the sake of compliance with existing laws and regulations; and
- Should make accountability and value creation mutually reinforcing throughout the enterprise, integrating sustainable development across functions rather than creating a specialist silo.
Regardless of the type of initiative, however, by adopting a CSR thrust, the business community removes a little of the burden that government has in implementing social programs.
Moreover, instead of only harping on where our corporate taxes go, the business community can collectively participate in non-political CSR activities and concretely see the fruit of their corporate efforts.
Many worthy CSR projects have already been done, but the need to continue on and come up with more meaningful and sustainable projects has never become more relevant than now given the current global economic, social and environmental crisis we are facing.
Business organizations indeed play a very vital role in this great and noble endeavor and there are still a lot of things to be done to achieve this. Thus, it is high time that business organizations take up this challenge and act decisively and forcefully in order to achieve meaningful and concrete changes for the good of our country and people.
