Trinidad and Tobago Government supports corporate social responsibility
Minister in the Ministry of Public Utilities and the Environment, Pennelope Beckles announced yesterday that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago will be introducing measures to increase corporate social responsibility (CSR) best practices in businesses. Beckles made this announcement last Tuesday (March 20, 2007) at the ACCA and Public Relations Association of Trinidad and Tobago (PRATT) seminar entitled “Securing the quality of social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting”. The Minister said that businesses in this country are being encouraged to adopt CSR strategies and the Government will work closely with them to support these efforts.
According to a Trinidad Guardian report, dated March 22, 2007 (p. 28, entitled Government backs Corporate Social Responsibility:
Corporate Social Responsibility is vital if we are to realise the vision of achieving developed nation status by 2020,” she said. “CSR has been touted as one of the most important criteria of corporate success in the global environment. The concept has certainly grown in popularity and importance with the spread of multinational businesses and has become an international benchmark of good business practice.”
Minister Beckles describes CSR as an approach where “all companies, local and foreign, have a responsibility to the society in which they operate”, and fulfils “a basic requirement of all modern businesses: to understand and meet the needs of customers, both internal and external”.
In developing countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, CSR has gone through its own slow but sure development. Previously, social responsibility was restricted to the one-off donation or sponsorship of a project, be it cultural or social in nature. Now, companies are focusing on sustainable projects. However, one-off projects still have their place in the matrix of requests for assistance.
In the midst of communicators using CSR to help their cause (the reality is that public relations practitioners use CSR as a tool, as opposed to a philosophy that underscores all communication efforts), people must also draw a distinction between cause-related marketing and corporate social responsibility, as two, separate yet interlinked areas.
Recently, I spoke with a Ph.d. Howard University candidate who is researching the impact of CSR on women and children in Trinidad and Tobago. One of her research questions was, do you think that Government should play a role in CSR? Personally, I think that businesses should be free to run their entities as they wish. Ideally, business should try to operate without creating harm to society. However, from a realist perspective, not all businesses attempt to do this, and this extends to the “big businesses” who undertake sophisticated CSR programmes and champion sustainability, but the very nature of their business harm the environment and at times the lives of human beings. To me, corporate social responsibility is a choice, just as you or I have the choice to be a good person or a bad person. Companies are constantly challenged by the demands and expectations of stakeholders, especially when they want the company to contribute to the development of their society. To me a government directive to make the undertaking of CSR programmes mandatory is one that requires proper planning to ensure that companies do not get the raw end of the deal. For example, a small or medium sized business may not be able to allocate large funds to supporting a project or providing training, but it may be able to seek to ensure that its operations do not harm stakeholders, or that it is as ethical as possible in the undertaking of business activities. At its very core, CSR is not about sophisticated programmes. It’s about being genuine in being ethical, considering how one’s actions affect others, and taking steps to minimise harm and inconvenience.
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The role of the government with regards to motivating CSR can be a complicated one, but history tells of what happens when government adopts a laissez faire approach to CSR. Just as a reminder - one of the major thrusts towards greater CSR came about in response to corporate irresponsibility. Corporate mishaps or the intentional and unintentional wrongdoings coupled with greater public awareness were the catalyst for the trend to start formalizing and structuring CSR.
In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, one approach the government may adopt is to devise ways as to how to best motivate corporations toward CSR. Motivation here suggests that positive CSR is rewarded, and negative CSR faces sanctions of some sort even if the sanction solely is to make such happenings transparent for greater public awareness.