Source: Danny Carroll, BBG
A Bombay based NGO called Karmayog has just carried out a survey of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices of the 1000 largest companies in India. Their findings? More than 49 percent of those surveyed do absolutely no CSR! The British Business Group (BBG) CSR sub-committee is readying to do its bit to change that. What we hope were baby steps in that direction, were the first set of CSR workshops, one each in Mumbai and New Delhi.
Janet C Geddes of KPMG and Anil Chopra, Management Consultant
Stephen Farrell from Business in the Community (BITC) from the UK was a brilliant start to the day. Stephen broke down the sometimes ambiguous area of corporate citizenship into a simple model, identifying four key areas of influence: the workplace, marketplace, community and environment, and providing the frameworks to help address each area.
Pankaj Baliga, head of CSR for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) continued where Stephen left off, demonstrating how to actually focus good intention and clarity of purpose into ultimately, best practices. TCS, of course, are considered to be an international benchmark in CSR practices. The secret of TCS’ success, as we learned from Pankaj, was the fact that it uses its core competence of IT to maximize the impact of its community projects.
Importance of win-win partnerships
Deval Sanghavi from Dasra, then invited in a panel of NGOs, to help us appreciate the importance of structuring win-win partnerships with community partners. Everybody’s favourite corporate convert Matthew Spacey – founder and CEO of the NGO Magic Bus – told us what we really needed to hear – that what NGOs value the most is not corporate money, but the management expertise and leadership skills that businesses can provide.
These first workshops may have been but a drop in the ocean, and we have much to achieve, but based on its success, we are already planning a series of activities including a third workshop in June. We look forward to involving many more BBG members this way. Also you can check out the Karmayog survey at www.karmayog.org/csr2008.
CSR360 Membership
Finally in a recent and very positive development the BBG’s CSR sub-committee has also been accepted as a partner in CSR360 Global Partner Network, a network of CSR partners convened by BITC. This will give us access to the latest best practices in the area of CSR.
Posted by
Jennifer Todd
Secretariat
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Associated Partner:
British Business Group, India