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Tytuł prezentacji

Miejsce i data

CSR: Unusual solutions to

unusual challenges

Boleslaw Rok

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Unusual challenges

• World food crisis: „We cannot go on eating like this” (FT)

• Financial crisis: „The market no longer has all the answers” (FT)

• Climate crisis: An Inconvenient Truth?• Energy crisis: „Prices are skyrocketing”, „We are

running out”, „Life After the Oil Crash”• Corruption: „White Collar Crime”, „Europe is more

corrupt than it thinks”• Poverty: „A social Europe should not allow social

exclusion”

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Those were the days...

• In “the good old days”, corporate social responsibility meant discreet donations towards worthy causes and a gently paternalistic attitude toward employees.

• CSR: a soft issue or a nice-to-do activity on the fringe of business.

• CSR: a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis.

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Managing Change

• C(S)R is NOT only about voluntary integration of (selected) social and environmental issues in the business operations.

• Globalisation makes us aware we are part of many complex systems – business, economic, cultural, political, environmental.

• CR is a ‘label’ that describes the responses by companies to many parts of the relationship between business and society provoked by globalisation. CR can be seen as the business contribution to the societal project that we call sustainable development.

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Unusual solutions

• How can business contribute through CR to address MAIN challenges such as poverty alleviation and climate change?

• Playing an active role through innovation, re-orientation of technologies, discovering new business models, new markets, new products, institutions, and social structures.

• The purpose is to find more innovative ways to solve the problem(s).

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Everyone a Changemaker

„It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but those most adaptive to change.” Charles Darwin

„We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have not put our minds to it. We create what we want.” Muhammad Yunus

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Yunus 2006: Social business

• The challenge is to innovate business models and apply them to produce desired social results cost-effectively and efficiently.

• Social business: a new kind of business introduced in the market place with the objective of making a difference in the world. A non-loss, non-dividend company.

• If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.

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Bill Gates 2008: Caring Capitalism

• The world is getting better, but it's not getting better fast enough, and it's not getting better for everyone.

• We need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today. Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives of those who don't fully benefit from today's market forces.

• I believe the highest-leverage work that governments can do is to set policy to create market incentives for business activity that improves the lives of the poor.

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The new ‘social contract’

• The Business – Society – State social contract triangle.

• The role for government is to act as broker between sectors, working with both the supply side of CR (companies, industrial associations) and the demand side of CR (citizens, consumers, stakeholder groups).

• New Deal: The European Alliance for CSR is based on a double commitment. EU commits to ensure a more business-friendly environment in Europe if companies commit to CSR.

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We are all part of the problem and together can be part of the solution

Consumer Social

Responsibility

Government Social

Responsibility

Corporate Social

ResponsibilitySUSTAINABILITY

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New partnership pattern

• Understanding of how business can at the same time create financial value and improve people’s lives, to move beyond “CSR as usual” to innovative partnership.

• Partnership might be most effective where it focuses on supporting learning and change aimed at embedding responsibility in all relevant processes.

• CR focuses on responsible decision making and practice in all business activities.

• Empower corporate changemakers: people at any level in a company who are trying to drive change through the development and deployment of entrepreneurial solutions to key social and environmental challenges.

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Co-creation

• The key building blocks of co-creation: dialogue, access, risk assessment and transparency – DART (Prahalad)

• From „firm-centric” to „dialogue-centric” (the Copernican Revolution)

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Challenges for CR

• CR must go much deeper and further;• Link between responsible investment and CR;• Convergence around globally-accepted frameworks;• Incentives for new entrants and front runners;• Civil society must remain vigilant;• Efforts to identify best solutions and scale them up;• The relationship between regulatory and voluntary

approaches.(Georg Kell, 2008)

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SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE

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Looking ahead

• Business is a creative act involving multiple collaborating partners, addressing hot social issues, based on the common values, shared entrepreneurial attitude and interdependence, contributing to social, ecological and economic gain.

• Mutuality (understanding, education, benefits).• The shift from co-operation and coordination to

collaboration geared towards significant change (process, product, person).

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...but what about

the CEE potential?

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CEE Public Policy Rationales

• CSR has appeared in CEE in the special circumstances of unfinished market reforms and opening up to the global economy from one side and a dynamic process of integration with European Union from the other side.

• Socialist heritage: government’s role in tackling social issues.

• Narrow-minded model of free-market economy.• Traditional philanthropic attitude with a religious

background.• CSR perceived as business obligation rather than

challenge for government. • The CEE model for CSR: partnership without civil society.

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Thank you for listening

Boleslaw RokLKAEMbrok@wspiz.edu.pl