Responsibility and business

I attended the recent Asian Forum for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It was the tenth year of recognizing the practice of CSR and it was good to see how things have been in the last ten years. How business still viewed the call to be a corporate citizen and whether they could see the relationships and the values that should have come up front. I say ten years of recognizing the practice because I am sure that we have really been doing our own CSR whether it be in the mode of giving, philanthropy, or program implementation and management.

Dato Timothy Ong who is the Chairman of the Asia Inc. Forum in Brunei Darussalam shared with us very poignant thoughts on integrating the CSR values in the practice of business.

“The business of business is business.” Mr.Ong started. “The business of business is to do well and to give well.”

Although there are many interpretations to this statement, and some may put in a quirk or two on the last statement, it is not a call for more donations. It is a call for more responsible ways of doing business; for more values in the pursuit of business. It is integrates into the daily pursuit of commerce the care for people and the provision of just wages; the utilization of non-hazardous or toxic substances in manufacturing or the disposal of wastes so that the environment is not harmed. 

It encourages the building of competitiveness through the continuance of innovation and research to find better ways of coping with the fast-paced world and its demands. “The business of business is to build competitiveness while meeting the needs of society.” Mr.Ong interposes.

Listening to Mr.Ong was like being reminded that nothing much has changed in man. That values are still what make things move with alacrity. In Stephen M.R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trusta lot of work gets done faster when there is confidence in the people you work with, for and around. Honestly, we need not even read these writers to know this. Experience tells us this is how things have to be done. Still, sometimes, we wait for credibility that lead to relationships that build trust to be written in a book to knock us on the head enough to spur us to evaluate how we have been doing our business.

If business is doing well, there is an unwritten order for it to do good- as if God built it in our conscience to share and it is up to us to listen to it or to pursue greed. It does not speak well of business if they make high profits and they end up with disgruntled employees. An enterprise cannot keep its customers if it does not maintain quality products for the price it demands. People are willing to pay premium for an item they expect would last.

Business can adopt different modes of giving. It may simply be through providing the right invention or technology advancement for the needs of the times. This may be internal to the business and may reap in additional profits, but it also has the responsibility to satisfy the market.   It may be funding a research for the betterment of a drainage system which can benefit a good number of the populace. It may come in the form of community development or livelihood programs that would allow others to afford what is offered.

It all boils down to two words really, giving back. From here a new cycle of good things may begin - a new continuum.