Mary Kay e RSE

Mary Kay é uma empresa americana de venda direta de cosméticos, fundada em 1963 em Dallas, Texas (EUA), por Mary Kay Ash. Atualmente, a empresa está presente em mais de 35 países, sendo considerada uma das maiores empresas de cosméticos do mundo. No Brasil, a empresa chegou em 1998 e atualmente figura entre os grandes players do setor. O grande diferencial da Mary Kay é oferecer às suas Consultoras de Beleza Independentes um plano de desenvolvimento profissional estruturado, que possibilita que cada uma dessas mulheres seja dona de seu próprio negócio e responsável pelo seu desenvolvimento profissional e financeiro. A empresa possui programas de incentivo, que incluem materiais educacionais, bonificações, prêmios em jóias, viagens internacionais e até o direito de uso de um carro cor-de-rosa, ícone da marca no mundo inteiro.

Campanha de RSE da Mary Kay

Cindy Dias

Cindy Dias

As Vantagens das Práticas de Responsabilidade social para as Empresas

RESUMO: Hoje ocorre uma mudança simbólica no mercado, algumas empresas já estão mudando a sua atuação para inibir a concorrência ou por ter ciência do seu papel perante a sociedade, tornando-se mais responsável no campo social. Pode-se perceber que este processo ainda está lento, mais aos poucos o pensamento que só o Estado tem a responsabilidade, vai perdendo espaço, esse avanço só não é mais rápido porque muitas empresas confundem Responsabilidade Social com filantropia, outras ainda não sabem com trabalhar essa questão ou não está bem estruturada para desenvolver o papel de uma empresa Socialmente Responsável, isso acaba dificultando o resultado no processo de desenvolvimento das comunidades. Quando a empresa seja ela micro ou de médio porte, trabalha a questão da responsabilidade social, ela consegue alguns objetivos como crescimento no mercado e ainda contribui para o desenvolvimento da sociedade. Com isso aumenta o número de cliente, pois hoje eles estão mais exigentes, não querem só consumir um produto ou adquirir uma marca, mas contribuir para futuramente ter uma sociedade mais justa.

A vida de uma empresa é fundamental para o mercado e para economia, toda empresa gera emprego e promove o sustento de várias famílias, direta ou indiretamente. É fundamental a responsabilidade da empresa, mas isso não quer dizer que todas as empresas são responsáveis.

A responsabilidade social se apresenta como um tema cada vez mais importante no comportamento das organizações, exercendo impactos nos objetivos, estratégias e no próprio significado da empresa, essa contribuição no sentido de uma compreensão da importância desta estratégia e dos benefícios que a mesma pode trazer para a corporação, quando aplicada corretamente.

A metodologia adotada para elaboração deste Artigo foi pesquisa explicativa por abordar as vantagens da prática da Responsabilidade Social para as empresas e pesquisa bibliográfica, por se apoiar em consultas a livros e redes eletrônicas (MATIAS e ALEXNDRE FILHO, 2006).

1. CONCEITUAÇÃO DE RESPONSABILIDADE SOCIAL

Algumas empresas confundem Responsabilidade social com Filantropia. Mas o que é Responsabilidade Social? O termo "responsabilidade social" encerra sempre a ideia de prestação de contas: alguém deve justificar a própria atuação perante o outro.

Durante muito tempo, foi entendido, em uma visão tradicional, com sendo a obrigação do administrador de prestar contas dos bens recebidos por ele. Ou seja, economicamente, a empresa é vista como uma entidade instituída pelos investidores e acionistas, com objetivo único de gerar lucros. Entretanto, tal perspectiva está mudando no mundo contemporâneo. (MAS O QUE È RESPONSABILIDADE, 2009)

(....)

1.1 COMO É REALIZADA A RESPONSABILIDADE SOCIAL DA EMPRESA

Para Ferrel (2001): a responsabilidade social empresarial é composta por um conjunto de quatro dimensões, em ordem decrescente de prioridade:

• A responsabilidade econômica

È maximizar a riqueza para os stakeholders. Ou seja, uma empresa tem o dever ético e legal de gerar lucro para acionistas, benefícios para os empregados e desenvolvimento para a comunidade. A empresa está utilizando os recursos da sociedade e deve gerar resultados positivos. Ela tem que ser produtiva e rentável.

Essa forma de perceber o negócio da empresa provocou uma forma de mudança no comportamento do empresariado que estava acostumado a beneficiar apenas os acionistas e gestores.

• A responsabilidade legal

É cumprir com todas as leis determinadas pelo Estado para seu tipo de empreendimento.

É o mínimo que se pode cobrar de uma empresa. Para operar em algum lugar ela obedece ao poder legal estabelecido, ou seja, o Estado que lhe concede o direito de atuar em uma região. A contrapartida são os deveres que tem que cumprir.

Não faz sentido uma empresa investir recursos em projeto social e estar em débito com INSS, não pagar imposto de renda ou desmatar, quando a legislação não permitir.

• A responsabilidade ética

É seguir os padrões de conduta aceitáveis da maneira definida pelos stakeholders.

• A responsabilidade Filantrópica

É a restituição à sociedade do que foi recebido dela.

Se uma empresa atua em uma região explorando seus recursos (mão de obra, matéria prima, infra estrutura) nada mais justo do que estar envolvida na melhoria do ambiente social.

(...)

. A RESPONSABILIDADE COMO DIFERENCIAL PARA MICRO E PEQUENAS EMPRESAS QUE A PRATICAM

A pequena empresa que adota a filosofia e práticas da RSE tende a ter uma gestão mais consciente e maior clareza quanto à própria missão. Consegue um melhor ambiente de trabalho, com maior comprometimento de seus funcionários, relações mais consistentes com seus fornecedores e clientes e melhor imagem na comunidade. Tudo isso contribui para sua permanência e seu crescimento, diminuindo o risco de mortalidade, que costuma ser alto entre os novos negócios. Ao assumirem uma postura comprometida com a Responsabilidade Social Empresarial, micro e pequenos empreendedores tornam-se agentes de uma profunda mudança cultural, contribuindo para a construção de uma sociedade mais justa e solidária, conforme Ashley (2005). No Brasil, o movimento da Responsabilidade Social Empresarial ganha força a partir dos anos 1990. Junto com ele, o mercado também vem evoluindo, com a exigência de ética e transparência nos negócios. Segundo Costa (2007), os desafios que hoje se apresentam aos micro e pequenos também representam ótimas oportunidades de negócio, ampliando a participação de pequenas empresas no mercado. A gestão socialmente responsável e os novos valores sociais abrem espaço para o surgimento de novos negócios, como, por exemplo, o desenvolvimento de produtos e serviços ambientalmente sustentáveis.

A maneira como as empresas realizam seus negócios define sua maior ou menor Responsabilidade Social Empresarial. O conceito da RSE está relacionado com a ética e a transparência na gestão dos negócios e deve refletir-se nas decisões cotidianas que podem causar impactos na sociedade, no meio ambiente e no futuro dos próprios negócios. De um modo mais simples, pode- se dizer que a ética nos negócios ocorre quando as decisões de interesse de determinada empresa também respeitam o direito, os valores e os interesses de todos aqueles que, de uma forma ou de outra, são por elas afetados. (RS EMPRESARIAL , 2009).

Assim, uma empresa pode oferecer o melhor produto ou serviço imaginável para seus consumidores e clientes, mas não estará sendo ética em suas relações com a sociedade se, por exemplo, no desenvolvimento de suas atividades não se preocupar com a poluição que gera no meio ambiente. Transparência é outro conceito que muito tem a ver com ética. A falta de transparência na condução dos negócios pode prejudicar não só clientes e consumidores, mas também a própria empresa. Se ela sonega, por exemplo, uma informação importante sobre seus produtos e serviços, poderá ser responsabilizada, mais tarde, por omissão. (RS EMPRESARIAL, 2009).

Responsabilidade Social Empresarial, portanto, diz respeito à maneira como as empresas realizam seus negócios: os critérios que utilizam para a tomada de decisões, os valores que definem suas prioridades e os relacionamentos com todos os públicos com os quais interagem.

CONCLUSÃO

A Responsabilidade Social não é só um pensamento é uma atitude que todas as empresas deveriam ter ou adotar, não só como um diferencial para o mercado, mas uma forma de transformação de todos envolvidos, a sociedade em si.

Ainda há muito a evoluir, por ser um tema novo, ainda pouco conhecido por algumas empresas, sobretudo para as micros e pequenas empresas. Até mesmo as Grandes Empresas não trabalham melhor o seu lado de empresa Responsável Socialmente, muitas vezes se perdendo no caminho do Marketing Social e deixando de contribuir efetivamente para a transformação de uma sociedade mais justa e equilibrada.

Uma empresa com Responsabilidade Social é um grande avanço para um país emergente, significa que os lucros das empresas estão sendo repartidos com a sociedade, uma evolução para a sociedade atual, mas quando isso não ocorre gera-se mais miséria, de todas as formas, da cultura à fome do povo.

Artigo extraido do site http://www.webartigos.com

Postado por Cindy Dias

Nespresso's robust social brew

"Corporate social responsibility is a well-established concept in today’s business environment. Enlightened corporations recognise they have a responsibility to do more than simply deliver profits to satisfy shareholders, and they accept their responsibility to contribute to the communities they operate within.

Unfortunately, CSR is up against some fundamental challenges: in today’s corporate landscape, it’s easy to cut, hard to measure and difficult to control the end result. And that’s just the companies who practice it; the majority of commercial enterprises simply don’t view CSR as relevant to their business.

The concept of Operational Shared Value addresses these challenges by delivering direct benefits to both business and the community. AT Kearney's recent whitepaper, 'Operational Shared Value: taking social investment to the next stage', developed in consultation with the Australian Secretariat of the United Nations Global Compact Principles for Social Investment, outlines a three-stage methodology which companies can use to create robust and successful OSV initiatives.

Stage one: Value chain assessment

Every business has a value chain, which describes its activities at each stage. This value chain can be broken into an exhaustive list, mapping each basic element under four broad categories:

- Input stage (e.g. raw material supply)

- Development stage (e.g. manufacturing process)

- Distribution (e.g. transport and logistics)

- Delivery (e.g. retail store operations)

Stage two: Identification of specific OSV initiatives

During stage two, we test each identified business element for its potential to create shared value, in the specific context of the company’s business and environment. The successful elements create a shortlist of possible OSV ‘levers’, which are then mapped to corresponding social and corporate impact areas. The outcome is a series of statements which guide the development process.

Example: Nestlé Nespresso

- Nespresso realised that obtaining a reliable supply of specialised coffee was challenging (the Input Stage of their value chain), since most coffee is grown by small farmers in impoverished rural areas of Africa and Latin America, where they suffer from low productivity, poor quality and environmental degradation.

- Nespresso decided to redesign its procurement systems by working intensively with growers, providing advice on farming practices, guaranteeing bank loans and helping secure inputs such as plant stock, pesticides and fertilisers.

- Nespresso also established local facilities to measure the quality of the coffee at the point of purchase, which allowed it to pay a premium for better beans directly to the growers. This also created incentives for growers to improve productivity and quality.

Stage three: Impact measurement

The third stage of AT Kearney’s OSV workshops is dedicated to measurement. Traditional CSR programs are largely unmeasured in terms of impact, meaning they’re likely to slip down the corporate agenda. Our OSV methodology builds in metrics at the beginning of the initiative, to quantify the benefit to both the company and the community. It’s a powerful tool for embedding rigour and accountability into the OSV program form the very outset, increasing the likelihood of its expansion and longevity in the business. However, our approach can also be used to measure existing social media investment programs, regardless of their origin.

Where to from here?

We believe that OSV offers huge opportunities for businesses that have previously considered social investment too hard. For those that see social investment as fluffy and irrelevant, or as a costly add-on that doesn’t make economic sense, OSV methodology overcomes these hurdles.

By structuring programs according to the principles of OSV, companies can deliver direct benefits to both the community and the business, creating a win-win for both."

Notícia de 06-01-2012, retirada de http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Shared-value-corporate-social-responsibility-manag-pd20120105-Q82GB?OpenDocument

Postado por Filipa Lelé

UAE companies improve ESG Index 2011 ranking

"DUBAI — UAE companies improved ranking and Index weight in the S&P/Hawkamah Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) Index 2011 that was launched nearly a year ago.

This first-ever Mena wide ESG Index, which was developed by Hawkamah in cooperation with Standard & Poor’s with the support of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), said on Saturday that it underwent its first rebalancing in December 2011.

The Index is unique in that it uses a company’s ESG score to determine its weight in the Index, ensuring performance is based on ESG factors rather than sheer market size.

Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, known as du, ranked first by weight in the Index. At the launch time in February last year du was ranked fifth with 2.77 per cent weight, which increased to 3.85 per cent. Another Dubai-based firm DP World ranked second with 3.14 per cent weight in the Index.

Earlier, its weight was 2.96 per cent at No.4. Abu Dhabi-based National Bank of Abu Dhabi also improved it’s ranking from No.8 to 6 with current weight of 2.66 per cent. In February last it had 2.57 per cent weight in the index.

Other top ten stocks by weight in the index are Saudi Arabia’s Savola Group, Jordan’s Arab Bank, Egypt’s MobiNil and Orascom Construction Industries; Qatar’ Al Khaliji Commercial Bank  and Qatar Telecom; and Morocco’s Maroc Telecom.

The latest rebalancing reveals that financial stocks continue to dominate the index making up 45.67 per cent.

However, this is indicative of the region’s equity market, as financials, likewise, represent nearly half of the benchmark S&P Pan Arab Composite. Saudi Arabia (28.49 per cent), Qatar (22.87 per cent) and the UAE (22.77 per cent) were the top three largest countries in the index.

The Index ranks Mena firms on nearly 200 ESG issues including carbon emissions, water and energy consumption, employee health and safety, community investment, charitable giving, financial reporting and auditing, board independence and executive remuneration.

Dr Nasser Saidi, executive director of Hawkamah, said: “For the past two years Hawkamah has been assessing and monitoring the growing interest of businesses, government, policy makers and investors in environment for social responsibility and corporate governance in the Arab region. Recent political developments have heightened the focus on governance, accountability, transparency and disclosure.”

The data shows that there have been overall improvements in the ESG scores of regional companies. This is partly due to the increasing emphasis the region’s regulators have placed on corporate governance, Dr Saidi said.

The recent issuances of corporate governance codes in the UAE and Qatar, for example, have had a positive effect on the rankings of their companies, he said, adding that but companies themselves have started to see the value of better disclosure and many have gone beyond the minimum requirements.

Kirsty Knight, Director, Index Operations at S&P Indices, said: “Following the rebalance, the index, which is unique in being weighted by ESG scores, is dominated by financial stocks, with this sector comprising 45 per cent of the index. Telecommunications services is the next largest sector with 18 per cent. This sector also contributes the index’s largest constituent.”

Notícia de 08-01-2011, retirada de http://www.khaleejtimes.com/biz/inside.asp?xfile=/data/business/2012/January/business_January116.xml&section=business

Postado por Filipa Lelé

Nicaragua's gold mining industry is booming, boosting country's economy

"The town of La Libertad saw heavy fighting during Nicaragua’s civil war in the 1980s, but today, the blasts that can be heard are from miners exploring for gold.

In the past decade, the price of gold has jumped from $300 an ounce to more than $1,800. These record prices have caused a boom in gold mining across Latin America, particularly in Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti.

B2Gold, a company based in Vancouver, Canada, operates Nicaragua’s largest gold mine. Inside the company’s massive mills in La Libertad, ore is crushed then washed with a carbon and cyanide leach solution to isolate the gold.

B2Gold bought the mine in 2009 and has spent $100 million to modernize the operation. The company’s efforts have helped Nicaragua double gold production in the past three years and has created jobs in La Libertad.

“The mine is very important because it has meant jobs for everyone,” said Cristobal Gonzalez, one of the workers at the B2Gold operation. “It’s also helped develop the community.”

People have been mining gold in Nicaragua for centuries, but the industry fell on hard times after the 1979 revolution. The Sandinista government nationalized mines and expelled foreign companies.

A U.S. embargo in the 1980s made it nearly impossible to buy spare parts for American-made mining equipment. In addition, the gold mines were targeted by Contra guerrillas.

“There was a lack of investment and a lot of damage caused by the war. The mines were targets because they were located in remote areas. La Libertad was a war zone," said Oscar Vega, the manager of the mine.

But now, the country’s mining industry has come back to life. It costs about $500 to produce an ounce of gold that today sells for about $1,600. Foreign mining firms are being invited back to Nicaragua and are even being welcomed by their old foes, the Sandinistas, led by President Daniel Ortega. The Sandinistas have ditched their Marxist rhetoric and government officials have reached out to mining executives.

“We work together, you know? If there’s a problem we sit down and we solve it and that’s a huge difference,” said Randy Martin, chairman of Hemco, which runs Nicaragua’s second-largest gold mine. “This is by far – and you can talk to any mining company in Central America – this is by far the best place to operate."

Gold is now the country’s third-biggest export, behind coffee and meat, according to Jose Aguerri, president of Nicaragua’s private business council. He said gold has helped the economy grow by 4 percent annually in the past year, the highest rate in Central America.

“Gold mining means a lot of investment and a lot of employment for the communities where they are. Also, they have a good relationship with the communities. And that has been very important for a sector that is not very friendly, traditionally speaking, with the communities,” Aguerri said.

Indeed, gold mining has been hugely controversial elsewhere in Latin America. It’s caused environmental damage, and it’s disrupted local villages. But in Nicaragua, environmental issues are often overshadowed by concerns about poverty and unemployment.

Another factor, according to Martin, is that firms have so far focused on Nicaragua’s traditional mining zones rather than building open-pit and tunnel mines in untouched areas.

“Because remember, the operations that are here right now are the operations that have been here for 60 or 70 years. They are technically the same operations. There hasn’t yet been that great big new discovery yet in Nicaragua,” Martin said.

Mining companies are also winning hearts and minds by sponsoring health, education and recreational programs. Tom Lee, who’s head of corporate social responsibility in Nicaragua for B2Gold, showed off a company project to install lights and a new roof at the town basketball court.

“The idea is to give recreational opportunities to some of the youth, the kids here in La Libertad so that they have something to do in the evenings,” Lee said.

B2Gold has also hired contractors to pave streets and build houses for miners. Lee said the company intends to invest heavily in both mining projects and community development while the price of gold is still high. That way, he said, Nicaragua will have something to fall back on when gold rush ends.

“We know that the price of gold is cyclical,” Lee said. “At some point it is going to drop again and we have to be prepared for that.”

Notícia de 07-01-2011, retirada de http://www.pri.org/stories/business/global-development/nicaragua-s-gold-mining-industry-is-booming-boosting-country-s-economy-7834.html

Postado por Filipa Lelé

Ask Cambodian Workers: What Good Has ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ Done?

"A recent blog post by Auret van Heerden titled "Where is CSR Heading?" begs a really big question: What good has "corporate social responsibility" been for workers, up to now? Sweatshop abuses are Exhibit A and that is where van Heerden plies his trade as head of the "Fair Labor Association" in Washington.

Founded in 1996 as the Apparel Industry Partnership--a desperate attempt by Bill Clinton to gloss over the depredations of supply-chain cheats and bullies producing for big American brands -- the FLA has produced helpful (to the industry) reports by van Heerden such as "Solving the Problem of Declining Wages". Van Heerden's post starts, "The global economic crisis has shaken the manufacturing industry to its core..." which means what, exactly? No more Mr. Nice Guy?

The big brands' record during the pre-crisis (fat profits) decades is reprehensible. Since the earliest "code of conduct" requirements for supplier factories (i.e., Levi's, Reebok, Nike and Mattel), labor rights have declined nearly to the vanishing point in production-for-export areas around the world.

Flexibilization through contract-work has reached epidemic proportions; millions of workers are finding work in foreign countries in situations akin to bonded labor; factory managers skipping out on severance payments owed to workers is becoming more commonplace -- in short, work is becoming more and more precarious with each passing year, even as corporations tweak their "codes" and trumpet new breakthroughs in "free association" rights in their supply chains. Parasitic "social auditors" -- some operating in an ostensible "non-profit" mode -- post thousands of factory reports each year while workers continue to strike and corrupt governments jail and harass independent union activists.

Tens of thousands of workers in Cambodia and Bangladesh have protested numerous times over the last ten weeks, due to expected national minimum wage adjustments (which are behind schedule); their wages are never raised through the dignified means of collective bargaining. Look back to 1998 when a prominent FLA member (Patagonia's Kevin Sweeney) wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "We Can Work Up To a Living Wage." So, what's happened over the past dozen years? Can you imagine consumers' reaction to an expensive Patagonia t-shirt with a hang-tag reading: "Wow. We're so sorry! We thought that we could promise you that workers making this shirt were being paid at least a subsistence wage, but it has proved to be really difficult to get our suppliers to agree. You can go to the Fair Labor Association web-site and read that we are not really to blame..."

The logic is seductively simple: A global brand meticulously monitors its' supply chain because conscientious consumers -- informed by the latest technologies -- will punish it at the retail level for any transgression. Rather, according to Jeffrey Swartz, the CEO of Timberland, consumers don't care at all about workers' rights in the factories producing for the footwear and apparel company. In an interview earlier this year, he said, "With regard to human rights, the consumer expectation today is somewhere in the neighborhood of, 'don't do anything horrible or despicable'... if the issue doesn't matter much to the consumer population, there's not a big incentive for the consumer-minded CEOs to act, proactively." In a 2008 interview he mused about his desire to "seduce consumers to care" so that his CSR report was not mere "corporate cologne". The "dirty little secret" of CSR is that nobody reads these reports; one of Sun Microsystems' team lamented the fact that only 247 out of 38,000 fellow-employees even bothered to download its 2007 CSR report.

Think CSR works on the environment side of "sustainability"? One answer spawned by the BP spill appeared in a Washington Post op-ed last week, "culprit is the cult of CSR... a fetish encouraged by the philanthropies that feed off it." I might not go so far as the opinion-writer, Chrystia Freeland (global editor at large for Thomson Reuters), when she suggests that, "many of the business disasters of the past 24 months have been facilitated by the mini-industry of corporate social responsibility," but I certainly do believe that CSR has been an indispensible partner to business-as-usual for the past 15 years of unprecedented corporate malfeasance."

Notícia de 26-07-2010, retirada de http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6261/ask_workers_in_cambodia_and_bangladesh_what_good_has_corporate_social_/

Postado por Filipa Lelé

Corporate Social Responsibility – more harm than good

"The current period of financial turmoil has – as on previous occasions – led to considerable speculation and projection by nervous enterprise leaders, confused politicians and interested advocates as to the correct conduct and purpose of business.

The last time this occurred was in response to the economic downturn of the early 1990s. This led, at the time, to the articulation of a presumed need for greater corporate social responsibility – or CSR – as articulated in the 1995 RSA Inquiry, ‘Tomorrow’s Company: the role of business in a changing world’.

Notably though, many of the original sponsors and supporters of that endeavour – many of whom appeared to endorse what was to become the New Labour agenda of demanding more targets and procedural audits, as well as greater dialogue and inclusion – are no longer around.

Among those whose executives pontificated over the deeper insights and wisdom they had into what made for, and sustained, a better, more responsible company, was Barings Venture Partners Limited. They were not alone in the ranks of those who were good at talking the CSR talk, but less so at walking the CSR walk.

But maybe that is because being a good, responsible company that cares about people and the planet, as well a profits, was not what CSR was really about in the first place. The programme director of the RSA Inquiry wrote a piece about it, published before the final report, that identified one key area to be explored by it as being; ‘the notion of business as the most important agent of social change, in an age when governments are redefining and limiting their own sphere of influence’.

In other words, as state leaders the world over became confused – in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War – as to their purpose and direction, so some – encouraged no doubt by a few disillusioned CEOs – sought to invest business with the role of social leadership instead.

That remains a key focus for CSR today. What is different from its original conceptualisation, however – and in some ways more sinister – is that whereas in 1995 it was the complexities of the globalised, international environment that business operated within that was held to have heralded the need for them to change, today it is people themselves that are presented as both the source and the locus of change.

‘[H]umans are complex social animals’, rails Matthew Taylor, the current incumbent at the helm of the RSA. Influenced by the new, fashionable orthodoxies of behavioural economics, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and the need to nudge, he describes people as ‘instinctive and imitative’, before – in a recent talk on what he describes as ‘Enlightened Enterprise’ – identifying his aim to change the public into ‘more capable and responsible citizens’.

The role of business to cover for the limitations of the state is still there in his exposition, but now CSR is not so much about altering business practice as our own purportedly feckless and foolish consumer habits.

So, Taylor laments, ‘the state has many competing objectives and when it uses its power to nudge it opens itself up to charges of paternalism and social engineering’. That is why, he suggests, there is a new opportunity for business ‘to build on a relationship based on choice and consent, and in some cases a good degree of trust’.

In other words, the purpose of CSR today is to act on behalf of governments that can’t be trusted and for people who don’t know what’s good for them.

This low view of government and people was always implicit to CSR, which usually focused its supposed benefits elsewhere – typically on people without a voice (ideally in Africa) – or better still the dumb (animals), or the inert (the environment). That way, businesses could patronise impoverished communities, eco-activists and their media groupies with token sums and gestures – that were rarely held to account or scrutiny – and at the same time encourage their staff to subsidise these schemes by volunteering their own time and energies.

And by arguing that there had to be a purpose to business beyond simply making a profit, the prophets of CSR slyly assumed that which had yet to be achieved – realising sufficient surplus to ensure employees were adequately rewarded in the first place. Staff who collectively, consciously and loudly fought for better wages were ignored. So British Airways could be commended for its social and environmental reports whilst consistently facing-down its own workers through a series of strikes.

But what gives business the legitimacy and authority to act on behalf of the people – and now, more ominously, literally on them – is never clarified. And, in the process, the notion that choice, consent and trust, are qualities we should expect – if not demand – from government, is also missed. In fact, Taylor complicates matters still further as, presumably unable to even trust businesses to pursue his ideals, he proposes that NGOs – those bastions of democratic representativeness and accountability – should act as ‘quasi-regulators’ of the entire process.

CSR was, from its inception, preoccupied by what it perceived to be the unnecessarily ‘adversarial culture’ of business. Today it is ‘our national culture’ that its advocates seek to correct. These are caricatured as being eating too much, drinking too much and exercising too little, as well as wasting resources and ruining the planet.

CSR was never about doing good. It was always a mechanism that a confused ruling class used to maintain its legitimacy and control in a disillusioned age. Today, combined with the sinister new orthodoxy of nudge, it is more backward still. A directionless state has shifted its focus from matters of public consequence to tinkering with our private lives but, lacking the confidence even to do that it now seeks to outsource this function to private enterprises where, no doubt, there are plenty of willing prefects to do its bidding.

If we want to do good for other people, the planet, or whatever else we choose, it is high time we refocused our attention on asserting what really matters to us and getting the right government, rather than businesses, to do this."

Notícia de 31-10-2011, retirada de http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/10/31/corporate-social-responsibility-does-more-harm-than-good/

Um registo de uma opinião oposta a muitas outras referidas neste blog.

Postado por Filipa Lelé

Coca-Cola executive assesses the future of Africa

"Alexander Cummings, executive vice president and chief administrative officer of the Coca-Cola Company, told attendees at the 19th annual Wharton Africa Business Forum that they were witnessing the emergence of a new Africa.

Cummings, who spoke this Saturday at the Dhirubhai Ambani Auditorium in Huntsman Hall, was a keynote speaker at the three-day conference exploring business practices that promote growth and development in Africa.

Cummings, who was born in Liberia, said the emergence of a new Africa will be accompanied by “the emergence of an immense opportunity.”

“In Africa, opportunity and responsibility come in a single package,” he said, adding that Coca-Cola supports African communities through micro-distribution centers and partnerships with local farmers.

“These are stories of small businesses. But the stories are growing and so are the businesses.”

Cummings also predicted a dramatic change in African markets.

“An African proverb goes, ‘When the music changes, so does the dance.’ Coca-Cola has been listening to the music of Africa for the last 80 years. It has changed, but never like this,” he said.

This sudden change, he said, can be attributed to a rise in the continent’s middle class, which now accounts for 34 percent of the African population. “You can imagine what that means for a company whose motto is ‘Refresh the World,’” he joked.

Udeme Asuamah, from San Francisco, thought the speaker was very informative, but was “disappointed there was no mention of corporate social responsibility through education. Education is the cornerstone of empowering communities.”

Barkot Tekle, who lives and works in New York, said he had attended Harvard Business School’s Africa Business Conference. “These forums gather all the players who have experience on the ground level in Africa, which is valuable, since information flow can be limited.”

Tekle thought the content of Cummings’ address was “not particularly surprising. However, I had no idea that an African occupies such a senior level post within a huge multinational like Coca-Cola.”

Etzerson Philitas, an organizer of the event and a first-year MBA student, said Cummings was a keynote speaker because “our theme this year is ‘Celebrating Innovation and Operational Excellence,’ and Coca-Cola is a leader in supply chain distribution.”

Philitas said that the forum was relevant because, “It is a great venue to dispel myths surrounding African business practices, as well as to network, and mix business with the social and cultural. So far the conference is going well. A lot of key relationships have been forged, and the content has been stellar. It seems like the conference is doing its job.”

Notícia de 07-11-2011, retirada de http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2011/11/cocacola_executive_assess_the_future_of_africa

Postado por Filipa Lelé

What's holding the Third-World back? It’s the corruption, stupid.

"What is the biggest problem faced by the National Transitional Council in Libya following Muammar Gaddafi’s fall from power?

Getting oil production back online? Overcoming ethnic and inter-tribal rivalries to prevent Iraq-style sectarian violence? Securing the country’s borders and safeguarding territorial integrity?

These are all notable challenges. But Libya, for a variety of reasons, faces a far bigger, more insidious obstacle to progress than those listed above.

The structure of Libya’s economy - geared overwhelmingly towards oil production - and its experience of four decades of shambolic governance catering solely to the whims of one man and his cronies makes the country particularly susceptible to corruption.

The lure of black gold inevitably creates incentives for corruption which stretch down the entire value chain: from the Oil Ministry official seeking to secure himself a kickback in return for an export license, through the local security chief wanting to see cash in return for the protection of a pipeline, right down to the oil executive in need of newoilfields: opportunities for corrupt practices are ubiquitous in the oil industry.

In Libya’s case, this problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Gaddafi regime was little more than a tribalkleptocracy whose very operating principle was corruption, entrenched at the highest levels.

The most recent reports suggest that the Gaddafi clan had amassed a fortune in excess of US$100 billion. Anecdotal evidence detailing the international shenanigans of Gaddafi’s offspring indicates that a large share of Libya’s oil wealth has been funnelled directly through the hands of the ruling clique since Gaddafi assumed power in 1969.

Institutions in the country, where they exist, have intentionally been kept weak and ineffective; after all, governance in Libya meant implementing Gaddafi’s orders, and no more.

His son Saif ‘authored’ a PhD at the London School of Economics, gloriously titled ‘"The role of civil society in thedemocratisation of global governance institutions: from 'soft power' to collective decision-making?” Ironically, said civil society is non-existent in Libya, thanks to Saif’s megalomaniac father and his ruthless stifling of politicaldialogue and debate.

An economy built on a prized commodity facing huge and growing global demand but requiring foreign investment for its extraction, coupled with a newly freed society formerly run by one man and his assorted cronies for nearly half a century: post-Gaddafi Libya has been dealt an ominous hand for post-war reconstruction.

There is huge potential for endemic, rampant corruption taking hold, which could blight the country for decades to come.

It is a commonly held assumption among a certain demographic in the West that we are somehow to be held responsible for the economic misery that is the plight of the poor in the developing world.

Post-colonial guilt has given rise to theories which argue that liberal capitalist practices cause Third World poverty, due to their exploitative nature. The empirical evidence, however, tells a different story. 

The introduction of free market practices has lifted 500 million Asians out of absolute poverty since 1990.Capitalism is the solution to, not the cause of, global poverty. So why does over a billion of the world’s population still have to make do with less than US$1 per day?

Rather than blaming the rich world, the answer lies closer to home.

The World Bank estimates that each year, more than US$ 1 trillion is paid in bribes worldwide. That’s the equivalent of the entire annual GDP of South Korea, the world`s fifteenth-richest country, disappearing illicitly in the accounts of bureaucrats, government officials, court officials, corporate crooks and all others whose jobs routinely allow them to fraudulently extract money.

Another World Bank estimate places the value of illicitly looted funds transferred out of Africa for safekeeping abroad at $400 billion. To put that figure into perspective, Africa’s richest economy - South Africa - has a GDP of roughly $360 billion.

Mobutu Sese Seko, the former President of Zaire, looted his country’s treasury of $5 billion by the time he fell from power in 1997, enough money to have re-payed Zaire’s entire external debt at the time.

Between 1993 and 1998, the Abacha clan in Nigeria stole between $3 and $5 billion in public funds, an amount that could have paid for the treatment of 3 million AIDS victims (ten percent of the global total) with anti-retroviral drugs over a period of ten years.

The vast majority of corrupt practices in developing countries originate within the government: 91 percent of all bribes reported to BRIBEline in India and Russia and 85 percent of bribes reported in Mexico and China went to public employees.

Corruption often takes the form of rent-seeking behaviour - extracting a share of a fixed amount of wealth without contributing productively to wealth-creating activity. That makes its effects pernicious and multi-layered.

A bribe is in effect another form of taxation, except that it is arbitrary, intransparent, applied inconsistently and, worst of all, not put to use for the public good like ordinary forms of taxation.

Hence corruption worsens the investment climate in a given country by raising the cost of doing business there: investing in a relatively corrupt country compared to an incorrupt one can be as much as twenty percent costlier for investors.

Worse, when corruption is sufficiently lucrative, manpower can be misallocated as a country’s talent is wasted. Some will seek to partake in this fundamentally unproductive but personally enriching activity, others will emigrate abroad to escape corruption’s consequences.

With money diverted from public into private coffers, essential public investments required for countries to escape poverty are not undertaken. For example, a country which improves its performance on a number of World Bank corruption indicators by one standard deviation increases its public spending on education by half a percent of GDP. Similarly, the rate of foreign investment in such countries goes up by an average of four percent of GDP. Most importantly, per capita income increases between two-and-a-half and four-fold - equivalent to a GDP boost of up to 400 percent.

The state-building process awaiting Libya poses an unparalleled challenge for a nation newly liberated to build a modern, prosperous and flourishing society.

But, as I’ve shown here, if this exciting process becomes mired in corruption, nepotism and fraud, the economic effects can be devastating to the point where they cancel out the benefit of having removed Gaddafi in the first place.

Primary responsibility to avoid this lies with the Libyans. Thanks to Gaddafi’s paranoia, no NGOs were allowed to set up shop in Libya during his reign, meaning that there are no international or regional watchdog organizations present on the ground. The National Transitional Council must ensure that this changes swiftly.

On a wider societal level, corruption must become so firmly associated with the Gaddafi era in the eyes of the public that a deep social stigma is attached to those members of the NTC who abuse their positions for purposes of corruption. This is a question of education and allowing for the cultivation of a flourishing civil society, with a free press and functioning institutions.

It is in this respect that the international community can play a crucial role. We must encourage the new Libyan government to strengthen the rule of law and the institutions that uphold it and we need to pressure the government to design and implement stringent anti-corruption mechanisms. The accountability of public officials both before the courts and the electorate needs to be ensured. The infrastructure build-up and of course the extraction and export of oil needs to be tendered through competitive, transparent procedures.

Toward all these ends the international community can and must contribute materially, through our technical expertise and by encouraging good governance practices to take hold in Libya by making aid conditional on anti-corruption benchmarks.

The challenges Libya faces are vast. But given that corruption does not take root in a fundamental sense - meaning a clear break is made with the governance doctrine of the Gaddafi era - the possibility of a successful, growing, stable and peaceful Libya emerging in the coming decade is real."

Notícia de 01-11-2011, retirada de http://www.thecommentator.com/article/590/what_s_holding_the_third_world_back_it_s_the_corruption_stupid_

Uma notícia onde título diz tudo! Parece-me, no entanto, que o artigo é um pouco enviesado e ignora muitos outros problemas. A corrupção de facto cria muitas barreiras ao desenvolvimento dos países de terceiro mundo mas não é a raiz de todos os males.

Postado por Filipa Lelé