"Malaysians have always had it in them. It, meaning the work involved under the banner of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)." - Dato' Johan Raslan, chairman of the Institute of Corporate Responsibility Malaysia (ICRM), in describing CSR engagement by Malaysians and local corporations.
Johan, who is also the executive chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers, said one of the biggest misconceptions about CSR involved the company CEO giving a big cheque to an underprivileged home or a cause.
Stories of CEOs rising from humble beginnings to wealthy stature, keen on helping the less privileged, and rich families involved in philanthropy were common among Malaysians.
In the past, people understood the CSR concept as needing to forgo profits or having employees take on extra work. One of the biggest misconceptions about CSR involved the company CEO giving a big cheque to an underprivileged home or a cause. CSR is more meaningful when an entire company gets involved in not a one-day event, but in an activity that is carried out on a sustained basis.
However, this narrow understanding is slowly diminishing, driven by an awakening in the Malaysian corporate scene.
The first is the involvement of the Government and regulators to promote CSR benefits through the government-linked companies (GLC) transformation programme.
The Silver Book programme allows the GLCs to be at the forefront and these players are experimenting with new ideas.
Their CSR activities just do not stop at poverty eradication and environment conservation, but also touch on education and heritage related issues.
Another important factor was “people power. Increasingly, employees are given the chance to speak up and demand that companies carry out more meaningful activities. People are choosing to join firms that have principles close to their own values. This in turn, pushes firms to adopt CSR-driven policies to engage the best talent.
Johan provides a comparison of the level of CSR awareness among Malaysian firms and its regional peers and finds that Malaysian firms have performed “very credibly”.
“Since we introduced CSR reporting in annual reports of local firms, we have seen progress from carrying out events for public relations exercise to more sustainable activities,” he added.
CSR reporting was made compulsory in Budget 2006, requiring all public listed companies to report on their environmental and social responsibility performance.
Bursa Malaysia had stated that these reports ranged from a one-line statement to a standalone report, allowing flexibility to adopt this practice.
In Budget 2008, it is expected that incentives will be offered to further promote CSR, but Johan said Malaysian companies, which were heavily involved in sustainable development, would continue to practice CSR regardless of these extra “perks”.
Extracts from an article that first appeared in The Star, 3 September 2007
