Business Case Studies, Executive Interviews, Michael Hopkins on Corporate Social Responsibility

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Executive Interviews: Interview with Michael Hopkins on Corporate Social Responsibility
September 2007 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary


Dr. Michael Hopkins
CEO and Chairman of MHC International Ltd. (London & Geneva).
He is a part-time Professor of Corporate Responsibilty
Business Performance (VRBP) at Middlesex University Business School
Visitng Professor at Brunel and Geneva Universities.


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    CSR is sustainable in that CSR actions become part and parcel of the way in which a company carries out its business. Its links to the bottom line of a company must be clearly laid out simply because, if it does not contribute to the bottom line, it will eventually be rejected by hard nosed directors and shareholders.

    Philanthropy is whimsical. It simply depends on the whims of the company directors at a particular time. Many NGOs receive their funds from corporations and carry out excellent work.Rather like Heineken beer, most NGOs carry out programs that other programs (mainly Government ones) cant reach.

    But NGO interventions are based on a scatter gun approach and are spotty. They can intervene wherever they like. Governments, on the other hand, have to intervene everywhere or nowhere. Better, much better, for a company to assist a government in making its contributions either nationally, or internationally, more efficient and appropriate. This then ensures widespread and even coverage.

    But what about all those good causes? I can see that my words will irk many readers who may accuse me of undermining good people and good causes. But this is not my point, I want sustainable actions that do not depend on the whims of, albeit, good natured people. But, what about all those charities that depend on companies for financial support? Should these be stopped? Obviously this is unreasonable and many hundreds of millions would suffer if corporations suddenly stop contributing to charitable organizations.

    Yet, there is a structural problem here. Governments mainly encourage charitable giving, often through tax breaks, since it takes the responsibility away from them. Govern ments are also corporations and must act in a socially responsible manner. My suggestion is that charitable giving is phased out over a long term, say ten years, so that both existing charitable organizations and governments can adjust. Corporations can help in this transition period not only with managerial and technical advice but with cash too.

    In conclusion, here are some actions that could be considered:

    Companies should abandon all philanthropy which is outside of a CSR framework.

    Companies should work hand-inhand with governments to promote economic and social development.

    Governments should help those people who cannot be helped to help themselves through a subsidy. They should look after vulnerable groups and not just await the whim of corporate philanthropy: if a charity fails because a company fails then this is a disaster for all the vulnerable groups and people concerned.

  • What is CRITICS? How do you measure CSR using CRITICS?
    CRITICS (Corporate Responsibility Index Through Internet Consultation of Stakeholders) is a questionnaire that MHCi uses to assess the CSR of companies. It is available on my company website http://www.mhc inter national.com/rate your company. html and invites anyone to assess their own company or institutions level of social responsibility in a few minutes. In fact it is a subset of questions that MHCi has developed to assist companies in their quest to become more socially responsible. The questions follow the definition given above for each stakeholder group. The longer questionnaire takes much longer and hence we have only 20 of the key questions on the site essentially because who would want to answer more than 20 questions on someones website? Nevertheless, the results have been quiet valuable and as well as the user of the survey, we also get a copy of the results which allows us to conduct analysis. For instance, we can find out trends over time and look at whether size of company (see below) influences a companys CSR.

    We give a score to each question answered, add the scores up and divide by 20. The final score is between zero and one, where one means excellent CSR and zero implies very poor CSR. To date hundreds of companies have filled in the questionnaire and we have also used the questionnaire in seminars and workshops to discuss the whole issue of CSR measurement. To date Shell and BP have received the highest scores while institutions such as the UNDP or ILO have fared less well. The questions have not been changed since 2001 and, consequently, may look a little dated today. But changing the questions in any way would lead us to be unable to look at trends; so we bite the bullet and continue to use the same questions.

  • Is there any distinction between Corporate Responsibility and Corporate Social Responsibility? Is it correct to presuppose that, most of the times the distinction between Corporate Responsibility and Corporate Social Responsibility gets blurred resulting in, at such times, an undue credit for the companies?
    As noted above, I am reluctant to drop the term social in my definition simply because the word social conveys what CSR is all about. Dropping the term does lead to blurring as the question rightly implies. I include economic and environmental issues in social, thereby avoiding the problem of only looking at social issues that may simply be a cost, not a business benefit; eg, paying above market wages for social not economic reasons. But, it is true, that some companies prefer to use the term "Corporate Responsibility" rather than "Corporate Social Responsibility". My above postulated cigar chomping CEO in Dallas mistakenly believes that including the word social means introducing socialism through the back door! Therefore, my own feeling is that better to use "corporate responsibility" as a term than not caring about the issue at all. A deconstruction of the term corporate responsibility that includes all stakeholders will, eventually, lead a company to CSR.

1. Corporate Social Responsibility Case Study
2. ICMR Case Collection
3. Case Study Volumes

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