The Corporate and social responsibility bourgeoning and fast mutating character and its application by domestic and trans-national enterprises have been hotly contested. While few heedful big corporations attempts to be good “corporate citizens”, majority are unheeding social responsibility practices.
That business goals pursuance utilises societal natural and human resource and impacts people’s live and communities, it must, therefore, plan for social needs, values, and aspiration, hence the basis for corporate social responsibility.
The foregoing notwithstanding, the complicated complications of markets inadequate measurements of business externalities are unresolved supporting public demands that businesses comply with social responsibility objectives. Therefore, corporate social responsibility or corporate social investment (as it is called in recent times) is not, will not and cannot be a gift for business host communities and their people.
Of course, research corroborates social non-financial assets, including “social licence” and legitimacy, business social good standing and/or image, consumer confidence among others as huge income sources to corporations when quantified.
The corporate responsibility window dressing in Ghana and elsewhere is as a result of a policy lack to oversee the business initiatives/commitment implementation. For instance, Goldfields confirmed that their continued existence hinges on development interventions undertaken for stakeholder communities and indicated further that the company needs “social licence” and this licence is development-support interventions.
“CSR keeps us in operation” and “we desire to fulfill our CSR obligations (including environmental sustainability) to remain in the mining business in Ghana” (interview with David Johnson, Stakeholder Relations, West Africa, GFGL, on August 26, 2016). Goldfields stated that a policy lack for CSR governance did not mean low priority for SCSR objectives, and further explained that social interventions for communities remained unshakable and high on management agenda.
It also claims that CSR issues permeate management decisions, citing CSR committee(s) with diverse stakeholder representation as evidence. Again the publication captioned “CSR: Evolution to Survive in Developing World” stating “GRS originally established a philosophy for CSR, which was to provide informal services….offering a piece of infrastructure based on Community Affairs Manager’s opinion of what was required in major stakeholder communities.”
In itself authenticates a substantial degree of policy absence in CSR management. The importance of policy in managing an organisation and its overarching objectives cannot be overemphasised. It directs and dictates organisational goals, enables exact and systematic stakeholder interests governance, influences initiatives visibility while avoiding excuses and management idiosyncratic inertias. Moreover, policy ensures planned, commitments cross-referencing by stakeholder and thus keeps businesses on their toes.
Policy absence for CSR causes sporadic and unsystematic and/or haphazard objectives setting, easy targets setting, commitments, implementation ineffectiveness and inadequate deliverables or most times interventions failures.
If policy, indeed, is generally considered an organisation’s comprehensive course of actions or inter-connected decisions or thoughts, objectives, principles and powerful instrument for executing plans, strategy, while clearly dictating long-term strategies it, therefore, means that CSR cannot deliver the social change agenda, including environmental accountability under the present ineffectual self-commitment strategy.
It also means that corporations will continue to hide CSR under corporate affairs departments only for business promotion.
It is, therefore, recommended that government through Parliament passes legislation to bind the corporate world (be it in the service, manufacturing, mining and/or oil exploratory sector) in Ghana to make own policy, which will be available to stakeholder constituencies, namely, government, local authorities, and business operating communities for the effective planning, monitoring, and implementation of CSR.
The looming danger of global warming and Climate Change with their consequential biodiversity destruction and pollution impacts reduce traction for the age long proscription forced on resource-rich nations by the global North governments enact laws to regulate trans-national conglomerates.
Written by
ALPHONSE KUMAZA
Ministry of Tourism, Arts & Culture
Mobile: 0208908466
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