WBI S ERIES ON C ORPORATE R ESPONSIBILITY , A CCOUNTABILITY , AND S USTAINABLE C OMPETITIVENESS

Public Policy for

Corporate Social
Responsibility

July 7–25, 2003

Edited by

Djordjija Petkoski
World Bank Institute
and

Nigel Twose
World Bank Group

Jointly sponsored by
the World Bank Institute,
the Private Sector Development Vice Presidency of the World Bank,
and the International Finance Corporation
Contents

Preface……………………………………………………………………………………1

Introduction ……………………………………………………….……………………2

Responses to Topics………..…………..……………………………………………..3

E-Conference Participation ………………………………………………………….4

Summary of Each Week’s Discussion

Week I: The range of roles that governments play in providing an "enabling

environment" for CSR…………………………………………………………………..5
Messages from Participants……………………………………………………...11

Week 2: Exploring the alignment between public sector priorities and CSR activities
in the extractive industries …………………………………………………………….24
Messages from Participants……………………………………………………...27

Week 3: Understanding the relationship between CSR, trade and foreign direct
investment………………………………………...………….……….…………………43
Messages from Participants ……………………………………………………..47

Appendix
Comments by Participants about the E-conference……………………………………...57
Short Bios of Moderators & Commentators………………………………….…..……...58
Additional Online Resources Relating to Public Policy and CSR……….………………61
WBI E-Conferences on Corporate Responsibility, Accountability and
Sustainability……………………………………………………………………………..62
 Preface to the Report

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the commitment of business to contribute to

sustainable economic development, working with employees, their families, the local community
and society at large to improve quality of life, in ways that are both good for business and good
for development.

Although the contemporary CSR agenda is maturing, the term “CSR” has not yet taken hold
within many public sector agencies, either in industrial or developing countries. Few
government initiatives have been undertaken explicitly as “pro-CSR initiatives” but nonetheless
many have contributed effectively to the promotion of greater social responsibility. For
example, the primary incentive of public sector activities that promote exports of sustainably
produced goods and services might well be to earn foreign exchange, but they still have a
positive impact by encouraging responsible production. Public sector agencies that do not use the
expression “corporate social responsibility” are not necessarily doing any less than those that do.
The challenge is for public sector bodies to identify priorities and incentives that are meaningful
in the local and national context and to build on existing initiatives and capacities. There is a
significant opportunity for public sector bodies in developing countries to harness current
enthusiasm for “CSR” alongside key public policy goals and priorities to encourage delivery of
results in both respects

This report aims to outline the proceedings, findings and recommendations of the global e-
conference “Public Policy for Corporate Social Responsibility” held from July 7 – 25, 2003. The
e-conference provided an opportunity for participants from all over the world to exchange their
thoughts and ideas on various issues related to the interplay of public policy and corporate social
responsibility.

The overriding need to deliver sustainable and equitable development underscores the
importance of achieving a better understanding of the role of public policy in relation to
corporate social responsibility and its potential to contribute to the development agenda. This e-
conference was just one step in building such understanding. Government and companies should
integrate consideration of such issues into their policies and business strategies as part of their
commitment to business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, CSR is a
complex issue, with many players, definitions, and interpretations. Instead of focusing on finding
“correct” answers to often ill-defined questions, the real challenge is managing the dialogue
between various stakeholder groups, building coalitions for action and creating additional
learning opportunities through the implementation of sustainable action plans.

In addition to the participants, who through their written contributions had a critical impact on
the overall success and quality of the dialogue, expert moderators also played a key role by
providing background readings and guidance, thus maximizing knowledge transfer opportunities.
Special mention has to be made of Tom Fox, Michael Warner and Regina Abrami. Mehmet Can
Atacik and Amanda Blakeley assisted in the preparation and writing of this report.

Djordjija Petkoski Nigel Twose

World Bank Institute World Bank Private Sector Development
Private Sector Development CSR Practice

1
Introduction
The global e-conference on Public Policy and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), July 7 –
25, 2003, was organized jointly by World Bank Institute (WBI) and Private Sector Development
Vice Presidency of the World Bank. The main objective of this online dialogue was to provide
an opportunity for participants from around the world to share their expertise and ideas on ways
in which the public sector can promote and support CSR activities in the developing world, and
to develop action-oriented recommendations for policy-makers. An expert team of international
moderators provided weekly topics, background readings, discussion papers and overall helped
to guide and focus the e-conference debate.

The first week of the e-conference focused on the range of roles that governments play in
providing an "enabling environment" for CSR. CSR covers a wide range of issues relating to
business conduct, from corporate governance and environmental protection, to issues of social
inclusion, human rights and national economic development. In the case of private sector
investment in low and low-middle income countries, the emphasis placed on each of these issues
can vary, and sometimes differs from the priorities of investors and businesses in more
developed markets.

The role of the public sector in CSR is complex and is an emerging field. As the term “CSR” has
not yet taken hold in many public sector agencies, many of their interventions have not been
undertaken explicitly as CSR initiatives, but nevertheless could be seen as part of the CSR
agenda. There is therefore a wealth of relevant experience among public sector agencies that is
currently being overlooked.

During the second week, participants explored the alignment between public sector priorities and
CSR activities in the extractive industries. The extractive industry sector, specifically upstream
oil, gas and mining companies, typically involve large multinational enterprises operating in a
country over the course of several years, sometimes decades. Operations involve large-scale
capital investments, construction activities requiring significant labor inputs, both global and
local sourcing, and long periods of facilities management. Tax and royalty revenues are often
substantial but deferred, and though they offer an economic opportunity can also be a catalyst for
poor governance.

Interest is growing in the potential coincidence of public sector priorities and the CSR activities
of business, not least with regard to the social and environmental management practices of
upstream extractive industries. This begs the question: how can public policy be formulated to
strengthen this alignment, whilst ensuring that the resulting interventions are both ‘optimal’—
good for both business and development—and ‘feasible’—in relation to the institutional
constraints of public sector agencies and the value drives of business.

The final week of the conference helped build understanding of the relationship between CSR,
trade and foreign direct investment. More and more companies are wondering what the link is
between their CSR strategies and their trade activities from both the import and export
perspectives. Multinational companies are exporting not only their products and services, but
also their operating standards, best business practices, values, and principles, i.e. codes of
conduct, all over the world. Many of these practices are increasingly being adopted by domestic

2
enterprises. Progressive corporations and financial institutions view CSR and sustainable
investments as a competitive advantage or a minimum requirement for risk mitigation.

Governments are beginning to view CSR and codes of conduct as a cost-effective means to
enhance sustainable development strategies, and as a component of their national
competitiveness strategies to compete for the “right” type of FDI inflows and to position their
exports globally. For example, the US-Vietnam textiles agreement signed in May 2003, includes
an obligation for the Vietnamese authorities to encourage implementation of CSR codes, in
return for access to the US market, which is now the top export market for Vietnam, after only
two years of formal trade relations. This appears to be the first time that an international trade
agreement has included a government obligation to encourage CSR codes, as opposed to the
more typical language requiring additional regulation or enforcement. The US-Cambodia textiles
agreement also included an obligation to raise labor standards with the incentive of an increased
trade quota for products manufactured in line with labor guidelines.

Responses to Topics
The global e-conference generated numerous responses to the weekly topics raised. Detailed
analysis indicates that participants raised a variety of interesting questions and suggestions
relating to role of public policy in promoting socially responsible corporate behavior as framed
by the questions of the week. The following list suggests the scope and breadth of the substantive
issues raised:

There was general agreement on the following points:

The term CSR can be interpreted in a wide range of ways
CSR represents a new mind set about the changing role of business in society
Practices of corporate responsibility will show variance, there is not a one size fits all
solution.
Government and businesses should consider the following when forming CSR policies::
o History, culture
o Business climate
o Public awareness
o Government
and take into consideration the constraints and responsibilities of each stakeholder, and
the potential actions each one can carry out in the context of these components
Policy and decision makers should demonstrate flexibility on who should take the lead

Some of the concrete recommendations from the e-conference were:

Creation of a CSR board-that includes government, civil society, business and academia
at country or regional level
Tax incentives-for sharing the public service burden
Legislative incentives-requirements from corporations that would provide incentives and
benchmarks
Governments can serve as exemplary institutions though by using socially responsible
procurement and personnel recruitment practices
Transparency at all levels in each stakeholders practices

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E-Conference Participation
This was a truly global meeting of minds, with 495 e-conference participants from 74 countries
representing a broad range of stakeholder groups including CSR professionals, corporate
executives, academic researchers, educators, members of multilateral institutions and educational
civil society organizations, and students. The most active countries in this e-conference were
Brazil, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Columbia, Former Republic of Yugoslavia, the United Kingdom,
and the United States. The different regions were represented in the following way:

Africa: 80 participants from 13 countries

Eastern and Central Europe: 71 participants from 14 countries
Latin America and Caribbean: 31 participants from 11 countries
Middle East and North Africa: 7 participants from 4 countries
Australia and Oceania: 13 participants from 2 countries
North America: 107 participants from 2 countries
East Asia and Pacific: 85 participants from 12 countries
South Asia: 8 participants from 2 countries
Western Europe: 94 participants from 15 countries

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E-Conference Proceedings
To read the complete discussion, please visit:
http://vx.worldbank.org/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?visit=public-policy-csr

Week I. The range of roles that governments play in providing an "enabling

environment" for CSR

CSR covers a wide range of issues relating to business conduct, from corporate governance and
environmental protection, to issues of social inclusion, human rights and national economic
development. In the case of private sector investment in low and low-middle income countries,
the emphasis placed on each of these issues can vary, and sometimes differs from the priorities
of investors and businesses in more developed markets.

The role of the public sector in CSR is complex and is an emerging field. As the term “CSR” has
not yet taken hold in many public sector agencies, many of their interventions have not been
undertaken explicitly as CSR initiatives, but nevertheless could be seen as part of the agenda.
There is therefore a wealth of relevant experience among public sector agencies that is currently
being overlooked. The following table categorizes possible government interventions regarding
CSR.

Public Sector Roles

‘Command and control’ Regulators and Legal and fiscal

Mandating
legislation inspectorates penalties and rewards

‘Enabling’ legislation Creating incentives Capacity building

Facilitating
Funding support Raising awareness Stimulating markets

Stakeholder
Partnering Combining resources Dialogue
engagement

Endorsing Political support Publicity and praise

For market-driven CSR issues, such as directors’ pay, public sector agencies may elect to adopt a
laissez faire approach or facilitate voluntary codes. CSR issues for which the market drivers are
weak—where there is no clear business case—may suggest a stronger role for the public sector
to create incentives. This might include as regulatory reform or the negotiation of strategic
alliances with business or civil society, based on a sharing of the costs and risks.

In low and low-middle income countries, interest is increasing in the possible alignment of the
public good outcomes of CSR activities with public sector priorities. For example, developing
country governments are beginning to view CSR activities as a means to enhance sustainable
development strategies, as a component of their national competitiveness strategies to compete
for foreign direct investment and to position their exports globally, and to improve poverty-
focused delivery of public policy goals.

5
Moderator: Tom Fox, Research Associate, Corporate Responsibility for Environment and
Development Programme, International Institute for Environment and Development

Commentator: Susan Aaronson, Senior Fellow and Director of Globalization Studies, Kenan
Institute, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina

Background readings:
“Public Sector Roles in Strengthening Corporate Social Responsibility: A Baseline Study”, Tom
Fox, Halina Ward, Bruce Howard, International Institute for Environment and Development
(IIED), October 2002

“Developing Value: The Business Case for Sustainability in Emerging Markets”, SustainAbility,
the International Finance Corporation and Ethos Institute, 2002
“The Role of Government in Advancing Corporate Sustainability”, A Background Paper
prepared by David V. J. Bell, April 2002

“Third Generation Corporate Citizenship”, Simon Zadek, The Foreign Policy Centre and
AccountAbility, March 2001

“Public policy and voluntary initiatives: what roles have governments played?”, OECD Working
Paper on International Investment no. 2001/4, February 2001

“Government and Corporate Social Responsibility: An Overview of Selected Canadian,

European and International Practices”, Canadian Business for Social Responsibility, 2001

"Why A Role for Government?", National Policy Association

"CSR Public Policies", National Policy Association

"Comparing Approaches to CSR: What Is Best for Canada?" Anne Golden, The Conference
Board of Canada

Key Questions Asked of Participants:

1. How is the public sector relevant to the CSR debate?

2. What are the public sector drivers for strengthening CSR?
3. To what extent is the public sector already undertaking “pro-CSR” activities, without
realizing it? Does this matter?
4. What are the complementarities and the tensions between public sector interventions and
private sector engagement in CSR? How do you strike the balance?
5. Does civil society have a role to play in supporting an enabling environment for CSR? If
so, how can the government facilitate this?
6. What, if any, role does CSR play in strengthening national economic competitiveness?
How might national and local governments include CSR in the design of competitiveness
policies?
7. Is CSR also relevant for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), both as individual
competitors in the marketplace and as part of global supply chains? What happens to

6
 indigenous companies as CSR codes of conduct become more stringent? Whose
responsibility is it to ensure they are able to respond to these pressures/new
requirements?

Summary:
The first week, from July 7-11 2003, addressed "the range of roles that governments play in
providing an 'enabling environment' for CSR". There was relatively high participation in the
discussion, typically with around thirty submissions per day. Discussion remained at a fairly
conceptual level, but some participants referred to particular examples or experience. Some key
themes emerged, including some that were not given particular emphasis in the above questions -
most notably the role of education in enabling CSR. This perhaps reflects the participation of
many academics and teachers in the discussion. There follows a brief summary of the discussion
under key themes. This summary is not exhaustive and the moderator recommends readers to
refer also to the daily summaries and individual submissions where possible.

DEALING WITH COMPLEXITY: DEFINING CSR AND MEASURING PERFORMANCE

Many contributors stressed the complexity, breadth and depth of CSR in terms of topics, actors,
contradictions and dilemmas. Some warned against seeing the 'public sector' and 'enterprises' as
homogeneous categories, noting the need to recognize the distinctions between public sector
agencies at national, regional and global levels, and also between different types of enterprise,
from SMEs to multinational corporations. There was some
discussion whether particular topics should be regarded as part of the CSR agenda (e.g.
disability, HIV-Aids), and a suggestion that it would be useful to systematically map out the
diverse CSR 'territory' as best as possible. There was a call to participants to attempt to develop
a working typology of activities that could be used by researchers to measure CSR activities in
different countries. Many other participants expressed an interest in such collaboration, some
stressing that any framework needs to be flexible so as not to stifle innovation. It was suggested
that it could be based on Carroll's four main dimensions of CSR (economic, legal, ethical and
philanthropic) within a framework such as the balanced scorecard. Some contributors noted that
various CSR standards and measures already exist, and that it is necessary to recognize the
difference between management/process standards such as ISO14001 and performance-based
measures when measuring companies' activities.

THE NEED FOR LOCALLY SPECIFIC CSR

It was suggested that there should be more research on country-level conditions that shape the
role of business in society, to get away from the current emphasis on research that focuses on
OECD countries. It was stressed that CSR is viewed differently around the world, and this
depends on cultural and historical circumstances - which means that locally-specific and
culturally sensitive solutions are required. For example, in the EU
accession countries, discussions on CSR are linked to a redefinition of the boundaries between
public and private responsibilities, and defined by a low level of understanding of CSR,
particularly within local government. It was noted that approaches to CSR would depend on the
orientation of the government and on the level of business influence on policy. There was a call
for greater emphasis on defining and implementing CSR (for example, in corporate reporting) at
the local level rather than from the global level.
Various participants proposed context-specific national guidelines on CSR, against which
companies' CSR activities and performance could be compared. One contributor noted the
difficulty of achieving this, particularly given the difficulty of defining and measuring against

7
social indicators, but recognized that some companies are making efforts to measure and
implement CSR at the local level. It was noted that this is often where the dilemmas start, as
what appears to be a straightforward policy (e.g. no child labor) becomes more complex when
the local context needs to be taken into account.

DOES THE PUBLIC SECTOR HAVE A ROLE TO PLAY?

There was general agreement that the public sector does have a role to play, and it was suggested
that the type of CSR that emerges is shaped by the roles that the public sector plays. Some
participants noted that government has generally adopted CSR only in a reactive way, for
example in response to requirements in export markets, rather than with a more proactive stance.
Where there are questions of corporate accountability, it was suggested that public sector
engagement is particularly crucial. Many contributors argued
for partnerships and synergy between the public and private sectors, although it was stressed that
this would only work when public sector officials do not feel threatened that their roles are being
taken over by the private sector. In order to establish under what circumstances partnerships can
work, it was suggested that there is a need to define
carefully where immediate cooperation is possible, and where conflict of interest is inevitable.

WHAT ROLES SHOULD THE PUBLIC SECTOR PLAY? Many submissions suggested that
where companies do not appear ready to engage with CSR, government needs to take a lead.
Suggestions included: ·Ensuring effective governance and a business environment that
encourages CSR. This means that the government needs to provide a functioning legal and
regulatory structure, and effective delivery mechanisms for public services.

Setting up a special 'board' or agency with a remit of encouraging CSR and monitoring
the CSR activities of both the public and private sectors, and to ensure that CSR is not
'tokenistic'.
Clarifying expectations of business with regard to CSR, and developing ways of
measuring their responses to these expectations.
Leading by example, e.g. through procurement and raising investors' awareness
Eliminating bribery and corruption and encouraging transparency in relations between
government and business, particularly related to payments made in return for access to
natural resources such as oil and minerals. Promoting transparency at local government
level, and tackling the corporate lobbying of government.
Providing tax benefits and other mechanisms so CSR is seen by companies as a benefit
rather than a cost. For example, this could include tax exemptions for companies that
build social capital by working with local communities as part of their core business.
Creating a vision and strategy for CSR, and allowing businesses to work with the
government towards that strategy.
Focusing particularly on the gaps in the current CSR agenda – particularly how to work
with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and how CSR can be made to work in
countries with poor information and a lack of capital.
Applying the Local Agenda 21 process to involve local companies in implementing CSR.

ADDRESSING A LACK OF PUBLIC SECTOR CAPACITY

Many contributions stressed that not all governments have the capacity to engage with CSR, or
even to establish a functioning legal and regulatory structure, particularly in developing
countries. This means that the desired partnership approach may just not be possible. Where this

8
is the case, some contributions suggested that business has a role to play in supporting the public
sector. In order to allow this, government needs to set clear public policy objectives, then
encourage CSR activities by businesses that contribute to those objectives. But first, there is a
need to define what is socially responsible, now and in the future. One contributor warned that
only the public sector has the necessary overview and understanding of social objectives to be
able to shape CSR, and that governments should not give legal authority to non-elected private
groups to establish their own standards of CSR. It was noted that both the public and the private
sector sometimes fail to implement their policies and statements related to CSR, and that what is
needed is political will.

BUSINESS DECISIONS, INCENTIVES AND DRIVERS

Some participants suggested that expecting company managers to maximize shareholder value as
well as aiming for 'vague' social and environmental objectives (as opposed to adhering to clear
regulations and laws) makes them unaccountable for their actions, and potentially allows them
simply to act in their own self-interest. There was some discussion whether shareholder value
and social and environmental goals are in line with each other - whether there is a "business
case" for CSR. One participant described a commonly held view among business leaders, that
adhering to social and environmental standards will harm their competitive position. Another
doubted whether there is necessarily a causal link between environmental/social performance
and financial performance, and called for an open acceptance that in some cases there will be
'win-win', but also 'win-lose' situations - at least in the short run. It was suggested that in the long
run, the public will "endow a host of goodwill on the firms that have CSR in their agenda", and
one participant pointed to research that suggests that there is a positive relationship between CSR
and financial performance, based on US and European data.

A common thread throughout the discussion was the need for the public sector to create the right
incentives for responsible action by enterprises. One contributor warned that it is difficult to
convince businesses to take part in project-based partnerships, and observed that they will only
do so if it is in their financial self-interest. Another suggested that the role of the public sector
should be "to provide incentives that encourage the focus to be on long-term sustainability not
short term profit gains". Where there is no 'business case' for CSR (i.e. adopting CSR would
make an enterprise less competitive) then a variety of incentives could be created to make CSR
in its financial interest. Such incentives may be created by government (e.g. through subsidies,
tax rebates or penalties) or civil society pressure. It was also suggested that CSR should be
linked to corporate risk management.

DRIVING CHANGE AND SHIFTING THE BUSINESS MINDSET

It was suggested that the adoption and mainstreaming of CSR may follow the experience of
Quality Management, which was met with skepticism at first but gained broader acceptance as it
was increasingly recognized as an essential part of running a prosperous business. One
participant highlighted the difficulty of establishing partnerships given entrenched assumptions
that companies hold with regard to governments, and vice versa, and the need to work for a
"mindset shift" to allow successful partnerships and dialogues.

There was a warning of the danger of CSR being used simply as a tool for brand promotion, and
a call for a more fundamental paradigm shift towards 'spiritually guided business', from which
CSR would follow. Both government and civil society may need to be involved in bringing a
change from the current business mindset - perhaps using the concept of CSR itself as a basis. It

9
was suggested that change needs to be context-specific and driven at grassroots level, and that
top-down attempts to introduce CSR will not
work.

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION, INFORMATION AND SHARING EXPERIENCE

Various contributors stressed the importance of CSR-related education, noting that it could build
capacity, promote interaction between different actors, demand good governance and track
public sector performance, and take into account local culture and identities. Many participants
argued that CSR, business and public ethics should be a central element in the academic agenda,
both for MBAs and in other disciplines. Others emphasized the need to think beyond the formal
tertiary education sector, starting CSR-related education well before university level, and
continuing to educate business leaders beyond formal education. There was a call for educators
to be flexible and open-minded, and to involve the private sector in education on CSR.

Other types of information sharing were also identified as important. One participant suggested
that public sector agencies could usefully initiate learning and exchange of good practice
between diverse communities and locations. It was suggested that technology and
telecommunications could promote transparency, both in terms of public sector policies and
activities, and by internationalizing the 'peer pressure' that encourages
enterprises to act responsibly.

THE ROLE OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS AND MULTILATERAL INSTITUTIONS

It was suggested that foreign governments and multilateral institutions should link their support
to CSR by only investing in projects that involve companies that are practicing CSR. This would
force governments to establish mechanisms to encourage the private sector to implement CSR.
Foreign governments could bring CSR into their aid and trade policies, and support developing
country governments to improve governance, to enable them to establish a 'social compact'. One
participant suggested that where there is limited enforcement of legislation, it is important for
multilateral institutions to act as external checks or monitors of both member states and
multinational companies.

THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY

Many submissions related to the role of civil society in supporting an enabling environment for
CSR, and how the public sector could facilitate this. Generally, it was agreed that civil society
organizations have a strong role to play. One participant described how segments of civil society
(including media, NGOs, academics and the church) can engage with CSR, and called on each of
these groups to 'walk the talk' by demonstrating their own social responsibility and
accountability. Civil society organizations may be able to act as a 'bridge' between companies
and government and who can 'translate' the terminology of social development into language that
business can understand; they can also provide information on enterprises' activities to the
public.

It was argued that effective civil society needs the support of the public sector and good
governance. Government may be able to coordinate partnerships between businesses and
appropriate civil society organizations. However, it was also suggested that there is a special
need for civil society action in countries with governance failures or where public sector capacity
is weak - for example, to act as a mediator between government, citizens and companies. Civil
society itself may be able to support government capacity to deal with CSR where this is lacking.

10
CSR AND NATIONAL ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS
One contributor suggested that a key driver for strengthening CSR is to attract 'quality' foreign
investment, and that CSR can provide an attractive marketing flavor at national level. Another
agreed that responsible business activity creates a better environment for doing business and
promoting social development, which is conducive to medium- and long-term investment.
However, others disputed that CSR could help developing countries in terms of competitiveness,
given that their competitive advantage at present is primarily based on low costs. One participant
described a commonly held view among business leaders, that enterprises operating in
developing countries should not be expected to adhere to social and environmental standards that
developed countries did not follow at earlier stages of their development.

SMEs AND INDIGENOUS ENTERPRISES

It was suggested that SMEs should be held as accountable as larger enterprises with regard to
their operational activities, but that engaging SMEs in CSR is a challenge, particularly in
developing countries. The following approaches were suggested:

Creating incentives for SMEs to adopt CSR, perhaps through fiscal incentives or as part
of Poverty Reduction Strategies as promoted by multilateral institutions.
Public funding for partnerships and 'learning networks' between SMEs in the North and
South.
Partnerships between SMEs and larger companies.
Public promotion and subsidy for the adoption of CSR standards such as SA8000.
Linking CSR to public procurement from SMEs.

MESSAGES FROM CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

The idea that governments should establish policies that support, facilitate,
or enable corporate social establish in any way is undemocratic and counter
to the principals of good government. I have no objection to consumers
deciding not to buy products of a certain company because they do not approve
of the company's operations for whatever reason. Similar I have no objection
to investors refusing to buy the stock of a company for whatever reason. What
I strongly object to is the government giving legal authority in any form to
private groups to establish and enforce their standards of corporate
responsibility. The private groups that have created these standards have not
been elected by the public and should have no legal authority or help from
the government to enforce these standards. If democratic governments
following the wishes of the public determine that private companies should
behave in certain ways, these governments can enact the necessary laws that
regulate the behavior of private firms. This is done all the time, for
example, laws that set minimum wages, establish safe working conditions,
protect the environment and so forth. It is the proper role of a democratic
government elected by the people to establish standards of conduct for all
citizens and companies. Governments have no right to give unelected private
groups the legal authority in any form to set and enforce standards of
behavior for either individuals or companies. Robert, USA

I believe that in addition to peer pressure we need role models, too. An

example from my country is our First Lady who is leading a partnership

11
project (btw public sector and NGOs) in upgrading educational level of
society.

I agree with the views on hardships confronted in coordinating such

partnerships, however, best way to resolve them is to analyze reasons
for partnerships. Public sector officials need to be convinced that
the aim of partnerships are not mainly to replace what they alone
are providing. Given the threat they feel due to privatization
programs, this is crucial. Additionally, the reasons for partnership
may be various. It may be to complement a service provided by public
organizations, or it may be to diversify a service provided. In case
partners understand this, they may be more positive in running
partnership projects. Semra, Turkey

I see CSR as a term that is not far from the lips of Chief Executive Officers
to the extent that whenever Vision/Mission statements are written the term
CSR is always an integral part of such statements; but the funny thing is
that they don't simply lift these statement off the wall for implementation.

However, setting the minimum standard for Corporate Social Responsibility is

one dynamics that shouldn't be left in the doorsteps of the government
because in third world countries, governments don't always live up to the
expectations of the electorates or the subjects (in the case of military
rule). According to the maxim "Nemo dat Quod non abeit" meaning you can not
give what you don't have. The contemporary third world government need to put
in place a working infrastructure that will engender business activities. It
is after then that the corporate world could be called upon to give back to
the community that provided good business environment. Bolaji, Nigeria

it seems to me that the idea of a single entity owning CSR, be it state or

business or something else, will not be effective and therefore will not
work. It would be better to allow equal responsibility for CSR initiative to
any entity willing to partake and that we all should
allow the natural emergence of this phenomenon, after which we can reach
consensus (not negotiate). The message to go out therefore should be that
anybody or any structure will be allowed and welcome to participate in CSR at
any time.

However, the above paragraph assumes a single level of CSR. It is my

perception that the fidelity of CSR should be structured to allow different
levels of "attachment" if you like. This essentially relates to the fidelity
of CSR in the sense that should one consider the possible government roles
posed by Tom Fox it is not difficult to see that not all governments van
actually govern to that fidelity.

As far as implementing CSR in developing countries, I would like to suggest

that in the light of recent World Bank studies, one should start with the
most important aspect first and then do the next important aspect. This
refers to the primary objective of implementing an effective government
delivery system. Because one might say that if no delivery exists, then no
CSR is needed. This will ensure compatibility with investors and multi-
nationals and it will set the scene for local industrial participation, be it
business, labor or civil society including churches (religious groupings).
This will allow the comparison of governments (which is seen as big
businesses) e.g. South Africa's value for the tax dollar is 30% and New
Zealand's value for the tax dollar is 70%. Johan, South Africa

12
The Kenyan national government needs some serious support to provide the
environment that encourages businesses to meet some basic minimum standards,
let alone all singing all dancing CSR. Not only that, but
big businesses are sometimes actually the ones providing the examples,
financing and support to help the government to start to function properly!
Its not about how government can help to enable CSR, but more
about how business can help GSR (government social responsibility!).

First, in terms of a developing country government providing an enabling

environment (as in Kenya) there has to be a focus on clear, workable laws
that can be enforced and that companies are encouraged to adhere to. In Kenya
there is little or no incentive to pay the minimum wage or to adhere to
pollution laws because either the regulators are non existent (i.e.
environmental inspectors), the law is so complicated
and out of date (i.e. minimum wage) or there are few examples of successful
prosecutions within Kenya of businesses breaking the law. So the first role
of the government in a developing country situation has got to be about
providing a functioning legal and regulatory structure.

Second, there is that old debate as to the role of the state, society, and
capital…. who does what in a functioning and fair society? Ideologically I
guess it depends if you are a capitalist, a communist, a communitarian, a
liberal etc… But practically this is an important question in terms of what
CSR actually covers in developing countries. In Western countries where there
is free education, free (or relatively
free) health care and some form of social security there is less of a
question and business can get on with CSR activities over and above basic
human needs. But in Kenya companies are taking an active interest in health
care because 30% of Kenyans have HIV/AIDS. Companies are providing awareness
campaigns, condom distribution, counseling, medical care even anti-
retrovirals to workers. Is this CSR? - or is such investment misplaced
because such companies should instead be investing in government in order to
enable government to be able to create a good health care system for its
people?

Therefore the second role of the government has got to be about mapping out
the level of its ambition in terms of educational, health care, job creation
and social security provision (development) and working as a
partner with business to deliver those aims.

The third point, is that it is actually part of CSR that companies actively
engage themselves in developing a fair and functioning government in the
counties within they operate. Multinationals publicly say that they take a
hands off approach to government, that is ‘political’, that is for the
government to decide, that it is not for companies to get involved in the
functioning of the state…. But the very fact that companies operate in
developing countries means that
they are already involved, companies pay taxes, apply for concessions, employ
people etc Companies need to get involved especially where there are huge
revenues being generated as is the case with oil production.
Some sort of governance package needs to go with such huge revenues because
it has been shown (especially in Africa) that this wealth generated by
business can easily lead to corruption and conflict . At the very least there
should be transparency that shows how much money flows from oil companies to
host governments the "Publish What You Pay" campaign and disclose all net
taxes, fees, royalties and other payments. Laura, UK

13
As an anthropologist looking into this phenomenon called CSR, the term
"culture shift" holds promise. But what exactly do we mean by "culture
shift". Both public sector as represented by the government and private
sector as represented by business capital in themselves are nebulous
terms. These entities are not monolithic structures nor their function
mutually exclusive. Firstly, if we are to include centrally planned
economies, the term public sector will be even more fuzzy as the state
itself is engaged in activities that are normally undertaken by free
enterprise economy. The important question therefore are: which part of
the public sector needs to undergo "culture shift" and in which direction
should the shift go. Is the current trend of globalization, free trade,
deregulation and privatization the kind of culture shift that one envisions
to promote or support CSR? Is the promotion of greater transparency and
accountability as part of governance enough to encourage the business
community to adopt CSR?

I agree that participation of both the public and private sector is

important. However, there is a need to define the areas where immediate
cooperation is possible or where conflict of interest is inevitable. One of
the areas where competition and conflict is likely to occur is in the areas
of natural resource management. For instance in forestry and mining, the
conflicting claims of various stakeholders have resulted in tension between
the Indigenous People who has different concept of resource management and
the modern and capitalist oriented stakeholders whose view of natural
resources is different. In
most case, the government is ambivalent, in some of its policies. On one
hand, they seek to protect the rights of the Indigenous People and on the
other hand providing policies that permits exploitation of said resources to
the detriment of the Indigenous Peoples. Ruben, Asian Development Bank

It has been a trend that corporate citizenship has been the life of
multinationals, so also with corporate social responsibility. Detached from
local communities the multinationals have been running the game with a "busy-
ness" for own profit - within a short-term perspective.

Now we see that multinationals role as exploiters of local resource - man and
land - has reached to a level of madness. The fact that long-term
perspectives of development and the duty to create value and to nourish life
- are the imperatives for survival and to contribute for a better future.

The global challenges are of such a kind that the partnership between
private and public sector is indeed needed. The new trend of CSR has emerged
from the grassroots of "nature activists" -> multinationals -> influencing
governments-> setting the standards and supporting structures for SMEs
operating on a very local market. CSP can be defined as a growth point in any
society, where we have seen that innovative companies have learned that to
save energy or waste management is not only an environmental action – but
good business - circular economies demands new measurements for economical
performance and we need renewal to measure this.

Sustainable policies and legislations comes more and more into praxis, and
many companies not understanding these new imperatives might in fact not have
a market in the future. The dynamic of inner will to be a sustainable
enterprise is a key to the future markets. Looking at the trend of the
sustainable Dow Jones index is maybe setting the scene for the future more
than governmental policies. The international financial market might adjust

14
to the reality faster than governments? The triple bottom lines of measuring
profit, social and environmental performance are entering into more and more
leaders mind-set, for sure closer to common sense now than before, however
impossible to opera without interaction with the local community...and the
global! Look at what
has happened to Coca and also Nike sweatshop labor. In such cases, poor CSR
performance poses a risk to reputation and brand. So how can local public
institutions welcome this kind of interaction?

Today we need to set focus on micro and SMEs anywhere in the world to take
part in this new trends, and to increase the partnership across different
economical zones of the world and within mega-cities/regions. How can public
institutions and the World Bank support the eco - or sustainable innovations
in enterprises operating in a less information rich societies with less
capital to adjust to a more sustain future? What are the incentives to offer
and how will you do the campaign to address this on a broader scale than
today? Stenseth, Norway

I would suggest three roles that the public sector can play, enforcer,
facilitator and leader by example.

I am quite skeptic about the enforcing role, in my opinion laws and

regulations will only drive businesses and public sector further away from
each other. Considering the complexity and scale of problems related to CSR
(i.e. environmental problems & social divides) cooperation between these two
sectors is vital, as was illustrated in other postings. I like the comparison
between CSR and quality management. QM is not enforced by law, but an
enormous amount of corporations has realized that to stay in business and to
prosper they need to produce top quality. Like CSR QM was at first met with
great negativity. After a while it became more interesting but still only
relevant for the quality department. By now successful companies have
realized that quality is relevant throughout the entire organization. I
suspect (hope) CSR will evolve much in the same fashion (a bit faster would
be nice, but change unfortunately takes time to be effective)

The facilitating role seems very promising. In the Netherlands (my

home country) the government is creating a center of expertise to support
businesses and NGO's alike. Also the thought that Stenseth offered seems to
fit into this role, transferring best practices from one nation to another
and involving students. In my opinion education is a crucial factor in
creating a CSR-minded culture. If we really want to change the way global and
local corporations go about their business we should start by educating the
managers of the (near) future. A great quote from a Dutch organization (DHO)
is:
If you are thinking one year ahead sow a seed,
If you are thinking 10 years ahead plant a tree,
If you are thinking 100 years ahead, educate people.
Jeroen, The Netherlands

You cannot enforce CSR by rule, but you can use ‘peer pressure’. I am sure
those companies that you have ‘named’ will be shamed. Thanks to the internet,
we can find out what is doing in other countries, and this will enforce
companies to be more honest!! Janet, Poland

15
What I have found to be interesting in my discussions with other
colleagues in the CSR field and business participation in Africa,
especially with reference business influence on national policy issues in
South Africa and the rest of the continent is different. This will
probably assist in terms of understanding how partnerships and policies on
CSR between corporates and government could be forged.

In the African context, it should be noted that governments still wield a lot
of power (political), which creates uncertainty for investments and
subsequent lack of corporate influence on policy. However, when one looks at
South Africa comparatively with other African states, it would be noted that
businesses have had influence on government for quite sometime. On that note,
I would like to highlight that in most parts of Africa it would be very
critical that there is government and public participation on CSR policies,
of which local and international businesses in that country should be part
of. Nkosithabile, South Africa

Even though Colombia faces an internal threat by the illegal armed

groups such as FRAC, ELN or paramilitary, which are mostly financially
fed by drug traffic; and considering that a huge part of the national
budget, which include a recent tax imposed to private sector, is
destined to finance the national army in order to control this terrorist
groups, government has not yet realized that part of the solution for this
problem could be driven out with the consolidation of CSR by the private
sector.

There is an important company that produces vegetal oil, which is located in

the middle of the Colombian territory, zone in which also confluence the
above mentioned groups. During many years this area was no ones land, and the
industry was going bankrupt. That company, wisely observed that they could be
part of the solution and started a intense work with the community, providing
them the opportunity to have an active participation on the production,
making them co-owners and giving to their families attention to their basic
needs. As a result of such approach, that zone is now a peace territory and
illegal armed groups were expelled definitely by the community.

With this example I just wanted to drive your attention about how CSR
can promote peaceful living in zones where government has never being
present. A big driver for Colombian government to promote CSR is the
construction of peace. Government should give tax exemptions to those
companies that build social capital, companies that invest in the
community. That will induce a direct impact on the accounting balance.

As a middle developed country Colombia still needs to reinforce the role that
private sector can play in promoting development and in that sense foreign
governments and multilateral institutions should invest in projects that have
a strong participation of private sector complying with CSR. The projects
must have a permanent joint work between public institutions and private
sector companies. If Multilateral institutions condition their support to
the application of CSR, governments will be forced to establish the necessary
mechanisms that will induce private sector to implement CSR. Harvey,
Columbia

I'd like to reply to Janet's question as to what governments can do to

16
Create this enabling environment. Tom Fox's paper (the required reading for
this week) has a model for the types of activities gov't can take. While at a
Washington think tank, my colleague James Reeves and I did a study of what
the Canadian, EU, British, and US governments have been doing. They have
strikingly different approaches. I think governments must first define what
global CSR means. There must be a shared notion of "ethical behavior." The
second step is to link CSR enabling strategies to policies (in foreign aid,
trade, at the ILO and World Bank etc....that promote both the rule of law and
adherence to international standards. THIS IS KEY. Finally, governments
should try a
wide variety of strategies: such as using transparency/disclosure to
encourage CSR reporting and help move markets; developing incentives or
preferences; utilizing procurement policies; or convening multi-stakeholder
dialogues. But to repeat the most important thing governments can do is to
help developing countries put in place a "social compact" This takes money--
the government must offer resources to improve governance systems worldwide.
Susan, USA

Although CSR as part of a corporate strategy might provide competitive

advantage to SMEs, do they want to? CSR makes financial sense to a
multinational corporation whose stock value can be greatly affected by a bad
reputation of social and environmental injustice. But SMEs that are in a
country that does not have a strong social and environmental public policy
may not feel the need to do comply with CSR unless it is proved in beneficial
in financial terms. Should CSR be promoted then through tax break incentives
like Mr. Harvey Rodriguez suggested; or should it be promoted in public
policy as part of private sector development strategies for poverty
alleviation designed by the public sector in aid of other international
institutions like the World Bank? Rina, Canada

Unfortunately, particularly in third world countries, the popular yearnings

of the people is exactly the opposite action plan of governments. Now that
this is established, it behooves on the civil society to regulate in the most
peaceful manner (unlike what obtains in Nigeria where Natives of crude oil
regions abduct, kill or foment violent troubles) the expected level of
responsibilities of companies in terms of CSR.

Unfortunately however, it is rather difficult to reach a consensus on the

modus operandi of achieving this (simply because of the level of literacy and
poverty in the third world countries). A giant stride towards the right
direction is effective orientation and awareness on the part of everybody;
after which all other variables will fit into place. Bolaji, Nigeria

The initiative of the World Bank in promoting CSR could become one of the
most important contribution in the development of our countries.
I am from Venezuela and I recently moved to Mexico where I live at the
present time. The example of the benefits of CSR given by Harvey Rodriguez
from Colombia, is very real. Benefits of CSR are not only for society as a
whole, but also for the companies, even if they still do not see any direct
on their accounting balance. There is the key, to make companies understand
that they should follow CSR for their own good, because in addition to being
a responsibility, it is also the most profitable proven approach. In
Venezuela, the lack of CSR is one of the conditions that contributed to a
huge social resentment that has forced thousands of companies to close, with

17
all of the social negative implications that in involves, such as the
increasing levels of poverty, criminality, unemployment, exodus of
professionals, etc...Of course governments have to be involved in CSR
programs, but companies have to follow these programs not because they are
told so, they should focus on CSR as an important element of their
profitability. If Venezuelan companies had performed their CSR, our country
would not be in such a bad shape, as it is now. Unfortunately, social
resentment can be sometimes manipulated with obscure political purposes.
I agree with Jeroen Hoff regarding the comparison between CSR and quality
management. "QM is not enforced by law, but an enormous amount of
corporations has realized that to stay in business and to prosper they need
to produce top quality." And they really need to perform within frames of CSR
to be successful. I think that the observation of Janet Bohdanowicz about the
participation of "free associations of people of good will (NGO Sector)" is
very important. My perception is that a good way to promote an interaction
between the actors of CSR is through education. Education in the formation of
new professional with a view in CSR, and education to train organizations in
this important field of knowledge. More than promoting CSR as a law, it
should be promoted as a philosophy of making business more successful and at
the same time of building a more ideal society. Jose, Venezuela-Mexico

I want to inform that government should firstly understand that by the way of
CSR its duties are implementing by NGO and others. Only after that it should
take laws and other regulatory rules to encourage locals to CSR. But, when
government in Azerbaijan released taxes from companies which supported and
provide finances to NGO's in order to
provide such activities like CSR. Many companies starting to use that event
like escaping from tax payments. May be that is very funny but it’s a
reality. And at the end of that government changed laws in order to prevent
tax escapings.

That is why I suggested special board. That board must have juridical
background. Depending on it that board may monitor and regulate
implementations of government and companies. I think that it would be better
to create board which mostly will become from local authorities. Authorities
who will elect only once for one or two year. And that board also may include
some foreign country representatives, who will monitor that process. May be
that is difficult. But, if we want to make it work we have to spend efforts
for it. Only after that board will prepare rules and then control their
implementation. But that board will not have right to take or accept laws and
rules. All that rules must be taken only by legislation organs of government.
But, one of most important aspect is not accepting laws, but making them
work. That is why we all need that board.

Related the scope. I think that we must spent time and money to educate
locals to the CSR. Education or explanation of CSR must cover some aspects or
consider local identity. I mean, the programs which will consider social,
cultural sides of local people will be much more successful than others. And
of course after education it will take time for nation to accept some new
things and adopt this innovations in their life style. May be that event will
be adopted with some changes, but at least it will adopt. I think there may
arise different ways of implementing or creating of that kind of board in
different countries. Karim, Azerbaijan

In Canada, there are several Indigenous SMEs who were partly aided by the
Federal Government (development aid), that have assisted other SMEs in

18
developing countries in Central and South America. The question is were these
SMEs practicing social responsibility? In Canada we have several laws,
federally, provincially and locally that business must adhere to in order to
keep their business license, these laws are related to work safety, labor
codes, environment, and human rights, should a business abuse these codes and
it has been reported, the business is investigated and could be dissolved.
However, many reports never happen and if they do, there are times that the
business gets away with the abuse due to an improper investigation into the
matter. I have seen businesses get away with many abuses not only in SMEs but
also NGOs. This is not limited to Indigenous organizations but also Non-
Indigenous. Which brings rise to another question were the Indigenous SMEs
that went to assist Indigenous SMEs in Central and South America practicing
good socially responsibility? The only reports I have seen of these
Indigenous SMEs have been done by the Federal government who have assisted
financial (or aided) however some have not been reported and it is often
difficult to find the information because no report has been done or the
SME's are still in process of making the partnership a reality. However an
assumption could be made yes, as we would think that the Federal government
closely monitors funds that it provides to assist in such projects thus try
to ensure the SMEs are abiding the laws/codes. However, due to the complexity
of dealing with not only the Federal government in order to have a business,
there are also provincial and local laws that are not federal jurisdiction.
Thus not guaranteeing if the SME is being a good corporate socially
responsible citizen.

Therefore in regards to looking at Canada's Indigenous SME's that are helping

SMEs in Central and South America with CSR efforts, it must be a multi-
lateral partnership approach, there must be some sort of accountability to
ensure SMEs here have the resources to be good social responsible corporate
citizens and that they have capacity to assist SMEs in the South. In
addition, the SMEs in the South must also have a multi-lateral approach, but
their system is much, much different than Canada and that must be respected.
So the next question would be how did the exchange take place between the
Indigenous SMEs in the North and South? Case studies would assist in looking
at the exchanges more closely. Anita, Canada

CSR is a factor of competitiveness with out a doubt. Businessmen were

citizens before they started doing business, so they have a
responsibility as part of a society they belong to. As long as companies have
responsible business practices, they will be enhancing a much better
environment for doing business and promoting social development. By that,
economic and social indexes are transformed and generate much more confidence
that in the mid and long term promote productive investment (local and
foreign).

Under this framework, government will have also the responsibility to

generate public policies on education in order to make CSR, business and
public ethics a central element in the academic agenda. Amartya Sen expresses
very clearly that as long as the society as a hole is able of developing is
capabilities completely, it will be possible a much equitative distribution
of wealth and a much better quality of life. Inducing CSR is a form of
promoting the construction of capabilities among the weakest communities. If
private sector promotes the construction of social capital, society as a hole
will have blast
off that will make it very dynamic and attractive to other societies.
Harvey, Columbia

19
The composition of the civil society can include the media, NGOs, academe and
the church among others. I think each one as a corporate entity should also
develop their own CSR practice to be able to influence others to adopt CSR.
"In other words walk the talk". So one of the important challenge is
developing a yardstick that can gauge how an aspects of CSR are implemented.
One example could be ISO 14001 and the OHSAS 18001.

The Western mining experience here in the Philippines would illustrate how
the different stakeholders through the use of media sought to influence
public opinion. I have met the WMC PR executive and more o less have some
ideas on how they go about their community relations, public relations
activities. Thus one important driver is the media. This may include, the
tri-media (print, radio and television broadcast), internet and lately here
in the Philippines telecommunication via the short messaging service (also
known as text message or SMS). The media industry in itself have their own
brand of CSR. Everybody is committed to service and also the truth. Very
critical assessment of the use of media space may yield interesting insight
on the politics of media enterprise. One only needs to look into the
advertisement and the kinds of programs and the editorial
policy of their news and current affairs programs.

Another interesting phenomenon is the NGOs or the Non Government

Organizations. NGOs comes in all sizes and shapes. They are sometimes
called PVO or Private Voluntary Organizations, Non-government Development
Organizations, Social Development Institutions. NGOs can be a membership
organization or a group of professionals doing public contracting work. NGOs
can be organized by the business community to serve as their social
development arm as in the case of PBSP in the Philippines
(http://www.pbsp.org.ph). Given the highly heterogeneous character of NGOs,
they can perform a variety of function. Which includes: advocate, critic or
watchdog, collaborating agency, In the WMC experience, the NGOs played the
role of critic and watchdog. Using the code of conduct of the corporation,
the NGOs have raised ethical issues and concerns on the activities of the
local subsidiary (WMC Philippines) with reference to the corporation's
pronouncement and their code of conduct statement. The local NGO networked
with their Australian counterpart, arranged fact finding missions and
dialogue and disseminated information about the said investigation. However,
as a corporate entity by itself, NGOs (registered with the Securities and
Exchange Commission as nonprofit and non-stock organization) needs to develop
their own CSR. In the Philippines a group of NGO has adopted a code of
ethnics. The issues of transparency and accountability is also being raised
within the NGO community.

The Academe is still another important driver. There are three important
function that are normally associated with academic institutions, teaching,
research and extension. In the WMC experience, David Hyndman, Australian
anthropologist and also some of the Filipino anthropologist did their share
of research on the controversy. Their expert's opinion was useful in
clarifying the issues. However, these functions are not value free nor are
divorced from partisan interest. One only needs to look into the researches
on palm oil and cholesterol and how it relates to lobby against coco oil
imports/exports (there are opposing findings and conclusions). Thus issues on
ethics and morality are also raised. Academics can not use academic freedom
as a shield for their accountability. As a corporate entity that provides
services (degree, consultancy, etc) Academic institution also needs to
develop their own CSR or its equivalent.

20
The Church can be very influential in creating the environment for CSR. In
the WMC experience, the Uniting Church in partnership with the local
church conducted their own fact-finding mission and dialogue and
disseminated their own findings. Again as a corporate entity, the academe
also has their own brand of CSR and will need to develop their own CSR
especially the private colleges and universities. Church and religious
institutions can also have very strong opinion on sin products (alcohol
products and cigarettes) as well as birth control preparations and devices.
Thus, they can influence the market. The church as a corporate entity also
has their own practice of CSR. One needs to examine the back end, as an
organization, they also generate income, acquire and manage assets. They
charge fees/donations/voluntary donations (or whatever name they call it) for
their services. They run schools and radio stations. They support charities
and foundations. Some of the old religious denominations here in the
Philippines have considerable land holding. Assuming that they don't
accumulate income from their business operation and their operation is funded
mainly by the donations, then they should also be accountable to the people
giving the donation. What do you think?

Each one of us has a role to play in creating the socio-cultural, political

and economic environment which in turn defines the policy environment for CSR
to prosper. One need only to recognize the specific role of each stakeholders
and how they relate to CSR.

I want to underline the fact that components of corporate strategy are very
different in developing countries. I think that the role and the importance
of the private sector, government, civil society is different at the
financial level, cultural level, educational level and legal level.

In Romania, for example, now is very difficult to understand and to promote

different CSR standards a high level, because we have difficulties concerning
the norms and values, laws and regulations, quality of life. Moreover, is
necessary to establish an educational program and promote the CSR standards
through the complex organizations, because the knowledge is one of the most
important and valuable keys to reducing poverty. The rules are make by
strong for the follow-up the weakness (the rules are made by the strongs to
be followed by the weaks). In conclusion, in developing countries is
generating an economic and legal chaos.

For promoting CSR strategy is necessary to establish international rules:

first the support for civil society and second the support for private
companies. The civil society must to understand the CSR that (as) an ethics
and moral obligation and not that a legal one. The public sector must to be
present in the activities of civil society like a partner and like a public
service provider. The civil society must effectively decide where they want
to go and for that need the support of public sector and a good governance
for maximize the impact of their activities and for enhance the reputations
of companies, products and values in local community. Adriana, Romania

Pf. Michael Jensen, in his paper published in Journal of Applied Corporate

Finance (Fall 2001),said that "...Stakeholder theory, argues that managers
should make decisions so as to take account of the interests of all
stakeholders in a firm (including not only financial claimants, but also
employees, customers, communities, governmental officials, and under some
interpretations the environment, terrorists, and blackmailers). Because the
advocates of stakeholder theory refuse to specify how to make the necessary

21
tradeoffs among these competing interests they leave managers with a theory
that makes it impossible for them to make purposeful decisions. With no way
to keep score, stakeholder theory makes managers unaccountable for their
actions. It seems clear that such a theory can be attractive to the self-
interest of managers and directors."

Therefore, if pf. Michael Jensen was right, I have two questions:

(1) corporate managers really can't make the necessary tradeoffs between
economic and social benefits?
(2) it is easier for corporate managers to be self-interest when they have
multiple goals?

Secondly, as to the role the government should play, pf. Michael Jensen said:
"... resolving externality and monopoly problems is the legitimate domain of
the government in its rule-setting function. Those who care about resolving
monopoly and externality issues will not succeed if they look to corporations
to resolve these issues voluntarily. Companies that try to do so either will
be eliminated by competitors who choose not to be so civic minded..."

Therefore, under conditions that government cannot resolve all externality

(such as pollution...) and monopoly power (so consumers will be harmed)
problems, when a firm operates, it is still likely to generate externality
and monopoly power, and thus CSR is important for the whole society. But if
corporations caring more about CSR are less competitive than those caring no
CSR, corporations will not care about CSR "voluntarily", as Jensen suggested.
So I think government should have to create proper environment such that
corporations will be "forced" to care about CSR, by way of some subsidies or
penalty to corporations.

Furthermore, I think government cannot do the work perfectly, since

corporations are forced, not voluntary or altruistic to care about CSR.
Therefore, the pressure from the third sector (NPOs, NGOs...) is an another
way to force corporations to care about CSR. Thirdly, we have to let our
society know more about how CSR is important and beneficial to our society,
such that corporations will find CSR is strategic and corporations caring
more about CSR will have more financial performance also. Fourth, MBA
programs should contain more courses such as CSR, corporate ethics..., and
government should support these programs. Hsiang-Lin Chih, Taiwan

....Given the definitional problems of CSR about what exactly is the concept
and practice of CSR in its various forms and types and manifestations and
components and facets (e.g. social, environmental, community, political) etc.
and do all of CSR's various stakeholders understand all of these in the same
way?) ( and believe the answer to this is no)....and given the measurement
problems of CSR regarding how do we (whoever "we" as interested parties
actually might be with variable degrees of interest or commitment) measure,
assess or benchmark the current and the future levels of CSR and the progress
being made towards either more and more, or better and better CSR over time,
either quantitatively or qualitatively, and as this is achieved either at
enterprise levels, or sectoral levels, or at national levels or perhaps at
supply chains levels or globally or "in the market"... (and we do not really
have a way of measuring this either)
.....and given the "promotional" problems of CSR (who actually "owns it"
(what are its proactive or reactive stakeholders (enterprises, the general
public, consumers, voters, etc. etc.) and its various actors in various
places (including national governments, civil societies and the private
sector and businesses and within each of these broader societal sectors the

22
various actors) (e.g. national. legislatures or executive branches of
government or for instance academia, the media, enterprises, business
associations, trade unions, investment funds etc. etc.) and how these can
promote CSR ...through different approaches, methods etc. i.e. the
voluntaristic and mainly ethics based or codes of conduct approach, the legal
and regulatory framework compliance based approach, (not yet fully in place)
or the competitiveness and consumer demands and increasing awareness approach
such as eco-labeling of products or socially responsible investment etc. etc.

....and given the potential confusion or at least the cacophony of voices and
understandings and approaches that all of the above can tend to produce
...shouldn't a first effort be at trying to systematically map out and
describe all of the above "territory" as best as possible? (or is this
perhaps just a waste of time?) Our e-conference could be a first step
towards doing this. Is there already a good book on the above? A book that
relatively succinctly tries to say: what CSR is, how one knows it is
happening, who is doing it, and how it is now being done, and how it might be
done better in the future) If this does not exist who might prepare what
would be a "reasonably authoritative or inclusive" publication on the above
"territory" at least as things stand at this point in time....since CSR
notions and practices are also constantly evolving and progressing? And what
could be some practical next steps to help bring interested people "on more
or less the same page" (or onto a similar page) at least intellectually
speaking? Max, ILO, Thailand

In Italy the debate on CSR have been enforced since the Italian Government
has launched a proposal on it, this is an evidence of how can be useful the
role of public administration in sensibilitation. At the same time the
governmental proposal has been judged too invasive
regarding something that has to be voluntary to be really efficient.
On the opposite side we have locally a lot of good example about how the
local public administration (Municipality,) can mainstream the CSR between
the companies working in partnership with them towards a sustainable
development. I will try to synthesize our position in some points:

In a lot of local public administrations is promoted the Local

Agenda 21 process to drive the public policies towards a sustainable
development. Now is time, for these organizations, to pass from an Agenda to
an Acting approach, involving the local companies in improving processes to
implement local CSR.

In a globalize approach the national government in Europe can

just define laws to control the respect of ILO in the sectors of national
companies moved abroad, but can not be in conflict with national law
(es.China and freedom of association)

The government in the developing countries must, first of all,

work on laws and controls, then it can facilitate the income in the country
of the foreign companies, those have CSR tools. But we have to remember that
these Governments need companies (thinks just to the minimum wage
approach...) Marissa, Italy

23
Week 2: Exploring the alignment between public sector priorities and CSR
activities in the extractive industries

The extractive industry sector, specifically upstream oil, gas and mining companies, typically involve large
multinational enterprises operating in a country over the course of several years, sometimes decades.
Operations involve large-scale capital investments, construction activities requiring significant labor
inputs, both global and local sourcing, and long periods of facilities management. Tax and royalty
revenues are often substantial but deferred, and though they offer an economic opportunity can also be a
catalyst for poor governance.

Interest is growing in the potential coincidence of public sector priorities and the CSR activities of
business, not least with regard to the social and environmental management practices of upstream
extractive industries. This begs the question: how can public policy be formulated to strengthen this
alignment, whilst ensuring that the resulting interventions are both ‘optimal’—good for both business and
development—and ‘feasible’—in relation to the institutional constraints of public sector agencies and the
value drives of business.

The table below provides a means to begin to look for potential alignments between CSR business
practices and public sector responsibilities and policies.

CSR Categories Public Sector Priorities1

Economic • Trade and foreign Investment

• Monetary flows to the public sector • Fiscal and monetary policy
• Employment and human resource development • Private sector development and
• Procurement and supply chain management industrial policy
• Technology transfer and intellectual property rights • Infrastructure development
• Decentralization and local government
Environment • Employment and manpower
• Environmentally safe production, products and services • National institutions and reform
• Environmental impact assessment and management • Health Care Services
• Environmental reporting and management systems • Education and youth development
• Poverty reduction
Social • Environmental protection and
• Health and safety of employees management
• Labor standards • Food security
• Corruption and bribery • Political stability
• Human Rights
• Violence and Conflict
• Social impact assessment and management
• Community and stakeholder engagement (non-commercial)
• Charitable giving
• Social investment
• Social reporting and management systems

Corporate Governance
• Rights and treatment of shareholders
• Governance policies and business principles
• Information disclosure and reporting
• Responsibilities of the Board
• Customer/end-user care

1
World Bank Diagnostic and Appraisal Tool – Version 1.2, developed by Michael Warner with input from Halina
Ward.

24
Moderator: Michael Warner, Programme Manager, Optimizing the Development Performance
of Corporate Investment, Overseas Development Institute

Commentators:
Mr. Paul Kapelus – Founder and Director, African Institute of Corporate Citizenship
Colin L. Hubo, Faculty, University of Asia and the Pacific

Background Readings:

Indicative Alignments between CSR and Public Sector Responsibilities and Policies

“Results and Recommendations for Developing Country Governments", in Putting Partnering to

Work, Business Partners for Development (BPD), 2002

The MMSD Final Report

“Oil Production and Long-Term Regional Development, Partnerships for Managing Social
Issues in the Extractive Industries”, Case-Study No 10; Warner, M., Larralde, G. and R. Sullivan
(2003) Business Partners for Development, Natural Resources Cluster

“Development in the Kahama District (KMCL, Barrick Gold) Tanzania, Partnerships for
Managing Social Issues in the Extractive Industries”, Case-Study No
“Optimizing the Development Performance of Corporate Investment”, Discussion Paper,
Overseas Development Institute (2002), London

“Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, Statement of Principles and Agreed Actions”

“Publish What You Pay Campaign: NGO Statements"

Key Questions Asked of Participants:

Where there is extreme poverty in countries such as Angola, which aspects of the CSR
agenda for upstream extractive industries are most relevant, and to which public sector
priorities do they align?
Is public sector engagement in promoting CSR in the extractive industries a useful
complement to a government’s poverty-reduction or post-war reconstruction strategies or
is it a diversion?
What can government do to increase the transparency of monetary flows from extractive
industry companies to the public sector?
What can extraction industry operators do to increase the local content of their suppliers
without undermining business performance, and what role can government play in
incentivizing this?
What are the roles for public sector agencies when partnering with the extractive
industries to broaden the benefits of a company’s social investment/community
development program?

25
 Should governments in developing countries play in a role in shaping the boundaries of
corporate social practices in the sector? How best can this be achieved, through national
legislation or local initiatives?
In a situation where the credibility of the government has been eroded has an effective
regulator, is there an alternative actor that could broker partnership between the industry
and stakeholders? How could alignment of objectives be achieved under such an
arrangement? How could government build the capacity of the local stakeholders and
resolve the credibility issue?
How can best practices be shared with other mining companies? What is the role of
government in this regard and what role, if any, should the industry associations play?
Should the government be encouraging greater reporting and transparency of mining
company’s social, environmental and economic impacts?
How do you sell the idea of alignment between CSR and public policy to public officials
who find the extractive sectors politically unpalatable? Is there a role for investment
promotion agencies especially in presenting the climate for CSR as a way of encouraging
foreign direct investment?

Summary:
CHARACTERISTICS OF CSR IN THE EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES
Often, although not always, the upstream operations of oil, gas and mining companies are
located in regions characterized by, inter alia, (i) “big men” who want to secure the flow of
resources, (ii) weak local government, (iii) a lack of strategic social and economic planning in
the region of operations, and (iv) local communities increasingly aware of the weak alignment
between the conventional imprint of the business on society (in the form of tax redistribution,
long-term employment and related benefits, local SME development and local infrastructure) and
their own livelihood priorities. As such a large portion of the debate in week two of this
conference has focused on the division of roles between operating company and government in
enhancing the social and economic impact of extractive industries for local communities.

ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN NEGATING THE SANTA CLAUS SYNDROME

There seemed to be a degree of consensus that the ‘Santa Claus syndrome’ should be avoided.
The commercial volatility of the extractive industries sectors suggests that operating companies
should refrain from entering into long-term, unilateral, commitments to community development
programmes since these can generate false expectations and community dependency, as well as
undermining the proper role of the state. Greater sustainability and reduced business liabilities
would be achieved where companies learn to partner with local government on community
projects, dovetailing their social investment programmes with the strategic social and economic
priorities of a mandated democratic planning and political process at district or regional level.
Where such political and planning processes are either absent, fledgling or corrupted, a number
of participants suggest that the company should seek to ‘lead from behind’ - avoid undermining
the proper role of government and yet play a transparent and graduated part in building the
capacity of local authorities to plan and implement social and economic development. This type
of ‘smart’ social (or more accurately ‘governance’) investment was thought appropriate for
countries such as Angola where good governance is in urgent need of resurrection.

26
Other participants went further suggesting that companies might enter in the planning process
itself (along with civil society), transforming hypothetical, desk-based, government-dominated
planning exercises into a shared understanding in the region of operations of a division of roles
and responsibilities for plan implementation. A sustainable Livelihoods approach was suggested
as a possible methodology for a more inclusive form of regional economic planning. Two types
of convenors of such planning
exercises were promoted: central government and supra-national bodies (e.g. the World Bank),
the latter preferred when corruption levels present a challenge to civil society participation and
transparency.

A word of warning was also issued: that regional/local authorities are usually urban based, and
thus lack the political incentive to engage in social and economic planning or partnering
activities with companies whose operations are in very remote (i.e. low electorate density) areas.
BP’s operations in Tangguh (Indonesia) and the mining sector in The Philippine were both cited
as examples of the difficulties of extractive industries
operations seeking to partner (or enter into joint strategic social and economic planning) with
local authorities whose planning and management capacity is weak and whose power-base is
remote from the field of operations.

MARKETING CSR TO PROMOTE FDI IN THE EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES

The conference hosted an interesting discussion on the role of both central and local/regional
government in marketing their CSR capabilities as part of FDI promotion. The example of the
South African Government was noted, where a combination of partnering (in the from of
‘negotiated policy making’ with companies) and mandating in the form of new concession
tendering criteria, e.g. black ownership, employment equity, affirmative procurement and
community investment, combine to enhance the overall social and economic performance of new
mining operations. At the local level in The
Philippines, it was suggested that a demonstrable capacity within local and regional government
to collaborate with mining operations in economic and social planning and partnership-based
social programmes, might also provide a basis for FDI promotion. The MODERATOR
suggested that despite these good intentions, in reality such forms of FDI promotion might be
wrongly interpreted as a disincentive to investment, either because such messages suggest a
greater exposure to commercial risk, or because it raises the prospects of higher recurrent costs
and fixed liabilities. Associated with this, one participant voiced the worry that such proactive
interventions by government might be seen as externalizing the social costs of investing, and
thus raising the cost of capital.

EDUCATING THE CSR EDUCATORS

Begun in week 1, the debate around ‘educating the CSR educators’ continued, with various ideas
floated on international dialogue and supra-national bodies for the piloting and dissemination of
best practices in CSR.

27
MESSAGES FROM CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

The extractive industry is a heavily regulated sector because of its impact

to environment and people. Civil society constituent is also broad and very
much active. Thus, it is in this sector where most of the non-government
organization and civil society drivers are found. In the Philippines, one of
the policy issue that draws the line between the different stakeholders is
the conflict between the Mining Law and the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act.
Thus, the question raised - how can public policy be formulated to strengthen
this alignment, whilst ensuring that the resulting interventions are both
'optimal' - good for both business and development - and 'feasible' - in
relation to the institutional constraints of public sector agencies and the
value drives of business resonates with some of the issues being raised here
in the Philippines.

The FTAA issued by the Philippine government to transnational company remains

a hotly contested area. At least one of whom adopted a code of ethnics and
claims that the voluntary initiatives they are implementing as part of their
CSR practice. Critics however, dismiss this initiatives as expensive
community relations package. However, even as the company has already pulled
out their operation, the process of sale/succession and the expectation they
have created in the community remains an issue. I am inviting participants in
this e-conference who are familiar with the Western Mining Corporation's
Tampakan Copper Exploration to share their insight on the issue, can the WMC
initiatives be considered as CSR or merely an expensive community relations
package designed to secure the free and prior informed consent from the
indigenous cultural community to enable them to push through with the
project? Ruben, ADB

I believe that in addition to peer pressure (as mentioned by

Bohdanowicz)we need role models too. An example from my country is our
First Lady who is leading a partnership project (btw public sector and
NGOs) in upgrading educational level of society. I agree with the views on
hardships confronted in coordinating such partnerships, however, best way to
resolve them is to analyze reasons for partnerships. Public sector officials
need to be convinced that the aim of partnerships are not mainly to replace
what they alone are providing. Given the threat they feel due to
privatization programs, this is crucial. Additionally, the reasons for
partnership may be various. It may be to complement a service provided by
public organizations, or it may be to diversify a service provided. In case
partners understand this, they may be more positive in running partnership
projects.

*As highlighted by Ans Kolk and other participants, measurement is

another crucial aspect in promoting CSR. "You can improve what you can
measure" is a slogan we hear in total quality management literature.
The best way we can measure a construct is to identify its dimensions.
Being a multidimensional construct, CSR has been defined to comprise
of 4 main dimension by A. Carroll. These are economic ( I believe this
should also be added to CSR components), legal, ethical &
philanthropy. My suggestion in developing a measurement instrument for
CSR is one that incorporates all 4 dimensions within a framework such
as balanced scorecard. Semra, Turkey

We are beginning to build a picture of the actual role of the public

28
sector at the "sub-national" level in some of the regions of the EU
through a project entitled CSR Vaderegio comparing experience between
Flanders, Basque region, Sicily and Scotland. Already in this small sample we
see varying levels of public sector intervention. A proactive strategic
engagement through the Trivisi project in Flanders (www.trivisi.be) is geared
to meeting some specific policy objectives around lifelong learning and
diversity; in the Basque region there is strong political support behind a
completely new initiative to drive CSR in the interests of regional
competitiveness; in Sicily the authorities are engaged only in respect of
narrow employment policy goals; and in Scotland there is deference to the
perceived lead taken by the private sector. In the second phase of this work
we hope to include some of the accession states and to look in more detail at
the sort of points that are coming out from Janet's comments on the Polish
context and from others about the need for accountability and transparency
within the public sector and whether this is a necessary precondition for
CSR. (If any European participants have an interest in joining this do
contact me - soon.) While the situation in our regions differs in many
respects from that of developing companies, our experience shows that it is
still the case that indigenous companies are much less likely than the
multinationals to pursue CSR in any integrated way and certainly much less
likely to be transparent about what they do. The attitudes of subsidiary
business units and how they
contribute to/have a sense of sharing in the global CSR strategy of
their parent company is also revealing. In very few cases has the "CSR
mindset" been achieved at the operating levels far from HQ. For the regional
authorities the question arises of the extent to which they are willing and
capable of setting terms or expectations of the social responsibility of
companies operating in their localities.

The question of whether the public sector recognizes the ways in which
its activities may be pro (or anti) CSR arose at the outset of our study. It
was quickly apparent that if we talked in terms of CSR very few of our
potential interlocutors recognized the link with their activity. It was only
when we broke down the issues as they might arise in relation to employment,
supply, environment, communities and governance that they were able to
respond. Kyla, Scotland

Before helping company needs to know what kind of help is needed and not to
act "the Santa Claus way" which many natural resource based companies do in
Indonesia (at least prior 1998), if not around the world. There is no
sustainability in the "Santa Claus" gesture. What it does, is creating a
community of beggars who will always be dependent on company operation to
sustain themselves. Many companies are not only build the sophisticated
school, but also provide an on-going support for the school, provide a free
education for the community and alike. While the intention is good, a good
intention may not yield to a good result and may even yield to an unintended
consequences. The biggest problem of the "Santa Claus" attitude is that it is
not sustainable. How can a local government which is located in far remote
area, with a limited resource capacities can take over the school management
(let alone the community). CSR is about sustainability and corporation needs
to learn from the community on how could these people could eventually be
self-sufficient. Recently, many businesses are creating "sustainable
development, community relation, community development department. While this
is an encouraging sign, business should not shoulder the responsibility to
translate their business engagement in social development to these department
only.

29
Second of all, is to influence the university curriculum and the company
training programs, so that the engineers are not only learning about what
beneath the mother earth but most importantly what lies on the top on it,
including its people and environment. Many engineers are ill equipped to
translate the social development aspect to their job and plainly ignorance.

Third, in a country where a good human resource capacity is scarce,

company as a place where talented, educated, knowledgeable, skillful
individuals are located, could mobilize its workforce (and their family) to
do corporate volunteering in the community, in the area of health, education,
etc. While this engagement is common in Europe and USA, this is still not
common. Many company employees lives behind a big wall that separate them and
the people outside the fences.

Fourth, by mobilizing company knowledge for public goods. Natural

resource based companies normally has so much information on what lies
beneath the mother earth. They can make this info available -when
needed- to the local government. There is a case where the city wants to
preserve the river but have no information about the topographical
information. Through a network, the city learn that the company has all
information they need. The city then invite the company and they let the
person who is responsible for such information sits on the working
group. The city do not have to spend a dime, and the corporate gains a
credibility within the local government.

Fifth is to improve the local governance capacity. Lots of company would like
to participate in this area but it may not be wise to go directly to the
local government because of its sensitivity to both parties. Hence, to do it
effectively, a company would be better off to work with an intermediary or
program delivery organization. Or, the employees, within its personal
capacity and as a citizen, can sit in the city council. Relevant information
and identified needs from this group can be channeled back to the company for
further action.

With such an approach, company do make a business case in doing their

CSR. When strength can be leverage and synergy with relevant party can
be created, company do not act alone in taking its role as an agent of
change in social development. In fact, company should never act alone
but together with community, other companies and government in realizing
their role as a citizen in developing the country. It's safer for the
company, the community and the government. Sita, Indonesia

I can speak a little about our experience as a signatory member of the UNGC.
We signed because it was natural for us to do so, having been established as
a socially responsible company from the beginning. For us the UNGC has been
overall a positive experience, but again this is largely because we didn't
need much convincing. What has been great is the interaction among the
members of the UNGC, because it gathers all manner and size of companies, and
creates an environment in which we can all talk to one another on the same
level: a start-up can talk to an MNC, eye-to-eye. A few months ago several of
us met on the West Coast, and plan to meet again sometime in the fall.
Slowly, we are getting to know our fellow members, their interests,
challenges and thoughts on the various themes within CSR; I say slowly
because we are all busy and scattered all over the world.

Whatever differences there are, continue to exist of course, and there are
points on which different members might disagree or simply not understand,
but the discussion and interaction platform, the UNGC, is there. I think it

30
will take some more time before it reaches its true and full potential, and
that will depend entirely upon the members.

There is criticism of the UNGC, of course, namely that it is too weak and
preaches to the choir. It does not preach to the choir too much--it does try
to court companies that are very skeptical of its benefits, although I must
say this is not without the help of the signatory members themselves. The
challenge of a voluntary program like the UNGC is that it is voluntary, there
is no enforcement mechanism, and members are left alone to uphold the 9
principles, without much material help from the Compact. What this means in
reality, is that smaller, more flexible companies can put the principles into
action quite quickly, but may not have the resources to do so on a grand
scale, while those companies that are larger and have more resources, move
more slowly precisely because their policies and corporate mindset are more
firmly established, require more people and more corporate protocol to effect
change or are simply not yet open to the principles.

For members like us, smaller companies with fewer financial and physical
resources than the MNCs, the challenge of course involves having the time and
the staff to attend all of the meetings which take place all over the world.
The other challenge is, quite frankly, being understood, because our views at
times differ from those of more traditional, well-established and well-known
MNCs, and the first barrier that needs to be overcome is the perception of a
young company whose structure and function differs radically from that of a
large traditional corporation, and the openness to and acceptance of the
smaller company's ideas. It is a question of corporate culture and mindset.
Brigitte, LUCITA

After spending more than two decades in the corporate integrity/social

responsibility field as a professor, adviser and consultant, I have come to
the conclusion that the real issue as regards the role of governments,
corporations and other stakeholders in promoting sustainable development is
to ensure that where ever power resides, accountability must also follow if
this entire area is not to fall into disrepute. This means that all parties,
governments, corporations, financial institutions (national and
international) must work with each other to ensure that there is an external
discipline to the powers that are exercised, whether they are governmental,
corporate, financial, donor aid and civil society power. This external
discipline must include capacity building to ensure that "community
development" projects are not just "buying peace" or image building and have
the active partnerships of the other stakeholders to ensure that
"decapacitation" of governmental responsibilities does not occur. Errol,
Canada

The academics fail to understand that CSR is an integral element of all

organizational/ business functions. Moreover, CSR education is limited to its
various definitions picked up from textbooks or the internet, supplemented
with examples that are good stories, not helping students understand the need
for such an initiative.

The academia, not only limited to premier institutes, should put their time
productively talking to industries about CSR and develop case studies, rather
than transferring CSR downloads on transparencies and babbling it out to deaf
ears in the classrooms. Sachin, India

31
The public sector has a duty not just to meet it's mandate set by Government
but also to the various people and communities (voters) that will be affected
by these priorities. Business have a duty to produce profits for their
shareholders but must ensure that the people and communities affected by
these industries are also taken into consideration (living conditions,
economy, health).

Formulating policy around CSR has been applied in the past with all the
care, but still with disastrous effects. A case in time was the asbestos
mining case in South Africa, years after the mine has been closed, people are
still dying of exposure to asbestos dust. The priority of the Government of
the day and the MNC in question was to increase profits for both and the
interest of the people where secondary.

This type of thinking (profits first) is very unlikely to change, if there is

no pressure from outside forces in the form of penalties placed upon the
country and the companies. The whole mindset of a company's success should
change from Income Statement and Balance Sheet to its contribution to CSR.

My recommendation would be to establish a World Body that would ensure that

these policies are based on a sound framework and best practices. The
framework should not be left for the country to decide on. The application of
these policies should be based on the set framework, but situations will
differ from country to country and consideration should be given to these
differences. There has been a lot of success stories throughout the World
that can be used to establish a body of knowledge that should be used for
future references and implementation strategies. Bruce, South Africa

While some aspects of the concept of CRS are absolute (e.g. safety records
are often reported and zero accidents must be the best
performance) others are less so and some could even be controversial.
The minerals industry in general highlights one of the areas of CSR I see
as most difficult and that is meeting the needs of all of the concerned
societies. For example you could site a processing plant in a remote
area minimizing disruption to human populations, but is this environmentally
responsible? or you could site it on an urban Brownfield's site minimizing
(further)environmental damage but creating traffic problems locally. One
group would view one as responsible but another group may view it oppositely.
So what standard do we measure CSR against? David, UK

Honestly, there are indeed ample number of ways in which companies can assist
governments. By definition, CSR is supposed to be the relative duty of the
private sector while the government sits at the background and moderate the
performance. However, in relative term, the government should and must
discharge its electoral promise to the electorate by making sure that
infrastructure are put in place so as to engender a good business environment
for the private sector.

Take Africa for example, almost everybody practices tax evasion. Personal
income tax is rarely paid and where paid, it is short paid. Large
Corporations have perfected the act of avoiding tax by hiring qualified
accountants to window-dress their accounts. All of these have negative impact
on the revenue strengths of the government and consequently hinders the
performance and delivery of public goods by the government.

32
Aside from tax payments, the new world order stipulates that from whom much
is taken, much should be given back by ways of community developments,
scholarships, e.t.c. Unfortunately however, (particularly in Africa)
companies engage in CSR simply because they want to achieve corporate
credibility as opposed to corporate goal that must be achieved. Bolaji,
Nigeria

With regard to the question of best practices or cases in the mining

industry, the UN Global Compact has two examples in its knowledgebase that I
have reviewed and found interesting and perhaps useful. The first case is
that of Freeport McMoran's operations in Papua New Guinea where a local
community accumulated around the mining area following government
encouragement. From the presentation by the Freeport executive at the UNGC /
Nortre Dame meeting last spring, the efforts to work with the local
government were challenging.

The second case is that of Samarco Mineracao, SA, Brasil where the company
created a community based program to improved the environment in a seacoast
fishing area coincident with their operations.

In one case the company provided leadership independent of the government and
other companies and was quite successful. In the other, collaboration with
the government lead to difficulties with NGOs.

The formula for success appears to depend upon the local situation and the
ability of a company to find a mutual ground for common interests with its
local community. As an experienced management consultant to large companies,
I hesitate to endorse formulas for how a company should operate beyond the
practical objective of finding ways to ensure its license to operate
successfully and profitably in a country. Paul

Authors such as Michael Ross have conducted research suggesting that when
LDCs get involved in extractive industries, they frequently stifle
economic growth and development through the Dutch Disease within which the
government puts so many resources into that sector that other sectors cannot
grow and compete. One suggestion for overcoming this and avoiding LDC
dependence on unsustainable and detrimental extractive projects is through
CSR. If democratic governments can lay out clear social policies for poverty
reduction and development, they can use these policies to encourage pro-poor
CSR when negotiating FDI contracts. Furthermore, although monetary resources
may be weak, government can reassert its commitment to development and its
authority by bringing local community leaders into the discussion so that
local development priorities can be established before a project begins.

Colin brings up the point that in some countries, relationships between

central governments and community groups are weak and thus partnerships
are not easily forged. In these instances, supra-national facilitators
may be helpful such a World Bank Group co-coordinators as many such projects
are co-financed by such supras. By bringing corporations, the public sector
and communities together before extractive industry projects begin, all
parties can agree on the development priorities of a specific community and
take specific steps to meet those goals thereby re-enforcing the public
sector and the role of the corporation. In addition, such a dialogue will
establish an initial environment of trust and reduce the corporations risk of
social backlash. Alexis, UK

33
I think we cannot forget what we have just read about last week. I have been
learning a lot with some of the contributions, and one reasoning came up with
which I personally agree and from which I think we can take a good lesson to
find out in what ways public policy can work together with private interests.
Besides the crucial work of mapping out CSR, we cannot forget that each and
every case has its own particularities. These can be historical, cultural,
social, economic, financial, political... so mapping out can never mean
setting out one-size fits all model. Multilateral institutions (should) have
learnt that all too well by now. I see the role of government as central in
the process of setting out the rules for behavior, based on which, companies
are going to behave more or less socially responsible, depending on a nr of
factors - capacity (financial above all), internal structure (highly
hierarchical or, on the contrary, innovative and flexible), level and quality
of education of the people that constitute the organization and of the civil
society they are operating in, existence of pro-active NGO´s and, above all,
transparency levels of the company and the government of the region they are
investing in.

I think it is here that lies the biggest problem for cases like the Angolan
one. As it happens in most African states, Angola still suffers from an
ingrained clientelistic, elitist and corrupt class, which makes it one of the
most unequal countries in the world (as well as one of the richest in terms
of natural resources, with unbelievable pockets of richness against a
background of uneducated people). I believe, it is very difficult to maintain
high levels of accountability of what is happening in Angola in terms of
private-public relations. This is when the case of companies contributing to
the betterment of public functioning through practical examples is important,
even though it still poses the problem of accountability and transparency.
Maybe here, multilateral institutions could play a role, having in hand a map
of CSR paths to development and, as these countries get more and more into
the international financial architecture dynamics and start to abide to the
WTO´s rules, a certain type of trade-off could be agreed with the public and
private entities in those countries, whereby CSR measures was the demanded
good. Ricardo, Portugal

First let me introduce myself before proceeding, I’m Timothy Waithaka on

internship at the Ministry Of National Development and Planning in Kenya,
East Africa. I would like to touch on what Alexis talked about. I think the
dilemma here may come in when the specific community is not developed to the
extent that few individuals who happen to be their leaders are the ones who
are literate which is a common phenomena within Africa. Hence, in such a
situation I'd advocate for the supra-national facilitators to play a bigger
role than other sectors. This is due to the fact that in such a situation
other sectors may take advantage of a community's status. Hence, very pretty
work can be done in terms of good policies to encourage pro poor activities
BUT, these people may be exploited in the long term in the name of CSR
projects. This may be in the pretext of Cheap Labour on a certain project
being implemented. We should be aware that such a community may not realize
this injustice since after all isn't the project there to help them.
Nevertheless we should not take it that just because the project is there to
help the community the sectors involved should be allowed to access and use
any resource as they deem fit. So, my main point would be for the project in
question to enable the community to be able to undertake it's own profitable
activities without necessarily relying on CSR activities. Tim, Kenya

34
I believe democratic government seldom exist in a country with abundance
natural resources as long as government rely their income on just that, the
natural resource, and not the tax revenue, hence government accountability is
a serious issues on its own. On the other hand, the civil society tends to be
also weak as many of the social development aspect has been left out to the
hand of government with little citizen's participation. As a result the sense
of citizen's responsibility is generally weak as well. I can't begin to tell
you how difficult it is to raise the awareness of the white collar groups on
the relationship between tax and social development during the reform back in
1998 in Indonesia (probably even today). Either they don't realize the
connection or choose to be ignorance. It is not uncommon that government
policies don't look at the poor as the subject but rather an object.

An approach that can be done is try to pull head of companies together,

cross-industries, big and small, MNC or local, to learn how can they
work together, share their social development engagement, and synergize
their work. Yes, the approach is very much business like but then again, if
many companies engage in such activities then we hope to see the bar being
raised where companies start to benchmark with each other. I think this
approach is more sustainable as it is very much the interest of the company
to sustain their business operation. I agree that entity like the World Bank
can do a lot in terms of facilitating dialogues, introducing the idea,
getting the right people to the table. I think this is the role that Bank's
PSD can do. Sita, Indonesia

The idea that business cannot be trusted and therefore government should
'audit' or verify the claims of company's can be turned around and perhaps
corporations should 'audit' or verify the claims of government in care of
people, transparency and honesty! In fact that is what happens every day in
the international business world when companies make informed choices about
the investments they make in developing the economic capabilities of a
country whether it is in mining, manufacturing or trade.

I believe the whole idea of CSR will fail if it becomes a regulatory matter
rather than a voluntary endeavor by a corporation to improve its
relationships with civil society, its customers and its employees. It is
clear that the experiments with state operated or closely regulated
enterprises in the business sector have failed in every part of the world
over the past 100 years. Paul

The need to dress-up as Santa Claus and What do we do when Santa

Claus have gone home can be minimized if not totally avoided if the
government did its job well. There are two basic function that different
government agencies do, the regulatory function and the developmental. The
public sector as represented by the government is not a monolithic structure,
We have the Executive Branch and the Legislative and within the Executive
Branch are different line agencies which includes the Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Department of Interior and
Local Government. (DILG) . In addition to the National Government Agencies
are the Provincial Government and the Municipal Government. Each of them have
their respective mandate. However, conflict may arise as a result of their
interpretation of such Mandate. One issue is the conflict between the Mining
Act, Implemented by the Mines and Geoscience Bureau and the Indigenous

35
Peoples Rights Act as implemented by the National Commission on Indigenous
Peoples. In some ways, the Bureau of Forest Management - Community-based
Forestry Management Program also comes to conflict with the Ancestral Domain
Claim of the Indigenous People. In an ideal corruption free government,
policy issues can be resolved through policy dialogue and harmonization.
However, if we factor in the role of the Congressman (legislative) and the
Provincial Governors and the Municipal Mayors, the picture becomes even more
complex. Some of the functions of the national government agencies are
devolved to the local government, makes governance even more complex.

…the government can facilitate the processing of the regulatory requirement

through a corruption free process is in itself is enough support to the
private corporation. The transaction cost involved
in the processing is added to the initial capital outlay at the stage when
the project is not yet assured that it can recover the initial investment. So
what can the corporation do to ensure that they get the project moving?
Dress-up as Santa Claus. The issue of developmental role of the government
is also tied up to governance issues. The allocation of scarce resources is
not detached to the partisan and patronage politics. Thus, we have the
phenomenon called pork barrel. Thus, if you are a Congressman or a Governor
or Mayor, you will give priority to areas where the concentration of
electorate are found and definitely, these are not the areas where the
extractive industries are found. Mines are often located in mountainous areas
with scarce population. Why build a good road or a health center that
services only a few households when you can build one in the lowland rural
community whose population is double or almost triple than that of the upland
community. Likewise, very few medical staff are willing to work in those
remote areas. Ruben, ADB

Based on my research work in building partnerships in the extractive sector

(including mining) in the Philippines, the work of the partnership has been
anchored a development framework that interlinked three major components of
organization, participation and self-reliance.

* The basic strategy was to involve the impacted communities in the

programs of the company. The crucial element in this strategy was
harnessing their capacity in support of company objectives. The rationale was
to make the residents feel that they "own" the program and that they were
decisive in its crafting or formulation. It was assumed that program
implementation would be more effective if communities acquired such a sense
of "ownership". Critical aspects of the program were therefore not relegated
to the effective control of company people.

* Another strategy employed was imparting entrepreneurial skills and

provision of seed capital for engaging in small-scale livelihood projects
using a modified approach. For some community programs by extractive sectors
in the Philippines, a livelihood project became an end in itself but in some
cases, emphasis on livelihood as a way to emancipate the residents from
conditions of poverty was equalized with sectoral coaching to advance social
consciousness and highlight the correlation between community problems to the
larger national situation.

* The creation of organizational forums in impacted communities and

among social sectors became a pivotal factor in mobilizing the residents for
supporting the exploration project. With active company intervention, the
people's organizations gained access to external assistance and technical
skills for implementing socio-economic projects. This improved their capacity

36
to plan within a broad sectoral framework and strengthen their ability to
program specific objectives within available resource limits. Colin,
Philippines

I fully agree with Paul Pederson that CSR directed towards the wider society
(after local legislation and internal stake holders have been taken care of)
must remain a voluntary matter for companies to improve their relationships
with different external stakeholder groups, and should not be regulated. It
is necessary to be realistic and acknowledge that companies (as opposed to
individuals working for companies perhaps) will never be driven by ethics or
moral concerns, but always by profits. Regulation of CSR would, in many
cases, force companies to detract from their core business motive - and this
will lead to shirking and evasion. It is my firm belief that CSR and
sustainable business practices will, in most cases, have a positive impact on
profits either indirectly, i.e. through a company's reputation/brand, or
directly through for example savings from environmentally sustainable
technology. The business case for CSR projects must therefore be advertised
widely and loudly, and this is where I see a role for government. Many
countries in f.ex. Africa undertake direct marketing of foreign direct
investment opportunities for MNCs. When identifying potential investment
opportunities, CSR opportunities could also be suggested and evaluated from a
profit perspective. It seems clear from diverse case studies and recent
contributions from Hubo Colin that CSR projects work best when driven by
local actors rather than supra-national bodies. However, just as many
developing countries need capacity building assistance from IO's and NGOs to
identify investment opportunities locally and attract FDI/local investment,
they will need initial assistance in identifying CSR opportunities and making
the business cases for them. Kristin, Norway

Local level research in South Africa underscores the need to identify ways in
which companies can help develop effective local governance (as
introduced in this discussion by Michael Warner on 10 July). The research
also provides important business case incentives for such support: Due to
historical factors, companies are faced with resentful and potentially
disruptive local communities, but find it difficult to engage with them due
to lacking local representation structures, internal community conflicts, and
tensions between tribal and elected authorities. Furthermore, companies’
social development efforts are impeded by the lack of effective regional
development coordination and planning. (These findings correspond to those
described by Colin Hubo and others with regard to different contexts.)

Cross-sector partnerships are a potential way to improve local governance,

but these need to provide benefits to participants that are greater than
alternative strategies (which is often difficult in the hurly-burly world of
South African local politics). Local government has the statutory
responsibility to broker partnerships, but seldom the capacity. An underlying
requirement is hence for the improvement of basic capacity in local
municipalities, in terms of skills development, for instance. Companies are
beginning to realize their potential role in this, though they need to do
this subtly. (See also Paul Pederson’s emphasis on the need for local context
specificity in these matters.) In general, companies must learn to ‘lead from
behind,’ as Paul Kapelus once said in the context of Zambian copper mines.
Ralph, South Africa

37
The Brazilian ministry for science and technology, had, since April this
year, the intention of creating a national technology network to engage
Brazilian companies with research centers and diverse public entities. This
Monday, that intention became reality through a presidential decree and the
Brazilian Technology Network was created.
The aim answers several questions raised already last week, like how does CSR
improve competitiveness and counts with the support of at least Petrobrás,
the biggest company in Brazil. As it is a public company, it suggests a
method of how the central government can use its own influence and resources
to stimulate the participation of private companies in a process that aims to
develop technology related projects that promote the reliance on imports of
goods and services in national strategic sectors. The minister said as well
that Petrobrás already made south-south and north-south contacts with
companies around the world aiming to help internationalising Brazilian
companies, which crucial to the interests of private companies in Brazil.
What the latter need to do is cooperate closely with the project, in a way
that will also be useful to them, like through the creation of joint working
groups between the university and the company, which aim to develop pre-
determined goods and services chosen by all the three (public, private and
academic representatives). The sectors in which this initiative will be
focused are: oil, gas, minerals, alternative energy sources, particularly
electricity. The Network will be coordinated by a rotative managing committee
that should be responsible for approving or disapproving the networks
initiatives. One other thing I thought it was particularly interesting was
the emphasis given to the role of the Brazilian Service of Support to the
Small and Micro-enterprise. They just didn’t recall we call that being
socially and environmentally
responsible...

The CSR map really has to be done and given to all the government
officials that have the decision power to introduce CSR in the
school/university curriculum, as well as to private uni´s, research
institutions, federations of industries and companies. I think that maybe the
World Bank (and not the IMF in this case) could easily come to the country
and finance mini-courses or other education-CSR-related
initiatives aimed at executives, lecturers, researchers and others.
Actually, the WB could even negotiate fair prices with the govt and
private entities to reduce its investment. Ricardo, Brazil

I agree with Ralph that the CSR debate should move beyond arguments between
voluntarism and regulation and towards a more nuanced understanding that sees
state policy and regulation as an integral part of the CSR agenda. However,
it is very important that the defining line be established. The important
issue here is the resources that will be used to support the policy. In
developing countries where Public sector resources is scarce, the use of such
resource should not in anyway result to perverse subsidy. The regulatory and
policy framework says that polluters pay, it is the obligation of the company
to mobilize their resources to clean-up the mess that will be created.
Taxpayers and the future generations need be burdened with indirectly
subsidizing the cost of the adverse impact to the environment and to the
people affected by the investment. It would be interesting if somebody in
this e-conference can present a study that supports the allegation of mining
company that they are making positive contribution to the economy. Taking
into consideration the cumulative impact and the economic valuation of the
ecology that will be adversely affected or shall we say re-arranged as a
result of the mining operation. Ruben, ADB

38
My name is Eliezer and I am a Venezuelan Sociologist working for a State
Owned Enterprise (SOE), a extractive one, in my home country. I would add
that my opinions do not reflect and do not try to reflect the corporate
position of my company and are my sole responsibility.

Taking up from Ruben's note I would like to complicate matters further by

introducing the conflict of interest that exists when SOE enter in the
picture. Yes, polluters pay, but the State, which is the entity that at the
end would be enforcing the "payment", also owns the polluter. My hypothesis
is that most of the times, in this case, the polluter does not pay, or what
it says it pays is not equal to what private companies are obliged to pay. In
these cases, the burden to the future is forgotten and the real drivers are
present benefits.

On the other hand, I know that many SOE try to design and implement CSR
programs, but become entangled in the conflict mentioned above. New and
constantly rotating Executives, responding to political demands from the
parties or government that put them there, will discover that in their cases,
diffuse "collective benefits" which are at the core of corporate plans,
become more important than community or regional impact, which occur wherever
the company is operating. Besides, and obviously different to private MNC,
they do not have a large diverse constituency abroad. Extractive SOE will
have limited, very specialized markets, not public shareholders and, in many
cases, stakeholders don't know there is something at stake. Eliezer,
Venezuela

Why do advocates of greater social responsibility seem to focus mostly on the

large multi-national companies headquartered in the rich countries who have
factories or other operations in poor countries? In comparison little
attention is given to the local or domestically-owned companies in poor
countries.

This is surprising since it well known that the subsidiaries of

multi-national companies generally show a greater social responsibility in
these countries than do local companies. For example, the multi-nationals
typically pay higher wages, offer better working conditions, and pollute less
than the local companies. I have visited a number of poor countries, and
learned that most people would prefer a job with a subsidiary of a multi-
national over their own companies. This is not to say that the level of
social responsibility of the multi-nationals is acceptable, but it is usually
better than local companies.

I can think of two answers. Do you have any others?

The first answer is that it may be easier to pressure the multi-nationals to

improve their social responsibility. Because the multi-nationals have
operations in both rich and poor countries, advocates of greater social
responsibility in the rich countries can exert more pressure on these
companies. Advocates can organize boycotts of their products sold in the rich
countries (Nike shoes) or embarrass them in their home countries by exposing
their lack of social responsibility in poor countries. Even though multi-
nationals typically pay higher wages than local companies, these wages are
still much below what they pay in the rich countries. It is easy to use this
comparison to make it appear as if they are exploiting workers in poor
countries.

39
Also it is easier to pressure the multi-nationals because they are far
fewer in number and much larger compared to the local companies. However, the
proportion of economic activity carried out by local companies in a typical
poor country is vastly greater than the subsidiaries of the multi-nationals.
It seems to me that focusing on local companies would result in a greater
improvement in overall CSR.

The second answer is that labor unions in the rich countries are major
supporters of higher standards of CSR, and they are much more concerned
about the multi-nationals compared to local companies in the poor
countries. In particular, unions are more critical of the low wages paid by
the multi-nationals than by the local companies. I believe the reason is that
the unions’ primary concern is not workers in poor countries but their own
union members.

Anything that the unions can do to force the multi-nationals to pay higher
wages in the poor countries makes it easier for the unions to preserve the
jobs and wage levels of their members. Because of the large difference
between the wage rates in rich and poor countries, the multi-nationals have
an incentive to locate their factories and other operations in the poor
countries. This is particularly true for unionized companies in the rich
countries where wages are typically higher than in non-union companies. Thus
the unions in rich countries have a strong incentive to claim that the multi-
nationals are not being socially responsible when they pay low wages in poor
countries.

For similar reasons, unions in rich countries are major supporters of the
demonstrations against globalization. Globalization means that there are no
controls on multi-nationals investing in factories in poor countries and then
importing their products back to the rich countries without paying high
tariffs. This threatens the jobs of highly paid union workers in the rich
countries.

For example, the umbrella union organization in the U.S., the AFL-CIO, has
provided both substantial money and people to organize anti-globalization
demonstrations. After the attack on the World Trade Center, the AFL-CIO
concluded that more demonstrations would be viewed as unpatriotic and halted
their support. As a result, subsequent demonstrations largely fizzled.
Robert, USA

The time frame of projects does not always allow for “bottom up” planning. It
goes back to the issue that the CSR specialists are brought into projects far
too late. There are few cases where the CSR agenda can influence the critical
path of the project. The question is whether, within the technical
timeframes, a bottom up planning agenda can be developed. My worry is that
community expectations are raised and not always fulfilled. This brings me to
the point – at what stage in the project life cycle or the planning phase can
the CSR practitioners have maximum influence? Of course the earlier the
better, and as Michael Warner suggests, the formulation of the concession
agreement should be influence by CSR. There is an interesting case in South
Africa where the concession agreement signed between the company, the
government and the traditional authority (entitled to royalties) integrated
significant social development clauses as well as the governance system for
monitoring the implementation.

When mining or oil companies enter an environment the “big men” want to

40
secure the resources and control the flow of resources. This often
undermines the potential for bottom up planning. Ruben raises the point
that the definition of national issues is contentious and politically
motivated. This is important when determining the flow of CSR resources. The
determination of the national issues, or even regional or local issues needs
to be a multi-stakeholder based process. In developing the social action
plans for the Copperbelt (Zambia) we followed the Sustainable Livelihoods
Approach in determining the development priorities, agencies and suitable
pathways – it was only then that the mine could ask “how do we fit into this
development agenda?”. This was a departure from previous planning philosophy
of the company that determined the development agenda. This requires a mind
set shift on the part of the company, the government officials (who were
fitting into the companies agenda) and the community (who had never really
been asked what they thought). But this new paradigm allowed more ‘voices’ to
enter the scene – NGO’s, community based organisations, donor agencies. But
still, it was a process hat was being run by consultants of the company and
being paid for by the company – rather than being implemented by the
government department or agency. How do we overcome this? I think there is
room for collaboration – company funds, donor funds, government funds. In
the case of Angola there is a need to ensure that CSR does not take over the
role of the government. It requires this form of collaboration between the
various development agencies. There is also room for different oil companies
to collaborate on CSR – to create some opportunity for learning from each
other. In so many cases companies ‘compete’ on CSR and do not want to share
insights, contacts etc. I think this is one area where this information is
non-proprietal. In fact, clustering CSR initiatives could create economies of
scale and improve the investor potential into an area – especially for
companies who are scared of CSR.

Marketing CSR to promote FDI: The notion of “responsible competitiveness” is

an important one in this context. The issue is to what extent does social
responsibility improve country or regional competitiveness. The immediate
answer is that it demonstrates sound risk management within a particular
geographical location. But is also sends a signal that the costs of investing
in a region re higher because companies need to spend more money on social
responsibility. This could scare investors away, especially those that do not
views CSR as an excellent social risk management strategy as well as reducing
the impact on local communities. The worry is that the cost of capital might
go up when companies prefer to externalise their social and environmental
costs. CSR promotes the internalisation of these costs. Paul Kapelus (South
Africa, World Bank Consultant for CSR in Angola)

I' d like to respond to Mr. Anderson's question: Why do CSR advocates focus
mostly on MNCs? Its simple. They are big and influential. Moreover, the
history of regulation teaches us that once big business sees the benefits of
a broader notion of responsibility, it is likely that they will either learn
how to amortize the costs of voluntary CSR or they will push for governments
to mandate these standards globally. Thus, we as example, Levis is ahead of
its competitors when it calls for labor standards within the WTO system.
Levi's is only the first--. But I think your answer to your own question, Mr.
Anderson is full of generalizations. First, as this discussion consistently
shows, there are significant CSR pressures on smaller firms in the developing
world-especially the firms that supply MNCs. Second, I think you have a very
cynical analysis of the role of unions. Yes US unions are often
protectionist. Their goal is to prevent foreign investment, to keep
jobs, especially unionized jobs in the US. But they also do not want to let
governments off the hook. it is the job of national governments to ensure

41
human rights are protected, monitored, enforced, to develop consumer
regulation etc...

I think the debate over CSR has become muddied. For example, CSR practices
can=t ensure that firms do not directly aid or abet violations of human
rights in the developing world, including taking
advantage of workers who are not permitted to organize. Governments must set
clear standards regarding the human rights responsibilities of the firms they
headquarter. More importantly, global CSR can=t substitute for transparent,
democratically elected and accountable governance in the developing world.
Global CSR stems from a failure of governance in both the developed and
developing world. Governments, including the US have failed to provide
resources to enable develop countries to adopt, implement, and enforce laws
and regulations that raise labor, environmental, and human rights standards.

And many developing countries continue to lack the resources, the will, or
the public pressure to provide an adequate system of governance and a social
compact for their people You're right to allude the CSR strategies won't
solve this problem. But they can help! Susan, USA

42
Week 3: Understanding the relationship between CSR, trade and foreign direct
investment

More and more companies are wondering what the link is between their CSR strategies and their
trade activities from both the import and export perspectives. Multinational companies are
exporting not only their products and services, but also their operating standards, best business
practices, values, and principles, i.e. codes of conduct, all over the world. Many of these
practices are increasingly being adopted by domestic enterprises. Progressive corporations and
financial institutions view CSR and sustainable investments as a competitive advantage or a
minimum requirement for risk mitigation.

Governments are beginning to view CSR and codes of conduct as a cost-effective means to
enhance sustainable development strategies, and as a component of their national
competitiveness strategies to compete for the “right” type of FDI inflows and to position their
exports globally. For example, the US-Vietnam textiles agreement signed in May 2003, includes
an obligation for the Vietnamese authorities to encourage implementation of CSR codes, in
return for access to the US market, which is now the top export market for Vietnam, after only
two years of formal trade relations. This appears to be the first time that an international trade
agreement has included a government obligation to encourage CSR codes, as opposed to the
more typical language of requiring additional regulation or enforcement. The US - Cambodia
textiles agreement also included an obligation to raise labor standards with the incentive of
increased quota.

Moderator: Regina Abrami, Assistant Professor, Business, Government and International

Economy Unit, Harvard Business School

Background Readings:
Sandra Polaski, "Trade and Labor Standards: A Strategy for Developing Countries," Trade,
Equity and Development Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003

Andrew Wells-Dang, "Linking Textiles to Labor Standards: Prospects for Cambodia and
Vietnam," Foreign Policy in Focus, June 2002 (download 72kb PDF)
Ajit Singh and Ann Zammit, Report, "The Global Labor Standards Controversy: Critical Issues
for Developing Countries," South Centre, November 2000

Ajit Singh and Ann Zammit, Appendix, "The Global Labor Standards Controversy: Critical
Issues for Developing Countries," South Centre, November 2000

Business and Industry Advisory Committee to OECD, "Discussion Paper on Supply Chain
Management," Supply Chains and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, OECD
Conference on Corporate Responsibilities, June 19, 2002, Paris

“Globalisation and the Vietnamese Garment Industry: A trade and value chain analysis of
responses to global challenges”, Khalid Nadvi and John Thoburn

Policy Briefing #18: The Cost of Compliance

43
Stephanie Barrientos, Catherine Dolan & Anne Tallontire, "Gender and Ethical Trade: A
Mapping of Issues in African Horticulture," 2001

Gary Gereffi, Ronie Garcia-Johnson & Erika Sasser, "The NGO-Industrial Complex," Foreign
Policy, July-August 2001

The Economist, "Getting Organized, with Western Help," November 29, 2001

Jim Baker, ICFTU, "Remarks to OECD Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility," June
19, 2001

“Responsibility Breeds Success”, Nigel Twose and Ziba Cranmer, Development Outreach,
March 2003

Key Questions Asked of Participants:

How do bilateral and multilateral trade agreements currently help or hinder CSR in
developing countries? Should they be expanded or adapted to include CSR? What are the
potential benefits, risks, limitations, and trade-offs associated with trade agreements
involving CSR? Is the perception of environmental and labor standards as a form of
protectionism justified?
Given the 1999 failure to incorporate labor standards into the WTO, is there any
possibility for multilateral governance of working conditions? How so? If not, what other
possibilities exist?
Besides trade agreements, how else might international trade be used to facilitate CSR? Is
supply chain management a better means to facilitate CSR? Is this true for all economic
sectors? Why? Why not?
Some argue that in many developing countries only foreign-invested firms are able to
meet the CSR standards of international buyers? How can this be remedied?
How can corporations be "socially responsible" in countries where worker rights such as
the freedom of association are denied?
Are codes of conduct, labor monitoring and third party certification efforts an appropriate
solution? Why? Why not?
Should corporations be in the business of building unions in the developing world? How
might they facilitate the development of state capacity?
Does a supportive CSR environment influence corporate sourcing and foreign investment
decisions? Is this true for all economic sectors? If not, what strategies might be deployed
to make CSR-friendly environments attractive to investors?
What can local governments, faced with financial and managerial difficulties, do to signal
the right brand of FDI?

Summary:
In the final week of the e-conference, discussion focused on the relationship between CSR, trade
and foreign direct investment. Two main streams of discussion emerged. They included: (1) how
trade and foreign direct investment might be used to facilitate CSR, and (2) whether a
government's effort to improve CSR and CSR-related regulations worked to promote FDI.

44
Organized by topic area, the items that follow summarize key discussion points and
recommendations that arose.

CSR, MNCs and SMEs:

Discussion opened with the question of why CSR-related activism focused mostly on the largest
MNCs. A number of reasons emerged: visibility; spillover effects into the supply chain; and an
ability to affect the firm's bottom line. There seemed to be little dispute with targeting MNCs,
although one participant made the point that MNCs tend to pay more and have better working
conditions than local firms and thus attention might be better directed elsewhere.

Evidence that countries were making parallel efforts to improve the competitiveness of local
SMEs also emerged. In one case, Vietnam, external factors - namely, the US-Vietnam Bilateral
Textile Trade Agreement - played a role in enhancing the presence of SA8000 in the country. In
the second case, Thailand, the government, in consultation with the ILO, is in the process of
advancing its own code that will be used to certify local firms.

CSR and TRADE AGREEMENTS:

There was consensus over the problem of defining CSR, an issue that arose in the first week of
discussion and continued into week three. Building on this, some concern was expressed about
including CSR provisions in trade agreements. Particularly worrisome was whether vaguely
defined parameters of CSR would evolve into a tool for protectionism.

The subsequent recommendation is that any such provision in trade agreements must include
detailed description of what is meant by the term, CSR. A helpful model in this respect is the
ILO monitoring criteria used in Cambodia, devised in cooperation with various stakeholders, and
meant to make concrete the term "substantial compliance" which is found in the US-Cambodia
Bilateral Textile Trade Agreement.

Another stream of discussion favored the inclusion of CSR and CSR-related (labor,
environment) provisions in trade agreements, with the argument that it might facilitate and
encourage CSR in less visible MNCs operating around the world, yet left free from the scrutiny
that falls on more consumer-prominent sectors like textiles, coffee, shoes and the like.

THE LEGAL BOTTOM LINE: A New Avenue to Encourage CSR

The problem of weak government capacity in the developing world was a problem that was
mentioned throughout the e-conference. In response, the moderator proposed discussion of what
domestic institutions in importing and MNC home countries could be used to encourage CSR.
One particularly promising avenue appeared to be the "legal bottom line," examples of which
were provided by the moderator and Halina Ward. The discussion ended on a cautionary note
related to whether governments would in fact Allow "their" MNCs to come under such scrutiny.

Current lobbying efforts to weaken the applicability of existing home country laws to an MNC's
overseas activities points to a new area where NGOs may want to focus their efforts.

MARKETING THE STATE: GOOD GOVERNANCE, FDI AND TRADE

45
Considerable time was spent discussing the relationship between CSR and FDI. The conclusion
has broad implications for whether CSR might positively serve as an investment promotion
strategy in the developing world.

Based on a number of examples, there was consensus that the promotion of CSR and CSR-
related provisions (labor, environmental) was not a disincentive to investment, but only so long
as a country remained cost competitive. The implication is that countries must continue to build
an appropriate investment climate that includes cutting the costs incurred through weak state
institutions and poor infrastructure.

Does FDI have a role to play? A number of positive examples were raised in the first and second
weeks of discussion, along with a warning against the "Santa Claus syndrome." In week three,
the moderator pointed to the Cambodia case where efforts to market the country as a "safe haven
for production" appear to have worked to its advantage. Investors, as Nigel Twose noted, are
producing goods that are not under U.S. textile quota. The country is seen as cost competitive,
with the ILO monitoring system, in particular, enjoying considerable credibility with major
international garment buyers.

Still, the question of how to facilitate good governance without replacing the state or relieving it
of its obligations remains. The Thailand case, raised by Ivanka Mamic, offered an exciting
example of state-led facilitation of CSR geared not only to encourage FDI, but also to raise the
competitiveness of local firms through a certification project.

The moderator suggested that we will see more of this trend in the next few years as countries,
fearful of losing market share to China, begin to sell themselves as the "un-China" with respect
to labor standards, in particular. The implication here is of an emerging market of countries
competing over the delivery of a low-cost CSR-friendly investment climate --- in effect, "a race
to the top."

CODES OF CONDUCT:
Although some criticism of voluntary mechanisms as ineffective tools was made, participants
appeared to support codes of conduct as a way to facilitate CSR through a company's supply
chain.

BUILD NEW GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS OR EMPOWER THE OLD?

A final stream of discussion related to the role of existing international institutions, especially the
WTO and ILO. At issue was how these bodies might be used to enhance CSR. There was little
consensus on this issue, with some participants worried about facilitating protectionism. Others
considered that only by recognizing the link between trade and labor in a body such as the WTO
could we expect upward harmonization of standards to take hold. Conversely, current work
underway by the ILO implies that no
formal link is necessary to utilize international trade as a mechanism for domestic institution-
building and CSR.

Today, developing countries are increasingly being encouraged to devise "pro-poor"

development strategies, ones that do not come at the expense of opening their economies,

46
but somehow do manage to foster social equity. In this climate, mechanisms to enhance CSR are
not only more likely to emerge, but it is vital that they do so if we are to speak of sustainable
development and economic growth in the same breath.

MESSAGES FROM CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

Based on the very limited understanding of the issues of bilateral and

multilateral trade agreements, it is apparent that trade agreements can be a
very powerful instrument in promoting CSR in developing countries. However,
its effectiveness in promoting CSR, depends largely on comparative advantage,
each parties bring into the negotiation table. Thus, the issue of integrated
sourcing initiatives (ISI) may be viewed by the different parties based on
the agenda that they intend to pursue in the course of the negotiation
process.

In the testimony of Sandra Polaski, Senior Associate of Carnegie Endowment

For International Peace, before the Senate Committee of Finance on the
implementation of the U.S. Bilateral Free Trade Agreement with Singapore and
Chile, June 17, 2003, She discussed the significant labor ramifications of
the integrated sourcing initiative (ISI). This provision allows goods
produced in third countries to be treated as if they had been produced in
Singapore for the purpose of satisfying rules of origin provisions. Currently
a list of electronic and high tech goods is covered, and the agreement
explicitly provides for expansion of that list in the future. It is widely
noted that the ISI will cover products from the Indonesian islands of Bintan
and Batam, but there is no limitation on where such products may originate.
What is the labor ramification? Neither Indonesia nor any other country that
benefits from this provision is required to effectively enforce its labor
laws. The third country beneficiaries take on none of the obligations of the
trade agreement, including those? like labor rights? that embody a carefully
forged consensus on trade policy in the U.S. This is not a theoretical
problem. In the export processing zones of Bintan and Batam there have been
widespread violations of basic labor rights. Both the State Department
Country Report on Indonesia and recent reports from Indonesian trade unions
indicate continuing problems, ranging from failures to pay even the minimum.

As an anthropologist, that has been involved with research and advocacy on

Indigenous Peoples issues in various capacity (as an NGO, as a technical
staff of a Government agency and now as a staff of a MDB, I find Andrew
Wells-Dang's statement relevant to my work. Nam Theun 2 is still a work in
progress, it involves the government, multilateral development bank (MDB)and
private sector. It is therefore, an interesting example of direct investment.
In the Nam Theun 2, one of the drivers of CSR is the environment and social
safeguards policies of the MDBs. I am interested in learning more on how the
government and the private investors perceive these safeguards policies?
Ruben, ADB

Is trade an appropriate vehicle for achieving corporate social

responsibility? CSR represents the human actions that should be done by
companies on behalf of the common good. Can we eliminate those actions in
order to dedicate efforts only for the sake of making money? (Note that I
said money, not profits). Profits are the result of actions taken by the
thinking side of the organization, which takes into account the human values
of it. Companies, as long as they have humans in their system, they will have

47
a human connection, meaning society. Companies, most of all, are social
entities, composed by social individuals, and for that reason, they have a
"natural" social responsibility. Thus, any legal activity that leads to the
well-being of the social system where the organizations cannot be excluded as
members ( because it is not possible), is always an appropriate vehicle.

Can it be shown to detract from investment and economic growth?

A good economic growth attracts investment, and good investments generate
economic growth. However, the stability of an economic growth depends
directly on a healthy society. Poverty, for example, attacks the health of
society. Social sickness can always be contagious to companies and lead them
to close doors forever. So, it is for sure a good investment to make a
contribution to prevent such conditions of social anomalies. Here is an
analogy, my neighbor is contagiously sick, could die and has no money to buy
medicine. I have the possibilities to help, but ... would I help him to buy
the medicine or should I ignored it because I think it is a cost for
me?....But if I help him, for sure I would prevent future damages to my
health and my pocket. The same occurs with companies, there are "invisible
costs", when you finally see them it may be too late and there are "invisible
profits" that can save the life of the company at large!!!....We are not even
discussing here the philanthropic aspects of the analogy.

Another issue is that in our scenario of CSR it is necessary to consider

another important element: Politics. Unethical politicians can use and will
use social resentment against companies just for the sake of gaining power.
If the organized private productive sector does not take into consideration
this variable in their plans, the social disease will put it in a financial
comma until it dies. Thus, it is advisable for the companies not to open the
door to unethical political opportunities. Jose, Mexico

The links between CSR and Trade/FDIs can be found on the way multilateral
trade rules impact on CSR activities by affecting the volume of production
activity and the incentives trade provides for either sustainable or
unsustainable production and use. Multilateral trade rules may be used by
developing country governments to ensure greater market access for products
and services that adhere to global CSR standards. For some countries, this
can be a competitive advantage for competing for FDIs (including SRIs) into
the country.

Take for example the case of links between trade and environment. As
industries have become more sensitive to non-tariff factors in the
comparative costs of goods in world trade and environmentalists have
discovered the concept unpaid environmental costs, exports of goods that are
produced under low environmental standards have been likened to 'dumping'
,that is the export of products at prices below the cost of production. The
practice has been called ecological dumping and is related to the broader
concept of social dumping - the idea that low standards for environmental
protection, worker health and safety, or even artificially depressed wages
are unfair practices. Colin, Philippines

The link between CSR, Trade and Foreign Investment is the absolutely
urgent and critical need for upward harmonization in labour standards,
especially equitable wages, if the global economy is to be just and
indeed sustainable. It is this feeling of injustice that is fueling the
demonstrations and discontentment around the world at meetings of
multilateral financial and trade institutions. It must be addressed and

48
soon.

Critical to this need is to have all countries who are members of the
ILO, who happen to also be most of the WTO membership to abide by the
1998 ILO Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work in two
ways. Those who do not have labour standards legislated to meet the core
labour standards in the principles should introduce them. Those that do have
these legislated standards, but turn a blind eye to their MNCs and others
violating them, as in Export Processing Zones, are in my view potentially
violating their present WTO obligations ( I detail how in a recently co-
authored text "Global Governance, Economy and Law, Waiting for Justice,
Routledge, 2003). There can be no legitimate argument about comparative
advantage, when countries are violating their own labour standards. Indeed
the refusal to abide by national and international standards is often linked
to corrupt regimes willing to not enforce standards if the amount of the
illegal rent is high enough.

Of course, the international community can not only focus on upward

harmonization of labour standards if the capacity to survive and thrive
in the global economy is not there in terms of governance, human
resource development, financial and regulatory infrastructure. CSR must
go beyond the so called "Santa Claus" boundaries to start addressing
these issues too in partnership with governments and international
financial institutions. Ultimately we may need to have the MNCs "bail
in" to help with such infrastructure through new forms of international
taxation or tax incentives. We also discuss these possibilities in the
book. We need a paradigm shift. We are not getting it and more than half the
world are getting increasingly desperate. Errol, Canada

In her introduction to the week's discussion, Regina Abrami noted "at issue
is whether the move for increased CSR builds comparative advantage or
ultimately takes it away from the developing world". Central to this issue is
the hypothesis that companies are keen to invest in (or source from)
countries that offer a business environment that is conducive to their own
CSR-related policies and activities. Possible reasons might be that companies
are keen to invest in (or source from) countries where there is a low risk of
their operations suffering from negative publicity around human rights or
environmental conditions, or where they will have to invest less in auditing,
training, capacity building and 'corrective actions' in countries where, for
example, labour standards already meet their own codes
of conduct. Linked to this hypothesis is the question of what makes 'quality
FDI', and the suggestion that investment by companies who are actively
engaged in CSR will support development more than other investment. However,
as Michael Warner pointed out last week, the opposite of the hypothesis may
be true - governments that seek to market their CSR capabilities as part of
FDI promotion may in fact disincentivise investment. Whether or not the
hypothesis is valid, I would like to ask participants whether they know of
any examples of host country national or regional governments acting on it,
by formally integrating any elements of CSR into the activities of their
Investment Promotion Agencies (IPAs) or Trade Promotion Agencies (TPAs):
Firstly, are any IPAs seeking to demonstrate to potential investors that they
offer a comparatively sound environmental, social or ethical investment
environment? From a quick review of a selection of IPA websites I have not
found any evidence that this is the case, but I would be very interested to
know of any host country governments or IPAs who are thinking this way.
Secondly, do you know of any host country governments that have sought to

49
make reference to the OECD Guidelines or other codes of practice in their
investment or trade promotion activities? This may either be as a condition
of doing business, or as an incentive to potential investors/buyers on the
basis of the above hypothesis. Tom, UK

Perhaps no one has taken on the issue as to whether CSR should be included in
trade agreements because there is still so much debate as to whether labor
standards (or environment, etc.)themselves should be included in trade
agreements or in WTO rules. Following up on issues raised by Mr. Mendes
yesterday regarding the ILO Declaration of Fundamental Principles, there is a
compelling argument that there already is an organization to address labor
standards: the ILO. Would resources be better allocated to giving the ILO
teeth (enforcement authority)? I'm not staking out a position on this, but
I'm not sure I've heard arguments that answer why the ILO shouldn't take the
lead on this.

As for including CSR in trade agreements, at first glance it seems compelling

because it avoids the distortionary impact of trade sanctions, which are
available as remedies for failure to comply with core labor standards through
the dispute settlement mechanisms of some trade agreements. Existing trade
agreements seem to implicitly recognize this given the difficulty of invoking
sanctions in NAALC, and the Chile and Singapore agreements. Doug, USA

I don't know much about the WTO and have a question in response. What
exactly is the nature of these environmental standards? Are they only
general goals such as "protect the environment"? Alternatively they might set
precise limits on emissions such as the maximum amount of sulfur dioxide that
can be emitted by electric power plants burning coal.

Many advocates of greater CSR argue that companies should abide by one of the
various standards of CSR developed by such organizations as the OECD or the
UN. I wonder if they have actually read these standards. The major problem is
that they are general and imprecise. Almost any company could claim that they
meet these standards.

In the OECD standards, one standard is that enterprises should "take

adequate steps to ensure occupational health and safety in their
operations." Another concerning the environment is that companies should
establish "...measurable objectives and, where appropriate, targets for
improved environmental performance, including periodically reviewing the
continuing relevance of these objectives." These are so general that it would
be hard to show that any company was not abiding by them.

This may be why many companies claim to abide by one or more of these sets of
standards because they are largely meaningless. Most companies,
however, will vigorously object to any legal requirement that they must
abide by them. One reason is that the companies can't determine what they
must due exactly to meet these standards. Laws and regulations must be much
more precise if they are to be legally enforced. Robert, USA

Codes benefit those that they recognize. In my experience if codes are

implemented in the right industries in the right way then they can have a
positive benefit for workers. This benefit, who receives it and under what

50
circumstances right now is more important than how many codes there are. We
don't know enough about which codes work best to start pruning.

Codes don't benefit everyone. However, the priority issues of significant

parts of the workforce, people related to workers, local communities and
wider society are not included in these codes. As a result, companies can
appear to be doing well because they comply with a code, but are actually
having neutral or negative impacts on those who are denied moral
considerability.

Codes assume a universal ethic. One reason codes deny moral considerability
is that they are based on assumptions about universal norms and values that
misrecognize the priorities of intended beneficiaries in certain
circumstances. I can give various examples of this and its consequences if
anyone's interested, but one possibility in relation to Regina's question
about FDI is that FDI will flow most readily to locations that appear to
conform with particular universal norms. See also my forthcoming article in
the Journal of Corporate Citizenship.

Parameters of benefit. Many people agree that codes are incomplete, but
then say that what is required to increase their coverage is more criteria,
better auditing, multi-stakeholder partnerships etc. I wouldn't totally
reject that, but we need to recognize that codes and the various instruments
required to implement them are rooted in a particular world view and
knowledge framework. Where codes fail is where this framework is
insufficient. Again I'd be happy to give examples, but what it means is that
any movement towards 'better standards' will take place within the
limitations of the knowledge framework that dominates what we currently think
of as globalization.

The rights of business. The negative practices of companies towards workers

and the environment are often the result of supplier-buyer relations. Yet the
trading relationship is not included in the codes we're talking about.
Neither are fundamental factors that define whether people think business has
a positive or negative benefit such as the right to invest/disinvest, the
commoditization of factors of production, futurity. In fact it's possible to
make the case that not only are codes a quid pro quo for leaving the
fundamental rights of business untouched, it can be argued that through
social (and environmental) codes the most influential companies are
redefining what ethics can or cannot mean. Michael, USA

To be effective in improving wages and working conditions, the WTO would have
to believe that excessively low wages and bad working conditions in a country
are an unfair barrier to imports from countries that have higher wages and
better working condition and a subsidy for exports. For example, the U.S.
might restrict imports from Bangladesh because the U.S. concludes that wages
there are below the "living wage" or working conditions are unsafe and amount
to an unfair subsidy to Bangladesh industry. The U.S. does something like
this now by banning the importation of products made by prison labor. I am
sure that U.S. labor unions would love this policy but I doubt that
Bangladesh would be pleased. Robert, USA

My understanding is that the theory and the practice in terms of the ILO's
'teeth' differ substantially. The ILO's statute could potentially be read to
authorise members to resolve to take a range of sanctions – including
expulsion of member countries or even more... But the culture is less about

51
sanction than problem-solving. I'd be interested to know how people have
read, for example, the effectiveness of the ILO mechanisms that swung into
action to deal with labour rights violations in Myanmar (many would view this
as a 'worst case' scenario where the ILO's mechanisms were sorely stretched).
You need a range of facilitating and sanctioning procedures as part of a
range of dispute resolution mechanisms. The challenge is, once again, to get
the right mix. We miss out on one possible part of the mix at the moment,
because the ILO's culture is not at ease with the notion of applying punitive
sanctions in 'worst case' scenarios. I've always been skeptical about the
value (and the motivations for) a social clause in the WTO - very few of the
proposals that have been put forward have *not* been tainted by
considerations of 'economic spillovers' (as opposed to moral or human rights
considerations) once you look at the proposed operationalisation structures
in detail. In event, it takes you back to that old chestnut - what would you
have to do to the WTO to equip it to take on this kind of role - in terms of
giving it substantive competence to engage with (as opposed to stay out of)
labour issues? And, conversely, what would you have to do to the ILO to equip
it to engage jointly with the WTO in a shared dispute resolution structure
that used trade tools as part of its 'teeth'.

I don't think it's very useful to compare the ILO/WTO/codes of conduct -

that's a bit like the voluntary/regulatory dichotomy. The starting point
should always be 'what do we want to achieve' and 'what's the best way of
achieving it'.. We have to get more sophisticated in the CSR agenda in terms
of understanding the mix of different approaches. Halina, UK

I suppose that multinational companies while entering new markets in the

developing countries and exporting modern management standards along with
principles of their corporate culture, play their positive role. This lifts
to the highest level of development the culture of management, producing
culture and corporate culture that existed before. The business of these
companies is at one time the example that demonstrates all this and the
example of effective business for the local companies. Of course there are
many lacks in many fields and conditions of business in developing countries
where these companies come, and there can be abusings made by these companies
in the fields of human rights, labour conditions and ecology also exporting
and using of old equipment that do not answers the modern requirements of the
highly developed countries. But I think that the "holding-back" factor for
all these abusings is the bright image of this company in the minds of
consumers.

And one more important feature is that branches of multinational companies in

different countries are less under corruption from inside. Also I would put
responsibility of existing and flowing foreign investments on the
governmental politics of countries and the people society matters there.
First of all such factors as the human rights, existing/non-existing of
corruption and economic factors.

I view the foreign investments and export of modern principles of the

corporate culture, management and technologies as the catalyst of the
progress. That’s why incoming principles of the culture (corporate culture
for example) are able to lift the society culture of the region to the higher
level without depending from culture features differences of countries.

Knowing the J. de Åstra's proverb that every society has the government that
it's worth, also the opportunity for corporations with high culture level to

52
exist is only in the society with adequate culture level and these things
cannot be viewed apart from each other. Sergey, Russia

In the case of national development plans, we can use the example of South
Africa. There is an integrated set of development plans or strategies, which,
though they do not mention CSR explicitly, contain many elements supportive
of government's role as potential facilitator of CSR. The government has also
shown that it is willing to negotiate with business in terms of the
implementation of these plans.

Is this willingness to negotiate and to support business voluntarism

increasing the competitive advantage of South Africa? Perhaps, but not on
the scale of the damage to competitive advantage that is created by the
inability of the state to implement its policies. Hence my suggestion that
CSR is nice to have, but much more important are the fundamentals – the state
must be able to show that it enforces its own laws and policies. Ironically,
some interpretations or manifestations of CSR may be causing more harm than
good in this respect, by over-emphasizing business voluntarism or self-
regulation in a context where the business case is not solid, or by masking
political lobbying against regulatory enforcement.

Similarly, at the international level, the question was raised regarding the
role of a social clause in the WTO. Martin Khor argues that "linking social
rights to a trade sanctions regime, though tempting at first, is likely to be
counterproductive in results" (ref can be supplied). This is
particularly so in the context where developing countries are systematically
disadvantaged in WTO negotiations, and their terms of trade are deeply
unfair. Without revision of this broader set of circumstances, social clauses
or increased reliance on business voluntarism may only make things worse.

At both the national and international level, therefore, the question may
not be "what can governance do for CSR?" but rather "what can CSR do for
governance?" I'd like to see business coming up with concerted suggestions
for greater fairness in WTO and for improved enforcement of minimum standards
in countries like South Africa. Ralph, South Africa

There are various theories about why one code has prominence over another
(ease of use, brand recognition, credibility of the custodian bodies,
relevance to the industry, etc) although I'd be interested to see the
evidence that particular codes are gaining overall dominance.

What is more interesting however is how similar the codes are becoming, and
what we should probably looking at is not the content but the way different
codes are being implemented.

However the key issue for me is that codes themselves are not contested as a
core element of CSR. This despite the fact that they are a management tool
rooted in a particular ideational and cultural tradition, and have not been
shown to capture the norms, values or well-being of those they intend to
benefit. Rhys refers to hegemony, but the clearest evidence of hegemonic
power is the unquestioned adoption of codes (and accompanying instruments
such as audits and monitoring) as central to the definition and delivery of
international justice involving the private sector. Michael, USA

53
Politics make the application of CSR extremely difficult , this can be seen
by the examples given, China will not allow any country to interfere into its
domestic issues. MNC's are making huge profits in China , because of the low
labour rates and working hours, as they did in the time of apartheid in South
Africa. In a previous mail, I propose that a there should be a mind shift
away from the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, but it is a different debate.

My view is that the onus still rest with the home country of the MNC, to
ensure that MNC's should not invest in countries where most human rights are
violated. The success of CSR cannot be measured on few examples, leaving the
rest of the developing world, vying for much need FDI, thereby disregarding
any proper CSR policies to protect its people and environment.

Regional organisations (OECD, SADC) seem to have more power and cohesiveness
in terms of CSR policies and trade, these regional organisations also have
input regarding the behavior of member countries. Therefore these vehicles
should be used to enforce these CSR policies. World bodies like the WTO, are
toothless against the might of the developed countries, this we have witness
many a time.

Companies, used in the examples are allowed to violate rules and policies
because they provide the much needed FDI in these developing counties. Then
again, in a world where the majority of the economies are modeled on
capitalism, profits and the sharing of profits it what is important to the
majority of businesses and politicians. Bruce, South Africa

In response to Regina's and E. Mendes's views, one indicator that is

suggested to measure FDI performance indicator for countries is
ability to attract headquarters of international companies. This is
because subsidiary branch's existence may not be continuous. Whenever
labour cost increase, the plants may be moved to another country
providing cheaper labour. However, headquarters may not be that
mobile.

This also points to another fact related with good governance. One of
the conditions for good governance is the nature of contract. If both
parties enjoy equal conditions it is more likely that they will be
sensitive to one others needs, rights. However mobility of capital
creates a situation where the contract of foreign company is
revocable. So, irrevocability in contract may be associated with
foreign investment that is more conscious of local stakeholder needs
as well.

I wonder how countries differ with regard to contracts done with

international companies. OECD guidelines (and related good governance
guidelines in European countries) aim to establish good governance
systems to protect investor rights primarily. However, the governance
structures should aim stakeholder happiness rather than shareholder
happiness alone. Semra, Turkey

I want to share with you our Russian experience of multinational companies,

and to ask if you have the same situation. Of course these companies do play
their positive role itsting the country to higher level, sharing their best
experience and values with domestic companies. But only if the country is
ready to receive all this. If government understands that along with benefits
there are dark sides of multinational companies and they aren’t to be

54
repeated in this country. For example all our Russian traditions and national
features are becoming meaningless now. Russian national values are no more
important for new, more profitable values, features and traditions are
incoming. Multinational standards are very positive and effective, but our
country seems not to be ready to implement them without loosing it’s face. It
is what we see now here, in Russia; but may be this problem is important also
in your countries? What do you all think about this? Marina, Russia

CSR environment is nowadays shaped as a policy network in which many

actors - private and public - play different roles. In this context
it is of a growing importance to understand how to exert control over
private firms and not-for-profit organizations in charge for the
satisfaction of public needs within a public-private interaction and
network. An answer to the following questions should be addressed by
future research:

1. How policy networks between government and business can

measure and report social responsibility to the general public?
2. Which is the level of social responsibility for a policy network
in which both public sector organizations, NPOs and private
enterprises are involved?
3. Which is the disclosure level in order to identify the social
value created or destroyed by private/public activities within a
policy network?
4. How third parties supplier (public, private for profit,
not-for-profit organizations and cooperative enterprises) can be held
accountable for socially responsible decisions?
5. How does accountability and social disclosure influence
inter-organisational relationships?
Only government has the necessary overview of public needs and it
should be accountable for final outcomes and social impact, even if
services and activities are carried out by business within CSR
relationships. Enrico, Milan

Nigel posted a very simple question to a yet a simple answer: how do

firms and govts collaborate to demonstrate that commitment in a
sufficiently convincing and transparent manner, as part of national
economic competitiveness strategies?

Central to the answer, off-course, is the political will, dialog and

coordination between private sector of the selected industry and various
but relevant department in both local and national level. Another
critical factors is the "capacity" of the people who do dialog and
coordination. Capacity means, but not limited to, the knowledge and
ability to engage in dialog and coordination.

In most emerging country, dialog and coordination within and among

companies and government departments in the country level are a
challenge on itself, let alone in the international level and the hard
subject such as labor. While I understand the argument that "international
standard" is needed, the question becomes whose standard and who has the
"power" to influence the standard.

Take the "living wage" issue for example. A guy, from New York came to
Indonesia to live in the "Indonesian Living Wage way" yet he maintained
some of his living standard" by describing that he can no longer afford

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the after shave, etc. Well, most workers don't use after shave. This is
probably too small of an example to be generalized but it shows how
difficult it is to impose another country standard (or international
one), particularly to the emerging market or the low income countries.
If the standard is to be the same everywhere in the world, the develop
country will definitely be of the advance and winning side.

Just curious, since supply and demand are closely related, does the
notion of responsible consumption is written anywhere in any
international document? Do they go hand in hand? Sita, Indonesia

Talking about the African context...According to UNICEF: An estimated 20 per

cent of the world's population - mostly those living in the world's poorest
countries - is at risk of contracting malaria. Malaria causes more than three
hundred million acute illnesses and kills at least one million people every
year. Ninety per cent of deaths due to malaria occur in Africa, south of the
Sahara, and most deaths occur in children under the age of five.

"Malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds, and remains one of the most
important threats to the health of pregnant women and their newborns," said
Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF. "We have the knowledge and the
potential to achieve our target of reducing the global burden of malaria by
half by 2010, but we need much greater investment and political commitment".

The Africa Malaria Report challenges the global community to step up the
momentum by: "Encouraging, among other actions greater private sector
involvement in the national supply and distribution of quality anti-malarial
drugs, and insecticide treated nets and Increasing global investment to
support implementation of programmes to control malaria in endemic countries;

And talking about labour standards, it is very sad to find out that since
1986, numerous international standards and mechanisms have been created for
child protection. Nonetheless, enormous gaps still exist between
international conventions, national laws, and what children experience every
day. UNICEF has identified children in six different circumstances for
priority attention, one of them is Children in forced and bonded labour.
According to the International Labour Organization, an estimated 246 million
children are engaged in exploitative child labour. Almost three quarters of
them work in hazardous environments such as mines or factories, or with
dangerous substances such as chemicals and agricultural pesticides. Some 5.7
million of these children work under especially horrific circumstances,
including the virtual slavery of bonded labour.

Yesterday I visited this great looking international supermarket, they

had a nice code of ethics hanging on their walls, it made me happy to see
that indicative. However, as I was on my way out I saw a couple of dozens of
very young children working there...my previous happiness turned into
sadness. This is something to reflect on...! Jose, Mexico

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Comments from Conference Participants:

USA: As someone new to CSR, I've found the conference to be highly informative. Thanks to
all of you, and especially to Tom Fox, Michael Warner and Regina Abrami for leading such an
enlightening discussion.

India: Many Thanks to the World Bank Institute - Djordjija Petkoski and Nigel Twose for
organising this e-conference and other such events on contemporary thematic issues related to
the corporate sector. These are truly enlightening and informative.

USA: Above everything else, this conference aims to convey the exciting quality of research in
general. The conference is very informative. I am grateful to all of you for your ideas. I hope
that your efforts will help and will inspire leaders around the world to apply CSR.

Mexico: This e-conference has ended letting me know that we are not doing a "Don
Quixote de la Mancha's work". On the contrary, the issue of CSR is one of the best real
opportunities to make a more just world and at the same time to make more prosperous business.
Finally, my gratitude to the World Bank Institute for being a great example
for the rest of the world to emulate.

LUCITA (Need to find Brigitte’s country from Alisa): I enjoyed everyone's interventions,
have found this to be, once again, a highly interesting and informative forum, and look very
much forward to future discussions.

Philippines: I read with great interest the participants' contributions (on the various topics under
CSR) from around the world. I have been "silent" but was a part of this e-conference all through
out. Thanks.

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Short Biographies of Moderators and Commentators:
Tom Fox
Tom Fox is Research Associate in IIED's Corporate Responsibility for Environment and
Development (CRED) Programme. He works on a programme of action-oriented research that
aims to bring developing country stakeholder perspectives into the international corporate
responsibility debate, and to explore the role of government in relation to CSR. He was lead
author of the 2002 study for the World Bank's CSR Practice on "Public Sector Roles in
Strengthening Corporate Social Responsibility". Other recent work has included acting as
rapporteur for a bilateral development agency round table on CSR. He works closely with IIED's
Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods Programme on analysis, networking and outreach
related to agricultural markets, trade and corporate practice. He is joint coordinator of the Race
to the Top project, which explores the social and environmental impacts and performance of UK
supermarkets in the agri-food system, through a process of benchmarking and engagement
between leading supermarket companies, government and civil society organisations. Before
joining IIED in 1997, Tom taught in a business school and high school in Lesotho. He has a
degree in International Business, and a Masters degree in Development Studies from the School
of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Susan Aaronson
Susan Aaronson is Senior Fellow and Director of Globalization Studies at the Kenan Institute,
the Washington branch of the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina. Her
scholarly research focuses on international investment and social responsibility issues. Aaronson
directs a major study, funded by the Ford and UN Foundations, that will examine how U.S.
public policies can promote or undermine global corporate social responsibility. In 2002,
Aaronson and James Reeves published a study of what other governments are doing to promote
global corporate responsibility, called Corporate Responsibility in the Global Village: The Role
of Public Policy.

Aaronson is a frequent speaker on public understanding of globalization issues. She was a

regular commentator on “ All Things Considered” in 1994–1995; “Marketplace” on public radio,
from 1995–1998, and “Morning Edition,” 1998–2001. She is the author of two scholarly books
on trade. Trade and the American Dream uses the history of the ITO, GATT and WTO to talk
about how policymakers talked about trade to the American public. Taking Trade to the Streets:
The Lost History of Public Efforts to Shape Globalization was published in 2001 by the
University of Michigan Press. It examines how trade regulation and social regulation came to
intersect and the role of nongovernmental organizations in trade policy.

In 2001, Aaronson wrote a study on how to remake U.S. trade policy, called Redefining the
Terms of Trade Policymaking. The forewords were written by Senator Max Baucus, Chairman,
Senate Finance Committee, and Congressman Amo Houghton. Aaronson has also written two
primers on trade—“Trade is Everybody’s Business,” for high school students and “Are there
Trade Offs When Americans Trade?” for adults. These books relate trade to citizens’ daily lives
and their many roles as citizens, producers, consumers, and friends of the earth. Aaronson
received her doctorate in history (business, economic, public policy) from Johns Hopkins
University and a masters in International Affairs from Columbia. She has also been a Guest

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Scholar in Economics at the Brookings Institution (1995-1998). She currently teaches in the
Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University.

Michael Warner
Michael Warner has fifteen years experience in international development as a consultant and
trainer, specialising in environmental and social impact assessment, public consultation,
partnership brokering and dispute resolution. He is currently working with the Overseas
Development Institute leading a new programme titled: “Optimising the Development
Performance of Corporate Investment”. The programme engages with the oil, gas, mining,
telecommunications and construction industries.

He has a Ph.D. in Environmental Management from Imperial London, University of London, and
worked for a number of years in developing countries as a consultant with Environmental
Resources Management, London. In the mid 1990’s he joined the Overseas Development
Institute and specialised in the adaptation of interest-based negotiation tools to resolve disputes
among communities, business and NGOs.

Between 1998 and 2002 he managed the Secretariat of the Natural Resources Cluster of the
World Bank’s Business Partners for Development, acting as the broker or advisor in partnership
arrangements involving: coal mining with RPG India (resettlement and income restoration);
upstream oil and gas development with Shell, Nigeria (EIA) and with BP, Colombia (regional
development); Copper mining with Anglo American, Zambia (local business development); gold
mining with Placer Dome, Venezuela (community health care); and bauxite mining with Norsk
Hydro, India (dispute resolution);

Michael is author of the book “Complex Problems …Negotiated Solutions: Tools to Reduce
Conflict in Community Development” (ITDG, 2001), co-author of the World Bank/IFC Good
Practice Manual “Doing Better Business Through Effective Disclosure and Public Consultation”,
and author of two forthcoming books on business partnerships for development.

Michael is also Director of a ‘niche’ consultancy company: Stakeholder Negotiation Services

International (SnSi).

Paul Kapelus
Paul Kapelus is a founding Director of the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship (AICC) and
is a member of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Stakeholder Council (Netherlands), and the
AccountAbility (AA 1000) Council (United Kingdom). The AICC is a center of excellence in
corporate social responsibility, undertaking research and methodology development—primarily
in the extractive industry, finance sector and information and elecommunications. A primary
focus of AICC is to establish learning networks throughout the African countinent. The AICC is
the partner for the Global Compact, launching the initiative in various African countries; and has
established, in partnership with the University of South Africa, The Center for Corporate
Citizenship which offers training and capacity building. Some current projects include the ISO
CSR initiative, sustainable banking in Africa, development of ethical frameworks for NGO's
seeking funding from corporations, and development of a Public Sector CSR framework for the
oil sector in Angola. In addition Paul undertakes some consultancy for organisations wanting to
implement corporate citizenship policies and practices. He holds a Masters Degree in Social
Anthropology (thesis on multinational mining and social responsibility - Sussex University, UK)

59
and has 12 years experience in the field of corporate citizenship, working on projects in southern
Africa, West Africa and East Africa.

Colin Hubo

Colin Hubo is on the faculty of the University of Asia and the Pacific.

Regina Abrami
Dr. Regina Abrami is an assistant professor in the Business, Government and International
Economy Unit. She joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 2001. She earned her PhD in
Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, she is a faculty associate
of both Harvard's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and the Weatherhead Center for
International Affairs. She is also a member of the Harvard University Committee on Human
Rights Scholars-at Risk Selection Committee and Fellow of the Center for International
Business, Tuck School of Business.

Her research is broadly concerned with the political economy of development, with particular
emphasis on Asia. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Economies Under Different
Command: Socialist Norms, Entrepreneurship and Market Transition in Vietnam and China. The
book describes how differences in socialist state strategies of economic management and
political mobilization resulted in distinct patterns of state-labor relations, industrial development
and private sector behavior in the era of economic reforms. The project is based on three years of
intensive archival and field research in Vietnam and China. She has also begun work on the
changing face of trade unionism and its impact on international trade politics, foreign investment
and the global campaign to improve labor standards in the developing world. These projects are
linked by their emphasis on how categories of personhood, including the idea of corporations as
"global citizens," shape patterns of economic redistribution, entitlement, cooperation and conflict
between citizens, states, and business. Most recently, she completed field research on the U.S.-
Cambodia Bilateral Textile Trade Agreement.

Professor Abrami has been a recipient of several major fellowships and grants, including the
Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies-Committee on
Scholarly Communication with China (CSCC), the Institute for the Study of World Politics and
Fulbright. In addition, she was a recipient of the Bendix Award and the Simpson Fellowship,
both from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Abrami has consulted with ADUKI Party Ltd. (Vietnam), the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP), and most recently, served as a Ford Foundation-funded project advisor in
China (1999-2001). The latest project resulted in the Chinese publication, “Chengshi li de Zugu
Xingshang: Chengdu Shi Wailai Jingshangzhe de Shizheng Yanjiu” [City Shopkeepers and
Mobile Traders: Field Research on Chengdu City’s Migrant Business Community]. She speaks
both Vietnamese and Chinese.

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Related Websites:
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (2000)
http://www.oecd.org/EN/documents/0,,ENdocuments-93-nodirectorate-no-24-no-28,00.html

Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes http://www.sustainabilityindex.com/assessment/criteria.html

CERES Principles
http://www.ceres.org/our_work/principles.htm

The Global Compact The Nine Principles

http://65.214.34.30/un/gc/unweb.nsf/content/thenine.htm

UNEP Rio Declaration on Environment and Development

http://www.unep.org/Documents/Default.asp?DocumentID=78&ArticleID=1163

International Organisation for Standardisation ISO14000 Model

http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prodsservices/otherpubs/iso14000/index.html

International Labour Organisation International Labour Conventions

http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/english/convdisp1.htm

Fair Labour Association Code of Conduct

http://www.fairlabor.org/html/CodeOfConduct/index.html

International Business Leaders Forum/International Alert The Business of Peace

http://www.internationalalert.org/pdf/pubbus/Busxsum.pdf

International Finance Corporation, Doing Better Business through Effective Public Consultation
and Disclosure
http://www.ifc.org/enviro/Publications/Practice/practice.htm

AccountAbility AA1000 Series Publications

http://www.accountability.org.uk/resources/default.asp

International Finance Corporation, Investing in People: Sustaining Communities through

Improved Business Practice
http://www.ifc.org/enviro/Publications/Community/community.htm

SustainAbility Developing Value: The Business Case for Sustainability in Emerging Markets
http://www.sustainability.com/developingvalue/contents.asp

Private Sector Development Vice Presidency of the World Bank

http://www.worldbank.org/privatesector/

World Bank Institute Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility Program
http://www.csrwbi.org

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WBI E-Conferences on Corporate Responsibility, Accountability, and
Sustainability

The Program on CSR and Sustainable Competitiveness recognizes the value of utilizing
distance learning in the form of web-based courses, video conferences, and international
electronic dialogues and conferences. E-conferences have proven to be an important step in
sharing knowledge and bringing together leaders at the local and global level, and e-conferences
are an integral component of the CSR program’s distance learning strategy.
For each e-conference, expert moderators provide relevant and up-to-date background
readings and guidance leading to focused, high-quality discussions that translate into
action-plans working toward tangible change in client countries.

To ensure that e-conferences are effective and long-term learning tools, the organization of
side and follow-up events is encouraged. Participants are asked to prepare team
contributions from their countries and then develop action-plans that will translate the
recommendations from e-conference participants and moderators into concrete agendas that
work towards sustainable development. Thereby, e-conferences are especially useful for
discussion at the global level but also for action at the local level, building capacity for
sustainable development through civic empowerment and inclusion. When possible, we
organize video-conferences to bring the most active participants and teams together, in
order to facilitate follow-up activities and discussion of the issues raised during an e-conference.

62