CSR is answer in time of crisis: Ligteringen
By Park Si-soo
In a time of economic recession, it seems natural that private firms are more attentive to their profitability than their relationship with the local community.
Yet this reveals ignorance of the latter’s pivotal role in “securing sustainable growth and a high level of trust from customers, employees and investors,” according to an international advocate of corporate social responsibility.
“Corporate social responsibility doesn’t help companies increase their profit next quarter. But it helps companies become more transparent in customer practices and achieve good relations with customers and communities,” Ernst Ligteringen, chief executive of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), said in an interview with The Korea Times, Monday.
“It also ensures a high level of employee motivation and a better competitive position, enabling companies to attract the most talented people in the labor market and keep them…because people like to work for companies that are serious about relations with the environment and society.”
He said people can no longer judge a company just by the level of profit it makes, but how it operates in relation to these. “A company that operates in harmony that helps develop solutions to the future is a company with more value for its customers, investors and all of society,” the GRI president said.
The GRI is an Amsterdam-based international organization with a mission to make sustainability reporting standard practice.
Forty-eight out of the 100 biggest companies in South Korea voluntarily reported self-assessments of social responsibility to the GRI this year, up from 42 in 2008, according to the KPMG International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting 2011.
Asked for the reason for the sluggish increase in reporting, Ligteringen cited companies’ lack of understanding of its value.
“What makes it hard is that companies are not familiar with the value of corporate social responsibility,” he said. “Many traditional companies don’t understand it yet. They just take it as philanthropy. They don’t understand yet its relevance with their future.”
But the GRI president noted things are changing gradually, saying an increasing number of major companies have acknowledged the value of their social responsibility, demonstrating the results of their achievements.
He underlined that companies with a strong sense of social responsibility are relatively free from corruption and other wrongdoings. “You cannot be responsible for society without being transparent. The two completely interact,” he said.
He expressed his wish to see Korea leading global campaigns to promote corporate social responsibility. “Korea is a country that leads in so many ways,” he said. “The world is looking to Korea to help develop solutions that we all need.”