Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) should be a pretty self explanatory term; Corporations involved in initiatives that benefit society in general and the uplift of underprivileged citizens in particular.

But what is CSR? Are corporations obliged to divert their assets towards taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, or it it just something good they could consider, without any legal or moral precedence?

Do companies only get involved in social development because it helps brand recognition and boosts sales?

There any many such interesting perspectives that a lot of us have about corporations getting involved in CSR work.

There are many, for example, who feel that social development is only an obligation of the government, and it is their right as tax paying citizens, and only feel that corporations only get involved in anything because of a greedy incentive to make even more money than they might be at any given point in time.

There are others who feel that there’s nothing wrong with companies making money or profits from projects that also help society as a by-product - why should CSR inherently mean "free" activities?

There are even others who think corporations can often have an even greater role to play in social uplift compared to donors and governments. Their take is that governments and donor-assisted projects would take too long compared to how quickly a corporation can choose to impact an area or start an initiative. Their take is that corporations have money, money = power. Perhaps even the power to bring about change.

A majority of the people isolate banks and corporations/businesses as having the largest amount of discretionary funds and influence and can enforce CSR initiatives more effectively. Based on that reasoning, the fact that these corporations have copious amounts of money at their disposal automatically obliges them to take the lead and give back to the people.

Finally, I’ve also seen people think that CSR in Pakistan is somewhat related to existing social problems which seem to have entrenched themselves within our social setup. For example, they feel that corporations are engaged in "CSR" when they are participating in anti-corruption business measures, have to account for the law and order situation and political turmoil the country might be facing. Compliance of ethical issues and international standards of the code of conduct seems to be part of "CSR" activiites.

Before we can start to unravel the more complex relationship of successful corporations towards societies, we need to understand what people in large feel CSR is.

What do you think? Have you heard any interesting perspective from your friends, family or from anyone around on how or why corporations should treat citizens in a certain way, or regarding the types of activities they should be involved in? Let me know in the comments!

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