Audrey Ng | audrey_a@nus.edu.sg
the ridge news
A NUSSU Publication
Feb. 28, 2008
Story Highlights:
- CSR Awareness Week 2008 held over two weeks by CSR Student Movement
- The event promotes and inspires CSR practice among NUS students, said Yang
- CSR seen as an increasingly important part of business strategy
- Speakers brought up questions on the ethics of CSR
When you buy your next bottle of moisturizer from The Body Shop, you may be glad to know that you are contributing to the livelihood of someone living in Ghana.
The Body Shop, well known for its CSR practices, and many other companies are incorporating CSR as part of their business plan.
“Corporate Social Responsibility”, more commonly known as CSR, is when companies acknowledge that their activities have an impact on society and work to contribute to sustainable development.
The CSR Student Movement (CSRSM) held their CSR Awareness Week 2008 from Feb 11 to 22.
Alexander Yang, president of CSRSM, said the purpose of the event is to promote awareness of CSR to the National University of Singapore community and inspire students to contribute to the value systems of the companies they work in future.
The CSRSM held film screenings and speaker sessions over the two weeks.
The films, “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” and “A Decent Factory”, were chosen to show the importance of telling the truth for companies practicing CSR.
There were three speaker sessions held in the NUS Business School, and guests from several organizations such as Singapore Compact for CSR, IKEA Singapore and CSR Asia shared their thoughts on CSR.
According to Singapore Compact, the national society aimed at promoting CSR in Singapore, “CSR is increasingly being seen as an important and integral part of normal business operations.”
Graham Owens from CSR Asia said that CSR is more than just community investment and philanthropy, but a “business strategy” of how companies conduct their operations, he said.
Owens said that there is a need for transparency, especially among investors, and that “companies have to show stakeholders what we’re doing; that we’re doing good CSR.”
Associate Professor Dr. Natasha Hamilton Hart from the Southeast Asian Studies Programme provided a refreshing alternative viewpoint about how companies are practicing CSR.
Hart’s talk raised the question of how ethical CSR actually is.
She questioned whether we should welcome CSR as a good thing, since “many companies claim to be virtuous but are actually responsible for damage” such as tobacco companies.
She agreed that while, there are positive aspects of CSR, there are “more pitfalls and potential costs associated with this new interest in CSR.”
Yang hopes that CSR week would raise questions among students and that they would understand that, they too can have an impact on communities as individual consumers and as corporate delegates.
He added that he hoped CSR week would build an interest level among students to a point that the Business School would start an undergraduate module on it.
CSR Awareness Week 2008 was sponsored by City Developments Limited and supported by Singapore Compact.
This is a good initiative. I publish a CSR-based magazine in Nigeria, and it’s good to expand my horizon with this project that’s targetted at young folks. Please keep it up and do link up.