 |  |  |  |  |  |
CSR
ochrona środowiska
edukacja
ekologia
kodeks etyczny
raport 2004
public relations
biznes a miejsce pracy
filantropia
raport 2007
biznes a rynek
zdrowie
raport
zarządzanie
raport społeczny
zrównoważony rozwój
biznes a społeczeństwo
odpowiedzialność
wolontariat
corporate
kampania społeczna
governance
CRM
fair trade
raport 2006
konsument
raport 2005
etyka
human resources
Year 2007 – what was it like for the responsible business?
Corporate social responsibility remained a strong trend in a business world, and that was probably the most important thing that happened in the last year.
In spite of many predictions proclaimed by business trendsetters, journalists, consultants, or by ordinary malcontents, CSR holds itself well, and is still booming in Poland as well as in the entire world. Hopefully, it will become one of key determinants of good management. It should, because in practice, it deals with the most important issue: the role that business feature in a society. It can be of course called otherwise - some people may be reluctant for “social responsibility” slogan, but the fact is, that challenges that we are facing, must be solved with participation of business sector. To great extent they concern economic, climate, demographic and political changes. Some of them are also related to poverty, exclusion, poor quality of life, lack of respect for human rights and labour law, poor education and health systems, limited access to labour market and to consumption goods, or difficulty with securing a room for open, public discussion. These were only some of the most common issues. Once we were saying that solving these problems is a task for government. Now, we are aware, that it must be done collectively.
Polish market is progressively influenced by changes that come from increasing social expectances. Not all of challenges related to this process are already visible in our marketplace, but – similarly to global trends – social and ecological risks become more and more important determinant of long-term corporate strategies. Other things that add to these strategies are chances arising from social responsible solutions. What we observe right now, is that managers of global corporations operating on Polish market become aware of this fact. Mangers working for polish companies also start to realize, that company’s development, competitiveness, values or even ability to get the best employees depends on proper strategic decisions. Decisions that meet simultaneously challenges of social, economic and ecological character.
Therefore, corporate social responsibility is a trend, which will not pass like other seasonal, business ideas, but will last, evolve, transform and adapt to new challenges, expectances and possibilities. What we could observe in the last year, was CSR becoming widespread professional, or at least beginning to evolve in this direction. Up until now, we have had a general CSR. In fact, almost everything could be understood as CRS: philanthropy, volunteering and social marketing. But in the same time, everything was melting and in consequence, CSR was perceived as a not well defined idea. Becoming professional, had allowed CSR to channel its activities into five, clearly distinguishable directions.
Social CSR
This direction embraces everyday philanthropy on the one side, and the most innovative projects based on private-social partnership on the other. In spite of common stereotypes, business in Poland is extremely generous. Even small enterprises’ owners very often make financial or material donations for some social purposes. Usually, it is due to their sense of moral responsibility and necessity of sharing something with others. Unfortunately, not always it is done in agreement with the law. In such cases social profile of CSR becomes “grey zone” in business, causing sometimes negative results for the business itself. Good news is that it is changing, and the more and more businessmen know how to help others without risking to harm their own company. Among them there are some that start to realize, that by helping others they can help themselves and their businesses. They can see the source of their success in developing positive relationships with potential clients, partners or employees, and therefore gaining a better position on the market. Officially, they will not admit to this kind of thinking, because in Poland there still dominates a stereotype, in which talking about profitability of philanthropy is perceived as inappropriate. In this mindset, only non profitable attitude can guarantee transparency of such activities. That is why, it is so hard to find and describe examples of good practices of social CSR among small companies.
This stereotype is copied by managers from bigger companies, who present their social commitment as part of non profitable help. Such attitude brings about many problems, that in last year provoked series of discussions. Does the management misappropriate funds of shareholders when it decides to support some social project with money coming from marketing budget? In principle, “non-profitable help” describes only a situation in which company owners or shareholders dedicate voluntarily some of company’s profits for social purposes. Philanthropic operations become transparent, when they are executed by corporate foundations, feed with funds coming from company’s profits. This procedure secures, that foundation’s activities are completely independent from current commercial operations of their donator. In fact, last year, the number of corporate foundations increased substantially. It means, that philanthropic activities become a mature form of support for various social needs.
However, we still observe many social projects realized directly by companies, usually with some support of non-governmental institutions. The biggest among them, like “Warto być za!” by Kompania Piwowarska, „Podziel się posiłkiem” by Danone, „Unlimited Potential” by Microsoft have a long-term and strategic character. Generally, information about social benefits of these projects is well exposed and easily accessible. Far more difficult is to find reliable information about benefits that a company that is managing such project gets. Mutual benefits are the essence of private-social partnership, that is why this type of projects is often named as „strategic philanthropy” or „social investments”. However, the stereotype so popular in Poland remains. Only in last year, during open public debates on social engagement, representatives of business leaders evoked in their speeches such slogans as: „helping”, non-profitability”, „support”, „moral responsibility”.
Social CSR is the most popular trend in Poland. It already includes few hundreds of successful and effective initiatives as well as thousands of small projects, who are well known mainly to their direct beneficiaries and local communities. Most of them are submitted to periodic evaluations (necessary for grants allocation and monitoring of short and long term effects), but only few companies are eager to share information about their own benefits coming from this type of activity. Yet, it is thanks to reliable analysis of mutual benefits, that is possible to improve such projects, increase benefits for both sides and evaluate economic and social effectiveness. Not until we start this dialogue, there will be a chance for truly innovative projects and important inter sector coalitions to emerge and work for positive social changes.
System CSR
This direction, although known already for some time, had not become an important part of strategic management in many enterprises until the last year. System CSR is an example of management professionalisation. It does not draw big media attention, and probably that is why it is not discussed as widely as social CSR. But situations in which a management declares company’s commitment for CSR activities but is not supporting it with managerial infrastructure happens very sparsely. It was not until recent times, that such promises were often given without serious consideration. Often, information about respecting ethical standards was added to company’s mission statement, or was mentioned in other strategic documents in form of voluntary commitment to help a certain group of people. But these words never led to any actions.
We heard and red examples of typical declaration: “People are our most important asset”, or „We are responsible part of the community”. But when we talked with employees, it quickly become obvious that declarations were far from being truth: irresponsible behaviour of managers, practices having nothing in common with being responsible and sometimes being even close to illegal. Fortunately, it changes. Declarations concerning ethical issues in business and in social responsibility became serious and are treated with respect. These companies, whose behaviour was considered controversial, stopped talking big and started to implement transparent procedures. A significant example of these changes: a manager of one of hypermarket chains supported a creation of trade union in his company. He saw in this act a possibility to get more information about any faulty actions appearing in the lowest levels of workforce structure. Being able to define them would allow company to implement more effective solutions.
System approach to CSR means use of management instruments. If management signs a CSR declaration, it must support it with introduction of operational goals, procedures, indicators, reports, tasks assignment, methodical monitoring and supervisors appointment. Last year, in our marketplace few consulting companies emerged, whose aim was to support this process. And managers, eventually, started to combine a management knowledge with policy social responsibility. The first CSR ranking of „Good Company” made by Manager Magazyn, rated various aspects of CSR system approach. Other initiative – a PricewaterhouseCoopers contest rewarded the best CSR reports. HR managers started to implement in their work a „management of diversity”, which would not be possible without the Gender Index. Examples shown above are only a small part of large group of initiatives that helped system CSR to find its way to the corporate management meetings, where it got more attention and found support for further professional development. This is probably only a beginning - there are new management instruments that we don’t know yet, but who were designed and implemented in other parts of the world.
Market CSR
This approach had just emerged. It concerns impact that CSR has on various instruments used by companies to influence their clients. Labels of many products shows that some part of income will be remitted to social-oriented organisations, initiatives, etc. It is a classic example of social marketing, which is not a new phenomenon in Poland, but who gained a lot of attention during last year. But it’s not all. A lot of companies learned, that controversial advertisement message will not guarantee customers’ sympathy. On contrary. It turned out that advertisements using sexist stereotypes or cruelty towards animals (like in Cropp Town’s spot: a mouse cut on half) can indeed generate reluctance for the company. The kindest opinion on such idea that I spotted on internet was ”disgusting, not mentioning the fact, that this ad is a plagiarism”. Such reactions provoked many companies to change their attitude towards „creative” ideas of advertising agencies and to look more cautiously into their advertising message.
It was not longer that two years ago, that I stated, that mature consumer awareness would not appear in Poland before forty years. I must withdraw from it. Such concepts as „fair trade”, „ethical shopping” became extremely trendy last year, especially among young people. While agreeing on a meeting place, it was often that I heard, that we should choose a place where “fair trade“ coffee is served. Of course, statistically this group cannot be called representative, but it has significant influence on public opinion. As a consequence, some marketing managers changed their approach to CSR into more serious and rejected the opinion that consumers are interested only in the lowest price and can be manipulated by a controversy.
As a part of market CSR, new subjects came about, like market for social responsible products, which is now slowly developing (Mleczny Start as an example of our local initiative). Descriptions of certain services or labels of products contain information about educational character, statements raising consumer’s awareness or inviting to support social initiatives. Companies co-operate with suppliers - who form a part of social economy - and therefore, support people who otherwise would be excluded.
Market CSR is by no doubt a difficult area, demanding not only systematic research but also education. There is no place in the whole world, where all people would choose to buy products fabricated by social responsible companies. It depends on many factors. It is good that this process had already started in Poland.
Ecological CSR
During UNDP conference, that I recently participated in, I heard about complete ecological ignorance of Poles. Indeed, statistically, ecological awareness of polish citizens is far smaller than those of citizens of other countries. Despite many visible activities of non governmental ecological organizations, this situation didn’t change radically. However, last year also brought some promising improvements in this area.
The most important element, that lately shaped our ecological awareness was a public debate on plastic shopping bags. Irrespectively from its final results, we already can draw a conclusion, that many people had received a clear and simple message: on our actions taken in the marketplace depends a condition of the environment that we are living in. In global perspective, it was Stern Report (probably not too well known to the wider public) that have opened a serious discussion among business leaders. It’s message was simple: benefits that come from consequent and early reaction on environmental changes caused by economy, are far bigger than costs that are related to it.
For many years, practical managers as well as critical sceptics have been asking themselves if CSR pays back. If it brings any business profits when included in a company’s strategy. Dissertations written on this subject run into hundreds. Finally, consensus was reached: it was not possible to give a unequivocal response to these questions. Stern’s Report injects some fresh air into this debate. It states that ecological CSR does pay back. It is profitable for the economy as a whole, for separate trades, but not necessarily for every company – while some of them will be forced to change a profile, or even a trade, others will see dramatic increase in income.
In Poland, Stern’s Report didn’t provoke such intense debate as plastic shopping bags subject. The most popular Polish journal „Gazeta Wyborcza” placed an article in which the report wasn’t treated seriously at all. What’s worst – it was event laugh down. Despite critical reactions on this particular event, poor ecological CSR is still a fact. It becomes visible especially when we realize, that everywhere in the civilized world last year passed under a claim of “getting green”. It concerned not only CSR but every area of life.
In Poland, CSR – understood as voluntary activity that is reaching beyond law requirements - has no associations with protection of environment. Explanation is simple. This area of companies’ existence is to a major extent regulated by law, independent dispositions and other decisions made by public administration. Administration, from its part, is responsible for immediate and full realization European regulations concerning ecology and business. As business sector in Poland was left behind other countries of EU in regard of ecological issues, most of companies, fighting fiercely for their survival on the marketplace, try to postpone implementation of these rules. Energetic policy, logistic policy, emission limits, product taxes and other obligations mean growing costs, which eventually must be paid by companies. It doesn’t left much room for voluntary commitments. This is probably the reason, why we still need to wait for ecological CSR to develop substantially. In the meantime, we can content ourselves with smaller successes, like growing ecological awareness among consumers and managers.
Public CSR
Until recently, this was the most unknown area of CSR. Of course, during last years European Commission was setting some trends in public CSR, but governments of particular countries, except United Kingdom, weren’t too enthusiastic in introducing them into real life. In most cases, it ended with general declarations. Last year brought a radical shift. In Italy, Spain, France, Lithuania and few other countries CSR became an important area of politics. Thanks to this new approach, several organisational instruments and initiatives have emerged: inter sector forums, financial solutions supporting CSR, strategies of popularisation CSR in business and public debate on country’s administration input in this undertaking.
Last year’s edition of „The CSR Navigator” report, show that this trend is not strictly limited to the members of UE. Governments of several other countries also saw in corporate social responsibility an important instrument, that can add to economical and social development, as well as economy’s competitiveness and public wealth.
In Poland some changes were also introduced, but most of them are still in the planning phase. UNDP initiated an inter sector dialog, with participation of civic and business sector, non-governmental organisations, academic environments, trade unions, public administration and media. It allowed to formulate a list of recommendations, presented to the government. Its reaction was positive, but to see rational effects, we need to wait few months more.
All these changes and increasing professionalisation of CSR will certainly enrich a discussion on new role of business in a society. At the beginning of 2007, a concept of „social enterprise”, created by Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize winner) in December 2006 got wide cover in a world press. At the beginning of 2008, Bill Gates lecture in Davos on revolutionary vision of business provoked new wave of discussions.
Yunus maintained, that apart of group of companies oriented towards maximisation of profits, there must exist a group of firms oriented towards maximisation of social wealth. Gates went few steps further, when he persuaded that each company must have a social mission, because it is the only reason for it to exists. And that means, that last year we witnessed a substantial shift in a mindset.
Bolesław Rok
tłumaczenie Ewa Brolska
Polish market is progressively influenced by changes that come from increasing social expectances. Not all of challenges related to this process are already visible in our marketplace, but – similarly to global trends – social and ecological risks become more and more important determinant of long-term corporate strategies. Other things that add to these strategies are chances arising from social responsible solutions. What we observe right now, is that managers of global corporations operating on Polish market become aware of this fact. Mangers working for polish companies also start to realize, that company’s development, competitiveness, values or even ability to get the best employees depends on proper strategic decisions. Decisions that meet simultaneously challenges of social, economic and ecological character.
Therefore, corporate social responsibility is a trend, which will not pass like other seasonal, business ideas, but will last, evolve, transform and adapt to new challenges, expectances and possibilities. What we could observe in the last year, was CSR becoming widespread professional, or at least beginning to evolve in this direction. Up until now, we have had a general CSR. In fact, almost everything could be understood as CRS: philanthropy, volunteering and social marketing. But in the same time, everything was melting and in consequence, CSR was perceived as a not well defined idea. Becoming professional, had allowed CSR to channel its activities into five, clearly distinguishable directions.
Social CSR
This direction embraces everyday philanthropy on the one side, and the most innovative projects based on private-social partnership on the other. In spite of common stereotypes, business in Poland is extremely generous. Even small enterprises’ owners very often make financial or material donations for some social purposes. Usually, it is due to their sense of moral responsibility and necessity of sharing something with others. Unfortunately, not always it is done in agreement with the law. In such cases social profile of CSR becomes “grey zone” in business, causing sometimes negative results for the business itself. Good news is that it is changing, and the more and more businessmen know how to help others without risking to harm their own company. Among them there are some that start to realize, that by helping others they can help themselves and their businesses. They can see the source of their success in developing positive relationships with potential clients, partners or employees, and therefore gaining a better position on the market. Officially, they will not admit to this kind of thinking, because in Poland there still dominates a stereotype, in which talking about profitability of philanthropy is perceived as inappropriate. In this mindset, only non profitable attitude can guarantee transparency of such activities. That is why, it is so hard to find and describe examples of good practices of social CSR among small companies.
This stereotype is copied by managers from bigger companies, who present their social commitment as part of non profitable help. Such attitude brings about many problems, that in last year provoked series of discussions. Does the management misappropriate funds of shareholders when it decides to support some social project with money coming from marketing budget? In principle, “non-profitable help” describes only a situation in which company owners or shareholders dedicate voluntarily some of company’s profits for social purposes. Philanthropic operations become transparent, when they are executed by corporate foundations, feed with funds coming from company’s profits. This procedure secures, that foundation’s activities are completely independent from current commercial operations of their donator. In fact, last year, the number of corporate foundations increased substantially. It means, that philanthropic activities become a mature form of support for various social needs.
However, we still observe many social projects realized directly by companies, usually with some support of non-governmental institutions. The biggest among them, like “Warto być za!” by Kompania Piwowarska, „Podziel się posiłkiem” by Danone, „Unlimited Potential” by Microsoft have a long-term and strategic character. Generally, information about social benefits of these projects is well exposed and easily accessible. Far more difficult is to find reliable information about benefits that a company that is managing such project gets. Mutual benefits are the essence of private-social partnership, that is why this type of projects is often named as „strategic philanthropy” or „social investments”. However, the stereotype so popular in Poland remains. Only in last year, during open public debates on social engagement, representatives of business leaders evoked in their speeches such slogans as: „helping”, non-profitability”, „support”, „moral responsibility”.
Social CSR is the most popular trend in Poland. It already includes few hundreds of successful and effective initiatives as well as thousands of small projects, who are well known mainly to their direct beneficiaries and local communities. Most of them are submitted to periodic evaluations (necessary for grants allocation and monitoring of short and long term effects), but only few companies are eager to share information about their own benefits coming from this type of activity. Yet, it is thanks to reliable analysis of mutual benefits, that is possible to improve such projects, increase benefits for both sides and evaluate economic and social effectiveness. Not until we start this dialogue, there will be a chance for truly innovative projects and important inter sector coalitions to emerge and work for positive social changes.
System CSR
This direction, although known already for some time, had not become an important part of strategic management in many enterprises until the last year. System CSR is an example of management professionalisation. It does not draw big media attention, and probably that is why it is not discussed as widely as social CSR. But situations in which a management declares company’s commitment for CSR activities but is not supporting it with managerial infrastructure happens very sparsely. It was not until recent times, that such promises were often given without serious consideration. Often, information about respecting ethical standards was added to company’s mission statement, or was mentioned in other strategic documents in form of voluntary commitment to help a certain group of people. But these words never led to any actions.
We heard and red examples of typical declaration: “People are our most important asset”, or „We are responsible part of the community”. But when we talked with employees, it quickly become obvious that declarations were far from being truth: irresponsible behaviour of managers, practices having nothing in common with being responsible and sometimes being even close to illegal. Fortunately, it changes. Declarations concerning ethical issues in business and in social responsibility became serious and are treated with respect. These companies, whose behaviour was considered controversial, stopped talking big and started to implement transparent procedures. A significant example of these changes: a manager of one of hypermarket chains supported a creation of trade union in his company. He saw in this act a possibility to get more information about any faulty actions appearing in the lowest levels of workforce structure. Being able to define them would allow company to implement more effective solutions.
System approach to CSR means use of management instruments. If management signs a CSR declaration, it must support it with introduction of operational goals, procedures, indicators, reports, tasks assignment, methodical monitoring and supervisors appointment. Last year, in our marketplace few consulting companies emerged, whose aim was to support this process. And managers, eventually, started to combine a management knowledge with policy social responsibility. The first CSR ranking of „Good Company” made by Manager Magazyn, rated various aspects of CSR system approach. Other initiative – a PricewaterhouseCoopers contest rewarded the best CSR reports. HR managers started to implement in their work a „management of diversity”, which would not be possible without the Gender Index. Examples shown above are only a small part of large group of initiatives that helped system CSR to find its way to the corporate management meetings, where it got more attention and found support for further professional development. This is probably only a beginning - there are new management instruments that we don’t know yet, but who were designed and implemented in other parts of the world.
Market CSR
This approach had just emerged. It concerns impact that CSR has on various instruments used by companies to influence their clients. Labels of many products shows that some part of income will be remitted to social-oriented organisations, initiatives, etc. It is a classic example of social marketing, which is not a new phenomenon in Poland, but who gained a lot of attention during last year. But it’s not all. A lot of companies learned, that controversial advertisement message will not guarantee customers’ sympathy. On contrary. It turned out that advertisements using sexist stereotypes or cruelty towards animals (like in Cropp Town’s spot: a mouse cut on half) can indeed generate reluctance for the company. The kindest opinion on such idea that I spotted on internet was ”disgusting, not mentioning the fact, that this ad is a plagiarism”. Such reactions provoked many companies to change their attitude towards „creative” ideas of advertising agencies and to look more cautiously into their advertising message.
It was not longer that two years ago, that I stated, that mature consumer awareness would not appear in Poland before forty years. I must withdraw from it. Such concepts as „fair trade”, „ethical shopping” became extremely trendy last year, especially among young people. While agreeing on a meeting place, it was often that I heard, that we should choose a place where “fair trade“ coffee is served. Of course, statistically this group cannot be called representative, but it has significant influence on public opinion. As a consequence, some marketing managers changed their approach to CSR into more serious and rejected the opinion that consumers are interested only in the lowest price and can be manipulated by a controversy.
As a part of market CSR, new subjects came about, like market for social responsible products, which is now slowly developing (Mleczny Start as an example of our local initiative). Descriptions of certain services or labels of products contain information about educational character, statements raising consumer’s awareness or inviting to support social initiatives. Companies co-operate with suppliers - who form a part of social economy - and therefore, support people who otherwise would be excluded.
Market CSR is by no doubt a difficult area, demanding not only systematic research but also education. There is no place in the whole world, where all people would choose to buy products fabricated by social responsible companies. It depends on many factors. It is good that this process had already started in Poland.
Ecological CSR
During UNDP conference, that I recently participated in, I heard about complete ecological ignorance of Poles. Indeed, statistically, ecological awareness of polish citizens is far smaller than those of citizens of other countries. Despite many visible activities of non governmental ecological organizations, this situation didn’t change radically. However, last year also brought some promising improvements in this area.
The most important element, that lately shaped our ecological awareness was a public debate on plastic shopping bags. Irrespectively from its final results, we already can draw a conclusion, that many people had received a clear and simple message: on our actions taken in the marketplace depends a condition of the environment that we are living in. In global perspective, it was Stern Report (probably not too well known to the wider public) that have opened a serious discussion among business leaders. It’s message was simple: benefits that come from consequent and early reaction on environmental changes caused by economy, are far bigger than costs that are related to it.
For many years, practical managers as well as critical sceptics have been asking themselves if CSR pays back. If it brings any business profits when included in a company’s strategy. Dissertations written on this subject run into hundreds. Finally, consensus was reached: it was not possible to give a unequivocal response to these questions. Stern’s Report injects some fresh air into this debate. It states that ecological CSR does pay back. It is profitable for the economy as a whole, for separate trades, but not necessarily for every company – while some of them will be forced to change a profile, or even a trade, others will see dramatic increase in income.
In Poland, Stern’s Report didn’t provoke such intense debate as plastic shopping bags subject. The most popular Polish journal „Gazeta Wyborcza” placed an article in which the report wasn’t treated seriously at all. What’s worst – it was event laugh down. Despite critical reactions on this particular event, poor ecological CSR is still a fact. It becomes visible especially when we realize, that everywhere in the civilized world last year passed under a claim of “getting green”. It concerned not only CSR but every area of life.
In Poland, CSR – understood as voluntary activity that is reaching beyond law requirements - has no associations with protection of environment. Explanation is simple. This area of companies’ existence is to a major extent regulated by law, independent dispositions and other decisions made by public administration. Administration, from its part, is responsible for immediate and full realization European regulations concerning ecology and business. As business sector in Poland was left behind other countries of EU in regard of ecological issues, most of companies, fighting fiercely for their survival on the marketplace, try to postpone implementation of these rules. Energetic policy, logistic policy, emission limits, product taxes and other obligations mean growing costs, which eventually must be paid by companies. It doesn’t left much room for voluntary commitments. This is probably the reason, why we still need to wait for ecological CSR to develop substantially. In the meantime, we can content ourselves with smaller successes, like growing ecological awareness among consumers and managers.
Public CSR
Until recently, this was the most unknown area of CSR. Of course, during last years European Commission was setting some trends in public CSR, but governments of particular countries, except United Kingdom, weren’t too enthusiastic in introducing them into real life. In most cases, it ended with general declarations. Last year brought a radical shift. In Italy, Spain, France, Lithuania and few other countries CSR became an important area of politics. Thanks to this new approach, several organisational instruments and initiatives have emerged: inter sector forums, financial solutions supporting CSR, strategies of popularisation CSR in business and public debate on country’s administration input in this undertaking.
Last year’s edition of „The CSR Navigator” report, show that this trend is not strictly limited to the members of UE. Governments of several other countries also saw in corporate social responsibility an important instrument, that can add to economical and social development, as well as economy’s competitiveness and public wealth.
In Poland some changes were also introduced, but most of them are still in the planning phase. UNDP initiated an inter sector dialog, with participation of civic and business sector, non-governmental organisations, academic environments, trade unions, public administration and media. It allowed to formulate a list of recommendations, presented to the government. Its reaction was positive, but to see rational effects, we need to wait few months more.
All these changes and increasing professionalisation of CSR will certainly enrich a discussion on new role of business in a society. At the beginning of 2007, a concept of „social enterprise”, created by Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize winner) in December 2006 got wide cover in a world press. At the beginning of 2008, Bill Gates lecture in Davos on revolutionary vision of business provoked new wave of discussions.
Yunus maintained, that apart of group of companies oriented towards maximisation of profits, there must exist a group of firms oriented towards maximisation of social wealth. Gates went few steps further, when he persuaded that each company must have a social mission, because it is the only reason for it to exists. And that means, that last year we witnessed a substantial shift in a mindset.
Bolesław Rok
tłumaczenie Ewa Brolska
| Dodaj komentarz: |
||||||
|
