Mr Neville Isdell, CEO of the Coca-Cola company, stated that businesses should be viewed from a “broader context”. He suggested that communities must be made sustainable, if not for the people then at least for the businesses – a sustainable community means a sustainable business. Therefore several companies such as Wal-Mart, General Electric and Coca-cola are now becoming a lot more self-conscious when it comes to their environmental actions so as not to compromise future generations since they are all potential customers.
Large business schools are also starting to pick up on this market trend and are therefore beginning to incorporate it into their programs. Kevin Thompson, a senior program manager at IBM, stated that “just as an M.B.A. is expected to know how to do financial modeling or how to read a balance sheet…increasingly there will be an expectation they can address the core society, educational, and environmental challenges”. Even the Stanford Graduate School of Business is now offering Environmental Entrepreneurship and Ethical Issues in the Biotech Industry as an added elective as well as giving students the chance to earn certificates in CSR.
Furthermore McKinsey and Company’s survey, a consultant company for large corporations, revealed that 90 per cent of global Cheif Executives only adopt CSR initiatives as a way to yeild business results.
Corporate Social Responsibility has taken a great leap from improving the here and now to improving the future, only because it’s beneficial for the companies and the trend has thus transformed from being a consumer-orientated benefits initative to becoming a business strategy central to the corporation’s planning process. After all, as the saying suggests, the more these companies sow, the more benefits they shall reap.
