Shanghai, July 12- “The scope of corporate social responsibility (CSR) should involve a number of stakeholders such as employees, minority shareholders, consumers, suppliers, purchasing agents, governments, communities and competitors in business, which jointly constitute the relevant main bodies that enterprises are responsible for”. This afternoon, Yang Li, a professor from the KoGuan Law School of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, visited Eastday interview room, weaved a fascinating and captivating narrative about the meaning of CSR and put forward his own views on the evaluation activity. Moreover, he shared some advanced foreign ideas and introduced the domestic status quo of CSR.

Since the official launch of "sharing the future of green development" of CSR Excellence Awards in Shanghai from April 28, it has selected 83 companies in nearly 100 cases. Up till now, online vote and first evaluation of panel has already been concluded.

External experience of CSR: To drive the development of corporate social responsibility with legislation

Talking about the external experience worthy of learning from, Yang claimed that international organizations have played a leading role. For example, the Global Compact had already issued the ISO14000 International Standard that involves CSR long ago. But, it was not until 2010 that 156 member states achieved a worldwide consensus on CSR for the first time, basing on the modified ISO26000 standard which locates the basic identity of CSR and sets the fundamental direction of its development pattern.

At the same time, pluralistic measures to propel the development of CSR taken by those countries are also worthy of reference. These measures include but not limited to putting much more emphasis on making use of institutional scheme, either hard laws or soft laws, and taking advantage of the process in which multinational corporations weaves the network of global economy so as to prompt the industrial chain mode of CSR. Yang said that relevant corporate laws have been modified in regard to CSR both in the US and the UK. To illustrate this point, he gave some examples: If an involved manager is deprived of freedom in the court, it would even be eligible for the judge to consider the thorough influence brought onto the corporation and its stakeholders by the long-term absence of manager and accordingly try to substitute long-term freedom penalty with property punishment as far as possible; food manufacturers should undertake certain amount responsibility for the weight gains of their customers.

For the past few years, during the process of prompting CSR of all countries, our neighbor- India’s experience is especially valuable for China. In 2013, India made some major changes to the Corporation Law, which requires every enterprise to take out 3% of annual net profit to cover the CSR expenditure in next year. By this way, fulfilling CSR becomes a legal obligation for enterprises.

Yang pointed out the most important lesson for China taught by CSR is that, in the future, on this issue the invisible hand of state could reasonably intervene in the field of private rights. “Apart from prompting CSR from the perspectives of the soft power of business environment, the ethics of enterprises and interior corporate governance, international organizations and countries start to utilize institutionalization to step into a new phase of prompting CSR more mandatorily and turn the field originally adjusted only by moral principles into an institutionalized field administered by the state.

Governments and diverse organizations: boost the development of CSR

Yang insisted that there should at least be three key roles undertaken by the government in constructing the institutionalization of CSR: (1) the government should lead the institutionalization related to CSR; (2) the government should coordinate plural powers which propel the construction of CSR including corporations, trade associations and NGOs; (3) the government should provide a platform for as well as support CSR construction activities such as standard setting, report release, case selection and benchmark establishment.

Furthermore, from wide view of the experience and lessons of other countries, apart from dependent on self-discipline of corporations and mandatory intervention of state supervision and institutionalization, in the long run the prompt of CSR should mainly depend on socialized plural organizations such as trade associations and NGOs. “Therefore, CSR Excellence Awards held in Shanghai this time, which incorporates famous trade associations and media such as Syntao Co. Ltd, Shanghai Association of Foreign Investment and Eastday, is itself an approach to forge consensus on social responsibility and thus is laudable.

The development of CSR in Shanghai: take a lead at home

Talking about the performance regarding CSR of Shanghai, Yang affirmed its gigantic achievements in the following three perspectives: (1) Shanghai Federation of Economic Organizations, an influential trade organization, will organize state-owned enterprises, private enterprises and corporations with foreign capital together to release CSR reports intensively and will select out the excellent ones of them every year; (2) People’s Government in Pudong New District, which is a regional government, has already established a special office for prompting CSR long ago. It takes full accountability for the release of CSR report of all Chinese funded companies or corporations with foreign capital in that district. Moreover, it has even published a competitiveness index of Pudong New District; (3) the Shanghai Quality and Technology Supervision Bureau, has established the 1.0 version of local standard of CSR report.

Talking about the general situation of CSR in China, Yang claimed that though state-owned enterprises have undertaken a model role, there are still two major problems in the present construction: (1) the awareness of corporations of their social responsibility is far beyond in place. For example, a number of corporations still think that to undertake social responsibility is totally equal to supporting charity; (2) great gap exists between enterprises of difference natures in terms of CSR fulfillment. Central enterprises and state-owned enterprises are usually benchmarks and role models while the situation of private enterprises is not that optimistic and still needs to be improved. What’s especially worth mentioning is that actual evaluation of CSR of multinational companies tends to be opposite to people’s impression.

In the end of the interview, Yang put forward that the aim of holding CSR related activities should include two perspectives: firstly, it could be expected that though the evaluation of excellent cases, benchmarks and role models of excellent enterprises in Shanghai in practicing social responsibility could be selected out; moreover, it could also be an attempt to construct the discourse system of China in regard to the CSR evaluation standard. In addition to the aforementioned perspectives, the ripple effect is also involved. CSR Excellence Awards per se is an attempt co-organized by the government, trade associations, mainstream media and plural NGOs to prompt the development of CSR, which is identical with fundamental idea of the development of CSR. Therefore, the CSR Excellence Awards itself is an exemplary demonstration of practicing social responsibility.

By an internship writer.