CSR Awards in Moldova: community focused

CSR awards are one of many ways to aknowledge and recognize CSR-related work undertaken by companies. Also, such awards are a good way to promote CSR concepts and widely used in the world by various corporate and governmental entities as well as business associations. Here and here and here are just a few examples. To join in this international trend, Amcham Moldova decided to develop its own CSR Awards to achieve the above objectives. So, this year at the upcoming CSR Conference the first winners of the CSR Awards will be announced and I'll post their names here.

As the deadline for the submission of applications is behind, we have five companies participating with seven projects. The companies are: Rompetrol Moldova, Avon Cosmetics Moldova, Sun Communications, RED UNION FENOSA and MOLDCELL.

According to companies' own assessment, the participating projects are almost all community projects. Assuming that these companies are most actively engaged in CSR activities in Moldova, we could derive some general conclusions regarding the level of development of CSR in Moldova. Specifically, CSR is understood and practiced as something - frequently unrelated to the company's core activity - directed towards and benefiting the 'socially vulnerable' groups (women, orphaned children, elderly)without any attempt to measure ROI. Moreover, such projects are not even regarded as an investment per se. Therefore, CSR in Moldova is currently at the philantropy stage of its development.

CSR conferences in the region

October is the month of conferences, including in the CSR area. An important regional CSR event, The Central and Eastern Europe Corporate Responsibility Summit, is taking place this week in Prague (13-14 October) and next week the CSR’08 “Living the Green” will happen in Bucharest (20-21 October). On 31st of October, Chisinau will host the 2nd edition of the International CSR Conference “Government and Business for Better Social Responsibility” co-organized by Amcham Moldova, Eurasia Foundation and UN Global Compact.

In comparison with the above-mentioned regional CSR initiatives which focus on the different aspects of the CSR case for business such as triple bottom line, social and environmental reporting, CSR strategy, stakeholder engagement, reputation and brand management, the 2008 CSR Conference in Moldova is at an earlier stage. The agenda of the conference stresses the importance of an effective dialogue among all stakeholders: the public & private sectors, civil society and mass media. The business community here feels strongly that the Moldovan government does not encourage CSR to the extent it should and could. Some of the specific challenges are: 1) mass-media is penalized for publicizing CSR initiatives; 2) the fiscal system discourages philanthropy; 3) the non-transparent governmental ‘fundraising’ practices discourage the Moldovan businesses to embrace a more evolved and sustainable type of CSR.

The level of CSR development among the business community in Moldova does not yet allow discussion of integrate-CSR-into-your-core-business results such as new competitive advantage, improved financial performance, enhanced brand image and reputation, increased quality workforce retention and more effective risk management. However, the goal of this conference is to enable the Moldovan business community to join in the rapidly-evolving global CSR movement, and realize that CSR is not about a bunch of charity and philanthropy projects anymore. Rather, to quote Wayne Visser, the founder and CEO of CSR International, it is “something that has more to do with the impacts of companies’ core operations on people and the planet.”

Why the Wall Street should save itself

Last night I had a 'catch-up' meeting with Dumitru, a friend, blogger and expert in international affairs at Petit Cafe, a brand new lounge bar I discovered recently in Chisinau. Since we both share a policy background, we started debating the financial crisis underway in the US. Is the federal government 'bail out' plan good or bad policy? Dumitru was arguing that the 'bail out' plan was the right - actually, the only viable - thing to do because the consequences of not 'saving' the Wall Street would be unimaginably disastruous for the US and the rest of the world.

I do not think the US government’s plan is so great. Although Dumitru’s and other analysts’ economic and political pro-arguments sounded very compelling, I felt they were not completely appropriate for this kind of situation. As I was looking for arguments to support my “gut feeling”, I came across Mallen Baker’s column in The Ethical Corporation magazine, entitled “Financial ethics: Learning from chaos after a collapse of trust”. While the crisis is indisputably serious, it is clear that it has been generated by completely irresponsible companies & groups of individuals.

It has been created by companies that began to believe in a form of business where trust and integrity were naive, fringe concepts that played no part in the process of wealth creation. And yet, the whole edifice came crashing down when trust disappeared overnight, when the banks didn't believe each other and refused to do business together.

So this discussion brings us straight to the debate about corporate responsibility. Regardless of sector or industry, companies tend to amass great amounts of resources and power that influences lives of millions of people. Responsible businesses use such influence with maximum positive impact and minimum costs. Irresponsible companies that specialize in ‘making money of thin air’, ‘playing the system while they can’ and ‘creating nothing of real value’ should be finally held accountable rather than bailed out. It is too bad that the costs and pain of learning this lesson of ‘shared madness’ will be spread out so broadly.