Talent under the radar

 ‘Underprivileged’, the politically correct term for poverty, sometimes euphemistically covers the lack of mental abilities. And thence in subsequent associations, the poor get equated with inert minds oblivious to progress. In India, the rural districts are larger than cities, and are peopled with many more very low-income groups with far fewer amenities. Overwhelmed by the advancements of the new millennium, they look up to metropolitan cultures in awe, while the latter, truth be told, seldom consider them as other than a statistic of backwardness – but are they really? 

Maslow’s theory places needs in a hierarchy, postulating that higher needs emerge on fulfillment of lower ones. On satisfaction of physiological needs, new needs for security emerge in people’s minds. When security has been dealt with, social needs have to be met; after which, self-esteem become potent. Thereafter, the self-actualizing needs begin to arise. The common assumption grows that as long as lower needs are unfulfilled, higher needs are dormant. By extension, since those surrounded by poverty must barely meet their physiological needs, they must aspire no further.

We decide to visit a rural district in West Bengal, a few hundred miles out of Kolkata to find out. Our city acquaintances enumerate the tourist spots of the region for us – religious icons and cottage industry. We are told where we can absorb the spirituality, and also where items for our drawing rooms would come cheap. The blanket assumption seems to be that the faceless masses have no talents otherwise to positively contribute to society. In fact, in remote pockets of the country, the backwardness of indigenous communities and tribes are kept as such in practices meant to preserve ancient cultures. These populations remain in isolation on reservations cut off from the mainstream, attractions for avid tourists and anthropologists. Small wonder then, that in carrying forward the traditions of the ages, their associated superstitions are also swallowed unquestioningly.

Meanwhile, technological advancements have concentrated in the metros, where competitions of the global marketplace are generally intellect-based. Although the urban numbers are but a fraction of India’s vast population, manpower supply exceeds demand. The prices of skills drive down, which is the basis of the lucrative outsourcing industry. A surfeit of Indian men and women join the virtual reality of business and knowledge processes. They change names and accents to handle services informatics for Western consumers, beaming out advice from a nation devoid of the same organized social system.

At least 25% of India lives below the poverty line mainly in the far-flung regions, where daily subsistence is a challenge. There is a label for this category of people – bpl, i.e., incomes of less than half of one US dollar a day. And ‘they’ are not just individuals, but extended families made up of parents, grandparents and children, dependent on local vegetation and governmental subsidies to survive in the age of information.

Beyond city limits, the surroundings change. There are more open spaces of natural beauty, and more greenery lining the highway, the tree branches meeting overhead to form a natural canopy. Breathing is automatically easier as pollutions of the concrete jungle are left behind, and we pass open fields of agricultural crop and fruit orchards. But the living standards are impoverished, small dwellings tinged with neglect and the sense of time standing still, cheek by jowl with large tracts of land acquired for development by corporate houses, walled off from the humble populace.

At our destination, it is a surprise to actually see a building made of brick and mortar, three storeys high, with further work in progress. We hear that outlying institutions receive governmental grants for building structure, although they must find the funds elsewhere to actually run the school. The institution, for boys only, boasts of eleven hundred names on the rolls, but privately we learn that keeping children in school is their greatest problem. A free mid-day meal is an incentive, but in middle school between classes VI-VIII, attrition is high.

The village boys are expected to follow in the footsteps of their forefathers, preserving occupational traditions. For many of the parents, modern education is a waste of time, and there is more economic worth in an extra pair of hands at work. In much of rural India, even males seeking academic achievements, are in minority. And women, far less able to cross the gender boundaries of the ages, scarcely enter the equation.

Eleven teachers deal with the inmate population of the school, at a ratio of 1:100, with less than half a minute to spare for each individual in class. In educational infrastructure there is but one computer to look at but not touch, one rack of books in the ‘library’, and students are yet to practice using dictionary and thesaurus. The school management we meet is ambitious; their goal is the recognition and grants of higher secondary status. That calls for results in Board examinations. The institutional targets push the faculty to contribute personal resources to provide free books, school uniforms and coaching after-hours to achieve exam readiness in their pupils.

We ask the school authorities for student background information. We learn that the general occupations of the region are: business, farming, small service, cultivation, labour, and labour (bpl). Although the actual economic value of each of these jobs may vary in comparison to the city, it seems safe to assume that “business” and “labour (bpl)” are at the two ends of the economic spectrum, with the former at a higher standard of living, the latter unable to make ends meet.

It seems logical to assume that students’ academic performances link with their economic backgrounds. Indeed, the “business” children do average scores higher than the “labour (bpl)” boys - by about 10-15 percent marks in summative exams. But surprisingly, scions of “small service” that middle the economic ladder, lead both, scoring marks in the ninety percents. So the correlations perceived are incidental, not cause and effect.

A theory builds from studies that control or balance interfering variables. Extrapolations from it make sense if the contexts are the same, else they hardly fit. When the guiding influences on people's lives have diverse sources, or the environment itself is in turmoil, the emergence of new needs may depend instead on intrinsic motivations generated from individual social learning. The dominance or subordination of a particular need is therefore more random and unpredictable than theoretically assumed.

Blessed with fertile lands and climes, India has largely been agrarian over the 5 millennia of its civilization. Rural cultures continue to steep in the ways things have always been and carry on the customs and rituals of ages gone by, juxtaposing ancient worship of the sylvan goddess with overlays of male dominance. They live in closed communities whose leaders assume extra-constitutional authority over their life choices. The political exploitation of this power over people ensures that any form of modernity is slow to arrive among the silent majority, the apparent drag to India’s economic ascendancy in the new millennium.

The changes imposed on the ordinary people of India over the last six decades of independence have been immense: colonial to democratic, agrarian to industrial, joint to nuclear family structure, and manual labour to electronic wizardry among others. In India’s collectivistic society, vacillations continue between traditions and modernity. The Diva writes elsewhere that:

The forces pulling physically and spiritually one way and politically and intellectually another, generate conflicts and tensions over cultural and material issues.

The condition is termed Trishanku in Indian parlance after the mythological king who, in attempting to take his mortal body to heaven, remains suspended in ether for evermore, neither here nor there.

The backwardness of people groups may be a state of mind, a failure of imaginative perceptions and opportunity perhaps, rather than some genetic anomaly. The home environs provide children with purpose in life in formative years. Parents and elders passing on perspectives of the world, attach value to education. For instance, the “business” person, hierarchically at the top of his little organizational pyramid, socializes attitudes and ethics that may differ from one in “small service”. The latter, on the bottom rung in a larger system, is like a small fish in a large pond, and must develop skills to be aware of others, learn diverse survival skills and adapt to changing influences. The outlook to education may hence differ in business, small service and other families.

Often in India, talent is thus suppressed, lost to the nation and humanity, because of faulty perceptions within and between social groups. Rural people are not mentally retarded but de-motivated by lacks of opportunity and resource. Doles are hardly the remedy. Rather, they need educational support to realize their worth, and shine in the larger world of people. The talent to self-actualize exists in people everywhere, whether it is the aptitude to excel in a certain field or discipline, or the ability to rise above average natural ability through sheer diligence; it just needs a trigger to thrive.

Governance still struggles to create the infrastructure for organized social services as in the West; hence in people development, they can do little beyond building a few school structures. It behooves individuals and corporate bodies that are more privileged, to acknowledge the social and gender inequality, engage in citizenship to replenish the macro community and bring worth to minority groups. Perceiving India’s vast underprivileged population as talent under the radar rather than a drag is the first step forward in fulfilling the collective social responsibility.

The socialist attitude

Perceptions of socialist attitudes tend to the negative, especially in the West. The assumptions may be of some sort of discrimination against creative enterprise nurtured in poverty-stricken populations. However, the socialistic slogan generally attributed to Karl Marx: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need may actually owe its origins to the 'right' - the moral teachings from religious discourse of times gone by! 

In response to the socialist attitude perceived in our posts on the London riots, a reader comments: 

In my opinion most people, who start life with very little, have a socialist attitude that says “those that have should give some of it to everyone else (me)”.

In societies used to outlooks of individualistic enterprise, the thought may conjure up visions of large groups of poor people feeding off other groups in parasitic existence.  The  socialist attitude would then appear to sponsor the maintenance of poverty, facilitating hooliganism and apathy to honest labour. 

The reader also writes: 

As people earn more and get a better standard of living and more possessions their opinion tends to move to the right and they then think “those who have a lot more than me should share it BUT I don’t think I should share what I have worked for with those who don’t work”.

In other words, with the gradual accumulation of personal possessions, people's interests also change, turning to self at the expense of society. I should think the larger a social organisation is, the more it needs to subscribe to certain socialistic values, if only to keep the collective together in harmony. People that live in society, rich and poor, have certain duties to the collective, in the same way that members of a family are responsible for its identity and organization. 

Democratic societies with formidable Diversity, like India for instance, have had to incorporate these values into their Constitution, assuring justice, liberty, equality and fraternity to all members within its fold. That means to carry the entirety forward to a new level of competence irrespective of caste, creed, colour and class. That also means to decrease divides between diverse social groups, and to fail to do so is to fail democracy. 

Psychologist Adler perceived the balance between social interest and self-interest, crucial for harmony. Since none can exist in isolation, people join with other people of similar background, employment, or status to form social groups. Groups co-exist with other groups, having interrelationships for the same reason, essentially to help themselves. 

Kronemyer explains:

“Social interest” … translates as “community feeling,” as opposed to one’s private interests or concerns. … If one has social interest then one evidences or enacts a “useful” style of life. If one does not have social interest then one is self-absorbed and is concerned only with one’s self. Such a style of life is “useless.”

With overt preoccupations with own wants and expectations, people desensitise to the needs of others in the same universe. In coping with the daily stresses of being in the world, they prefer to adopt the selfish style of living. It should be of no surprise then that within the prevailing sense of individualism in a rapidly complicating world, many more people believe that they alone should enjoy the fruits of labours. 

The concentrated devotion to owning more possessions, tilts the balance towards self-interest at the expense of social interest, and ultimately leads to the ethical bankruptcy witnessed in recent times. In many parts of the world, the powers-that-be as well as groups lower on the social hierarchy appears to thus lose their moral compass. 

In the community living of Christian apostles centuries earlier that the scriptures provide glimpses of, the so-called socialistic values seem to be upheld in their fair distribution among the ordinary people in society. In Acts 4, it says:

The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common… There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need.

It seems logical to infer therefore that, when individuals and groups share resources between them respectfully, neither question of resource control nor of unmet needs arise. True, the simplicity of the earlier times has been lost in the complexities of the present day. However, much of the change in people’s minds from then to now has been in negativity. Attitudes have not expanded to encompass Diversity, but have instead shrunk to in-groups, and competitive self-interest.

The Parable of the Bags of Gold (Matthew 25:14-30) provides insight into an effective process of harnessing abilities that could be relevant even today. It says:

Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

The master of the house in the parable was fully cognisant of the differential abilities of his employees. Present day wisdom might have advised investing all of his wealth in schemes guaranteeing maximum returns. But rather than simply boost the bottomline for himself alone, the man in power opted to provide opportunity to all his workers in accordance to their individual abilities, and share the proceeds of their work with them. 

The point is the socialist attitude does not demand doles, but exhorts those blessed with privilege to talent manage those less fortunate. Over the centuries of their existence, the scriptures have taught no different. On his return from the journey, the master in the parable rewarded each person proportionate to the labour they put in. The man that not only did no work, he further justified his action with presumptions that the employer's profit sources were dubious, got not reward but punishment for his brand of selfishness. 

In the context of the riots in London, criminal activity should indeed be dealt with in accordance to law. However, the punishments should fit the crimes. Prejudicial judgements, concerned solely with exercising power, usher in retribution, not justice. The organizational machinery has the positional clout to to make development happen; they perhaps need the will to bring outlying groups into mainstream. 

Similarly, to help others help them achieve their targets, it behoves businesses to also invest in social development; however very few do. When focused on the bottomline, corporate bodies tend to become insensitive to both people and environment. In the drive for immediate gains, they refuse to consider the future effects of depletion of natural resources. They forget that they are dependent on people within and outside the company for their survival; profit making is a distant dream unless goods and services are sold and bought.

In earlier posts on this site, on the effects of businesses reneging on their corporate social responsibility (CSR), we wrote:

The abuse of resources by production and manufacturing houses, like the indiscriminate release of industrial wastes into rivers, toxic gases polluting the air and thinning the ozone layer, have been implicated in global warming, changing climate patterns and new diseases. Indiscriminate hunting has also endangered many animal species … Multinational corporations (MNCs) have at opportunity, flouted human rights and environmental concerns in developing nations… 

Perhaps prophetically, we also wrote about a year ago, that:

Business and political compulsions have created the “conflicts” that divide people. The single-minded pursuit of advantage has retarded healthy development in human relations. It has instead borne bitter fruit – us-and-them polarizations on the basis of race, religion and culture, and vengeful reactivity. The privileged have grown richer and greedier while the poor, more disadvantaged and resentful. The accumulated negativity displays in their eagerness to embrace any cause that advocates the removal of perceived “inequalities” through violence.

In the present context of the outpouring of reactive violence, it seems clear that social interest has all but died as ethical bankruptcy becomes socially generalized. The connivance of corporate and political circles accentuates divides creating polarized groups of haves and have-nots in terms of privilege and opportunity. 

The unhealthy competition for resources raises inter-group tensions, mistrust and perceptions of social inequality. Leaders in democracies need to resurrect the values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity in social dealings. If they are to forestall the growing disgruntlement spiralling into anarchy, they need to encourage citizenship amongst all groups of society, political, corporate and others. 

References for this post: 

1. “Chapter 4. Life in the Christian Community” usccb.org 

2. Kronemyer, David. “Alfred Adler’s Concept of “Social Interest”” phenomenologicalpsychology.com. Phenomenological Psychology. October 3rd 2009. 

3. The Diva. “CSR 3: The exercise of domination” thedivaatlarge.blogspot.com. TheDivaAtLarge. February 26, 2010. 

4. “The Parable of the Bags of Gold” biblegateway.com. BibleGateway.com. 

CSR: 7. References

List of References for CSR: posts 1-6:

1. Browning, Jackson B. “UNION CARBIDE: DISASTER AT BHOPAL”. Reprint from Crisis Response: Inside Stories on Managing Under Siege. Jack A Gottschalk, Ed. Visible Ink Press, a division of Gale Research. Detroit Michigan. 1993.
2. “Clarence Hailey Long, 1949 - Another Landmark Image”. digitaljournalist.org The Digital Journalist. Life. Powered by Hewlett-Packard. Undated.
3. Cochrane, Robert. “Ethics and games theory”. twmacademy.com. TWM Academy. Powered by The Working Manager. Undated.
4. “Corporate Social Responsibility / Human Resource”. ibef.org. IBEF India Brand Equity Foundation. Managed by Woodapple. Undated. Updated December 2009.
5. “Economic history of India”. wikipedia.org.Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Undated.
6. Elkington, John. “Chapter 1 Enter the Triple Bottom Line”. johnelkington.com. pp 1-16. 17/8/04.
7. Gopalakrishnan, R. “Insaaniyat”. tata.co.in. TATA leadership with trust. June 2004.
8. Iyer, Raghavan. “GANDHIAN TRUSTEESHIP IN THEORY AND PRACTICE”. theosophytrust.org. Theosophy Trust. August 1985.
9. Kumar, Jeevan. “Economy and Society – The Gandhian Perspective” pekea-fr.org. Undated.
10. Mehra Madhav. “The poor are not an obligation; they are an opportunity”. wcfcg.net. WORLD COUNCIL FOR CORPORATE GOVERNANCE. Undated.
11. “Marlboro Man”. wikipedia.org.Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Undated.
12. “Origins of CSR and Stakeholder Theory”. chriscurnow.com. The Spiral Path A SEARCH FOR MEANING AND PURPOSE IN WORK. July 9, 2006.
13. Sengupta Biswas, Jharna. “How and what”. ”. twmacademy.com. TWM Academy. Powered by The Working Manager. Undated.
14. Sengupta Biswas, Jharna. “Letter and spirit” twmacademy.com. TWM Academy. Powered by The Working Manager. Undated.
15. Sriramachari, S. “The Bhopal gas tragedy: An environmental disaster”. ias.ac.in. CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 86, NO. 7, pp905-920.10 APRIL 2004.
16. Weber, Thomas. “Mahatma Gandhi – A living sermon”. lifepositive.com. Life Positive Your Complete Guide To Holistic Living. Oct-Dec 2002.

CSR: 6. The branding initiatives

In the face of global competition, monopolies are at end. Networked public opinion can make or break markets for established products and company reputations. Sustainability is a major problem for companies discovering that the erstwhile branding equations have altered.

Japanese carmakers Toyota has enjoyed top international success in recent times. In USA, they outsold the local brands that needed government bailouts to keep from going under. However, five fatal accidents from last year involving Toyota cars have prompted public reaction to the brand, and now a Congressional hearing. The accidents have been attributed to jammed accelerator and brake pedals, or electronic malfunctioning, although the exact problem is not yet clearly identified. Some consumers also complain that their feedback to the company about the problems four years ago was ignored.

The company has been forced to recall products for repairs. Akio Toyota, the chairman of the company rushed to Washington to apologize. His people, he said, had become “confused” between product sales (their compulsions) and product quality (their constraints). Any company can ill-afford the image association that its competitors can feed off. Toyota's sales figures are already down by about ten percent reflecting the dip in consumer confidence.

US biofoods giant Monsanto lobbied long and hard for the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) vegetables in India. They convinced the agricultural ministry of the “second green revolution” with the mass cultivation of their Bt brinjal, a GM vegetable. However, with strident public protests against the product, the environment ministry withheld its clearance. Monsanto’s track record in the country has also not inspired trust. Earlier, the company had sold processed potato chips containing GM-ingredients in retail outlets, without the labels on the packs that are mandatory in the West for such foods.

In India, it is no longer enough for a company to have a saleable product. Companies are pushed to provide something extra to attract consumer attention and create positive associations in their minds. Some companies still stick to promotions, discounts, mutual tie-ups, and so on, in various short-term measures.

The point is predicting consumers’ buying patterns has become difficult. With increasing range of available products and changing consumer attitudes, companies need to have a finger on the pulse of the people to keep ahead.

A more recent trend among companies seeking the competitive edge is exhibiting a serious corporate commitment to people or planet. The way forward to building an image memorable to consumers has become owning CSR.

Some very large corporations have created charitable institutions, parallel to their profit-making ventures, to conduct strategic philanthropic programmes around the world. These foundations channelize money from rich corporate bodies in the West, e.g., from Microsoft or Dell in the computer industry, to fund programmes run by the local NGOs in developing nations. The main criterion for the funding generally is reaching as wide an aspect of society as possible, like large donations to assist in the economic uplift of the destitute. Others, even cricket clubs or reality shows, show support for child education, the rights of the girl child, and so on.

In India, the mobile phone companies appear to be adopting environmental causes. The Aditya Birla Group’s cellular division Idea, had earlier come up with the “walk and talk” campaign to encourage sedentary sections of the population to get more exercise. But then their message was criticized for endangering safety, since by doing so people may become unmindful whilst amongst traffic. They have since shifted to saving the planet by saving trees from being cut down for the manufacture of paper. Nokia calls for public donations of old handsets for recycling to prevent excessive mining in the country. The company has pledged to plant a tree for each phone recycled.

The Tata Group, one of the oldest in Indian family business, now has the fifth generation in corporate leadership. Mahatma Gandhi had lauded the company as exhibiting exemplary trusteeship, its operations contributing to the freedom movement through economic means. More recently, they launched their bold new TV ad campaign entitled “Jaago Re!” and meaning 'wake up to reality' on a slightly different track - social development. The campaign built around their tea products is aimed at the conscious awareness of habitual practices that render an ailing society.

The simple but effective video clips contain no celebrity faces. Rather, ordinary looking but savvy generation next characters identify to the general public the roots of social issues like political incompetence, bureaucratic bribery, corruption in public life, and so on. Their message is that the public’s toleration of social evil merely serves to enable it.

During the elections, the campaign’s website also offered help in voting registrations, pledging to target one billion votes in the country that presently has less than fifty percent exercising franchise. Dovetailed with improved product quality, the campaigns have proved hugely successful, as reflected in the rising sales of the range of Tata Tea.

Corporate social responsibility as a marketing initiative is making sense to many companies as a solution to their concerns about sustainability and competition. The average consumer, perhaps fed up with daily reports about malfeasance in high places, is appreciative of a return to ethical values, albeit in advertisements. Consumers are rewarding the companies for their social cause initiatives with longer-term relationships with their brand. Companies still awaiting legislation to force them into socially responsible business practices may eventually discover that, along with and society's tolerance, their time has run out.

Next… references

CSR: 5. The change in process

Issues of sustainability have been debated upon since the 1970s in the West, and the process now continues in the global forum. Companies are realizing that several past assumptions and practices are unsustainable in the changing world.

Concerns for the company's longevity in the new age now forces consideration for other people and environments. The global emphasis is also shifting from positional and group power to less obvious power sources - expertise, creativity and networking. These have been instrumental in the phenomenal rise of the Internet. Since then, organizational structures and the nature of work have been transforming. Virtual offices allow personnel to come to ‘work’ even when located in different regions. Innovations, solutions, information and opinions spread exponentially across the world.

Communications have been facilitated. Global teams pool resources in joint ventures, collaborations, and problem solving exercises across boundaries and geographical borders. For example, computer-aided technology allows medical help, even complicated surgery by specialists thousands of miles away. Connectivity to remote parts of the globe expands the knowledge base. Access to higher education empowers the once disadvantaged - women and other minority groups. Their competing on equal terms with the privileged is now less of an impossible dream.

With globalization, companies seeking new markets perceived exciting new avenues in other continents. This led to spate of mergers and takeovers occurred during the 1990s. Companies based in different regions of the world came together based on the numbers. Lack of knowledge or experience of one another’s values and cultures merited little attention.

For example, in the car industry, American Chrysler and German Daimler merged into one giant company assuming that their gains with access to new markets, would equate the sum of the parts and more. But then it was discovered that, within the same organization, cultures termed distinctly “scrappy” and “stodgy” do not quite jell! Inevitably, the anticipated success of the global presence failed to occur.

The culture clashes raised global awareness about people issues in diversity. In learning about other cultures, people discover their similarities. The easing of constraints in India and China has allowed these two most populated in the world to make appreciable economic strides forward, with higher growth rates. Migration of skilled workforces is now bi-directional, not only East to West, but increasingly West to East, as Asia is said to be becoming the new economic frontier.

Those companies working at global “acculturation” first are the most likely to have realistic success in the new markets. Managers in charge of a knowledge-based global workforce also need new people skills to be able to fulfill their roles. Quoting research, the article Crosscultural Awareness explains:

Earlier it was generally accepted that organizations required three groups of specialists to be effective: business managers, country managers, and function managers. But now, with the trend to go global, the new important requirement is for a unique fourth kind of specialist manager – a leader with global mindset skills for successful intercultural management.

Societies around the world are becoming more heterogeneous with the changing demographics of constituent groups. Consumers are no longer a homogeneous mass with product wants easy to identify and manipulate. Social representative groups have buying needs different to one another. The business strategy of the new millennium should have specific rather of broad classifications of consumers.

The company that tunes into “culture”, “lifestyle” and so on, can innovate or design product fit. Investments in research about possible consumer need, want, like and dislike along cultural lines, could reap returns, with “culture sensitivity” augmenting the corporate bottomline. The article “Homework” illustrates the context:

…the research - the homework - is meant to set up effective performance. For example, three months after the launch of its new cultural website aimed at ethnic immigrant communities, Lufthansa had 190,000 visitors and revenue raked in through the site was 91 percent over their target. Because they remembered cultural occasions, their particular significances to the immigrant people, and associated their customary travel plans with interesting packages…

Ethnic communities are the new consumer units targeted in many marketing initiatives. However, no company can afford complaisance. “Culture”, even ethnic culture, is ever changing. The article Crosscultural Awareness notes:

Culture is not a static ‘thing’, but is constantly being created, expressed, affirmed and enforced. It is evolving unceasingly, from continuing conversations and negotiations about individuals, about the organization and about the environment.

With availability of information is literally at the fingertips, consumer groups have become far more aware of their own needs and the products that will fulfill them best. Along with the demographics, consumer tastes and their assertiveness have changed.

Next…branding

CSR: 4. The meaning of bottom line

Corporate social responsibility is not a new concept. Although reformers have called for change in practices over time, its enforcement not been adequately organized. Disciplining operative processes with respect to society and environment, thus left to individual conscience, has generally been ignored or overlooked.

“Compulsions” determine what the company wants to do to achieve its business objectives. “Constraints” determine how the company achieves the goal of free enterprise. A healthy balance between compulsions (the ‘what’) and constraints (the ‘how’) is necessary for the long-term. However, most business organizations tend to tilt towards their compulsions of target gains, rationalizing that to make an omlette you have to break some eggs.

During the industrial age, many Western companies preferred to locate production and manufacturing plants in nations across the world, attracted by cheap labour and comparatively minimal legislative constraints. The dangers to health and environment were also then, far from home. In India, for example, the holdings of many of these companies survived her Independence, and remained the legacy of colonial times.

Union Carbide had designed a pesticide production plant at its premises located in the heart of Bhopal, a populous city in India. In 1984, the fatal leaking of methyl isocyanate caused the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, which some have also termed the “Hiroshima of the chemical industry”. Twenty thousand men, women and children living in proximity to the plant, died instantly inhaling the gas. With minutes families were decimated. The diffusion of poisoned air into the atmosphere injured three hundred thousand more.

Over 120,000 survivors are left still in need of medical help they cannot afford. Despite calls for humanitarian restitution, Union Carbide and the new owners, Dow Chemicals continue to assert that, further to the minimal compensation they paid in 1989, they have no obligations remaining to the people and the place. Meanwhile thousands of tons of toxic waste lie exposed and untreated on the factory premises even today, nearly 25 years later.

Business houses tend to consider public interest to be inimical to entrepreneurship. Social groups demand constraints on their activities and a proactive giving back to the society that nurtures their enterprise. One side takes ‘bottom line’ to solely mean their profits; the other argues against the exclusion of beneficence to people and planet.

Company awareness of the context of its existence would be “enlightened self-interest”. Cochrane says the process involves the adherence to standards at three levels:

• public policy
• internal standards
• actual performance

Consistency in doing so preserves “integrity”, whereas “inconsistency breeds cynicism”. In the race to get ahead, political and business leaders have often displayed this cynical inconsistency towards others sharing the same sphere. Thus, globalization, which has allowed multinational corporations to achieve dizzy heights of success, has also witnessed rapacious damage to human and other resources.

The point is that in being present in the same space, every entity, group and organization relates to every other. The greater system, the universe, is composed of various subsets - each encircles its own unique constituents of state, corporate, family, or even individual. The subsets exist within this social matrix, relating to the macro (universe) as well as to each micro (organism) through dynamic interfaces that give rise to unique issues and energies between them.

The wholesome growth and development of any one depends on the relationships it forms with the others. The functional interrelationships between the various subsystems (digestive, circulatory, endocrine, etc.) within a living organism are vital to its wellbeing. In the same way, each subset’s contribution to the health of the total system extends its own longevity.

Elkington coined the term ‘triple bottom line’ to explain the evolving new reality. Corporations not only add economic value, they also add or destroy environmental and social value. Change, he predicts, is imminent in the form of a “global cultural revolution”. This revolution, powered by business, will precipitate paradigm shifts in seven important areas: markets, values, transparency, life-cycle technology, partnerships, time and corporate governance.

Altered lines of thinking in both politics and business are pressured by successive waves of public reaction. Elkington observes:

• Wave 1 brought an understanding that environmental impacts and natural resource demands have to be limited…
• Wave 2 brought a wider realization that new kinds of production technologies and new kinds of products are needed…
• Wave 3 focuses on the growing recognition that sustainable development will require profound changes in the governance of corporations and in the whole process of globalization, putting a renewed focus on government and on civil society.

Corporate governance, for instance, is now transitioning from “exclusive” from others to “inclusive” of others, as partnerships become the business mantra of the twenty-first century.

Next…change

CSR: 3. Exercise of domination

Technology has driven far-reaching changes around the world. It has allowed individuals and groups to exercise power and control. In the process, the lack of social responsibility has often been displayed in business and politics.

The purpose of tool making through the ages has been to improve human capabilities in the fight for survival, to hunt and gather food, to protect against the environment, predators and other aggressors. The holders of technology acquired power and ipso facto control over their own destinies. Industrial developments encouraged the shift in perspective from control over one’s life towards control over the environment.

‘Power’ may be defined as the capacity to influence people, events, and even the direction of change. ‘Control’ might mean to exercise a dominating influence. Although different words, ‘power’ and ‘control’ are often assumed to mean the same - dominance over processes, people and other resources.

Power has several sources, including position and group. These two types of power generally prevail. Positional power is legitimized by mandates acquired from states, or designations in organizations. In similar fashion, group power follows from membership in a specific faction, community, or religious group.In political and business areas power tends to become control, as in waging proxy wars, causing damage to the environment and people, involvements in scams or financial malpractices, etc. The events confirm Hobbs’s statement that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

During much of the twentieth century the destructive sophistication of technology was witnessed, like the hydrogen and atom bombs dropped in World War II. Further, power dynamics between capitalist and communist ideologies led to proxy wars being fought in other countries, devastating nations of the ‘third world’. For example, new military hardware, napalm and other horrific weapons were experimented with in the “killing fields” of Asia.

The end of the Cold War led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union and her Eastern Bloc satellite states. Many of these countries still struggle with their national identity and relationships with one another. Military organizations of most countries today perceive their defensive weaponry inadequate without nuclear, biological and chemical warheads. The US-led coalition forces are now engaged in wars of liberation in countries under individual or group tyranny. The goal is to install new democracies in those regions, although local resistance to their presence is extreme.

The abuse of resources by production and manufacturing houses, like the indiscriminate release of industrial wastes into rivers, toxic gases polluting the air and thinning the ozone layer, have been implicated in global warming, changing climate patterns and new diseases. Indiscriminate hunting has also endangered many animal species, among them tigers, whales and dolphins. Multinational corporations (MNCs) have at opportunity, flouted human rights and environmental concerns in developing nations, and are commonly viewed as symbols of capitalistic greed in those regions.

The economic downturn that hit the Western world the hardest exposed the ‘rot’ in management circles even at home. Individuals at the top of the pyramid entrusted with steering the corporation in the ‘right’ direction used organizational positions to personal advantage. Power and policy was utilized to feather their own nests, defrauding their people and the general public. The effects of the ethical bankruptcy cascaded into the global financial collapse.

Business and political compulsions have created the “conflicts” that divide people. The single-minded pursuit of advantage has retarded healthy development in human relations. I t has instead borne bitter fruit - us-and-them polarizations on the basis of race, religion and culture, and vengeful reactivity. The privileged have grown richer and greedier while the poor, more disadvantaged and resentful. The accumulated negativity displays in their eagerness to embrace any cause that advocates the removal of perceived “inequalities” through violence.

This has culminated in the rise of global terrorism. The export of terror has become lucrative trade, with the underprivileged classes the main sources of potential suicide bombers. They play out ideological convictions, or enlist merely to provide the dependents they leave behind some economic means of survival.

The urban nature of terrorism, targeting densely populated metropolitan areas using men, women and children, has rendered conventional military warfare almost obsolete. No country is free from the fear of attack either from outside or from within its territorial boundaries. The point is self-interested domination that shows little consideration for other groups in the same universe, reaps a similar harvest.

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