Well-defined CSR strategy leads to strategic competitive

A well-defined CSR strategy has several advantages in the long-term and leads to strategic competitive advantages, Associate Director of Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Nupur Pavan Bang has said.

A White Paper on 'Family Businesses: Heeding the Call of Corporate Conscience,2015-2017,' was conducted by Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise on Thursday.

"Firms would do well to understand that a well-defined Corporate Social Responsibility strategy has several advantages in the long-term.

It leads to strategic competitive advantages and as a result create long-term value for shareholders.

Without enlightened promoters aided by independent directors and a complementary policy framework universal adoption of well-meaning and highly spirited CSR pursuits will continue to remain a distant dream," he said.

Bang, one of the authors of the report, said the study was done on the CSR spend pattern of different categories of firms, based on ownership structures, from 2015-17 using data from government portals.

State-owned Enterprises have been largely driving the CSR spends in India and they contributed to 31.7 percent of the total CSR spending of the sample as compared to 46.4 percent of Family Business Group Firms (FBGF) contributing to 42.7 percent of the total spend, the report said.

The study also talked about the patterns in CSR spending by the family businesses, in the context of the mandatory CSR regulations of the Companies Act.

A panel discussion on the subject was also organised with some of the eminent speakers including Secretary and CEO of Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Vijay Mahajan and Director of Schulich School of Business, Hyderabad, Prof V Raghunathan among others.

Speaking at the release event, ISB Dean Rajendra Srivastava said, the rising inequality and other social and ecological imbalances necessitated greater formalisation and regulation of the social obligations of firms across the world and especially in India.

However, the CSR policy in India remains a work-in-progress given that the country was the first to develop such a prescriptive law, Srivastava said.