It is not CSR but CR | Vinita Bali | TEDxNMIMSBangalore
The speaker argues that society should abandon the concept of "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR) in favor of genuine "Corporate Responsibility," which means embedding social considerations like waste management or public health directly into the core business model. He suggests that true governance requires individual and corporate citizens to perform their day-to-day responsibilities without needing external monitoring, exemplified by recommending fortifying staples like salt with iodine to combat malnutrition.
## Theses & Positions
- The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is fundamentally flawed because it suggests businesses are doing something extra-curricular rather than fulfilling their core duties.
- Business operations should transition from thinking about CSR as a standalone expense to integrating social issues into the core business model to create *longevity* and *sustainable advantage*.
- True governance is achieved when individuals and entities *know what they have to do* and *believe and perception is common uniformed and aligned*.
- The relationship between business and society is not one of conflict ("business versus society") but one of necessary co-existence ("business and society coexisting").
- The goal is achieving *economic and social development*, not just economic progress.
## Concepts & Definitions
- **CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility):** A concept which, according to the speaker, lets business "get away from its everyday responsibilities."
- **Corporate Responsibility:** The concept that businesses must be responsible to employees, stakeholders, the environment, and the communities they inhabit as part of their *everyday* operations.
- **Governance:** The state where everyone knows what they have to do, and that knowledge/belief is common, uniform, and aligned.
- **Conscientious Capitalism:** Capitalism where both the corporate sector and individual citizens act with great genuineness and great authenticity regarding what they are meant to do.
- **Systemic approach:** Thinking about problems comprehensively, not in fragmented or chunked ways, but holistically.
## Mechanisms & Processes
- **Local Waste Management Example:** The process of handling the 70% of garbage generated by bulk generators (hospitals, schools, hotels) in Bangalore, suggesting that the solution requires the generators themselves to take ownership of the waste at the source.
- **Embedding Social Issues:** Identifying a social problem (e.g., nutrition, water access) and designing a profitable business process around solving that problem (e.g., a food company improving nutritional value).
- **Fortification:** The government's successful decision to fortify salt with iodine to eliminate goiter, showing how a small cost can eliminate a major public health problem.
- **Productivity Chain:** Under-nutrition (a social issue) $\rightarrow$ Low productivity (economic impact) $\rightarrow$ Improved employee well-being (corporate responsibility) $\rightarrow$ Higher productivity and customer satisfaction.
## Timeline & Sequence
- **Companies Act 2013:** Mandated CSR reporting requirements.
- **Fiscal year ended 2015:** The first year of implementation under the Companies Act.
- **1970s:** Period when the government decided to fortify salt with iodine.
## Named Entities
- **Bangalore:** City used as an example of high daily garbage generation.
## Numbers & Data
- **Bangalore daily garbage:** *One and a half to four thousand tons* of garbage.
- **Bulk generators' contribution:** Account for **70%** of the garbage.
- **Companies Act 2013:** The legislation mandating CSR.
- **Fiscal year ended 2015:** The first year of implementation analyzed.
- **Average CSR spend in 2015:** **1.35 crore**.
- **Stipulated CSR amount:** **2%**.
- **Companies analyzed:** **3,855**.
- **Companies qualifying for CSR:** **1,300**.
- **Companies implementing CSR programs:** Roughly **1,000** (out of 1,300 analyzed).
- **Spending > 2% of average profit (analyzed group):** **50%** of the 1,000 companies.
- **Spending < 1% of average profit (analyzed group):** **28%**.
- **Revenue range (smaller companies):** Between **hundred to five hundred crores**.
- **Revenue range (large companies):** Greater than **ten thousand crores**.
- **Cost of fortification (micronutrients):** Between **2 to 10 paisa per kilo or per litre**.
- **Underweight children born annually in India:** **7 million** (based on 22 million total births).
## Examples & Cases
- **Bangalore Waste Management:** The expectation that the 70% of garbage from bulk generators should be dealt with where it is generated, not outsourced responsibility.
- **Waste Disposal Directives:** Corporate responsibility involves not littering streets with garbage or dumping effluent into rivers.
- **Healthcare/Nutrition Model:** Instead of companies running hospitals (lacking core competency), they should focus on core business (e.g., food production) while embedding solutions for malnutrition, like fortification.
- **Iodine Fortification:** The government's decision to fortify salt eliminated goiter at a very low cost.
- **Under-nutrition Impact:** Under-nutrition causes lost GDP, estimated at **one-and-a-half to two percent** of India's GDP annually.
- **Underweight Child Statistics:** If 22 million children are born annually in India, **7 million** are underweight and cannot realize full physical or cognitive potential.
## Trade-offs & Alternatives
- **CSR vs. Responsibility:** Alternative is viewing social issues as integrated into the business model, offering a permanent advantage, versus treating them as mandated, external CSR spending.
- **Standalone CSR Activities:** The alternative to CSR spending (e.g., running a school) is allowing companies to improve core services (e.g., a healthcare company running better hospitals).
## Counterarguments & Caveats
- The speaker directly challenges the standard CSR list that mandates spending on education, health care, etc., by questioning the *core competency* of biscuit or detergent manufacturers to run these services.
- The statistics show that smaller companies in the analyzed sample performed better regarding CSR spending (>2% vs. <1%) than the very large companies.
## Conclusions & Recommendations
- Stop thinking about CSR and focus entirely on *Corporate Responsibility*.
- Future systemic thinking demands moving toward "conscientious capitalism" where private, government, and civil society act in harmony.
- Business must embed social issues into its operational model to create enduring, systemic advantages.
## Implications & Consequences
- Failure to adopt a holistic, systemic view means society will never realize a culture of development and growth for everybody.
- If systemic issues like nutrition are ignored, the consequence is a diminished human capital pool, as shown by the 7 million underweight children estimate.
## Verbatim Moments
- *"If businesses are to work in a manner which is responsible which is responsible to employees responsible to all stakeholders responsible to the environment responsible to the communities we live in there will be no need to call it's social responsibility to my mind it is simply corporate responsibility."*
- *"we seem to believe that it is someone else's responsibility to deal with my garbage."*
- *"If all of us simply did what we are responsible for doing frankly there would be very little reason to monitor audit impact and so on."*
- *"If we need to retain the S word let's call it corporate sustainable responsibility and not social responsibility because tomorrow we will come up with corporate environmental responsibility corporate community responsibility and so on and so forth."*
- *"if we think of this not as corporate social responsibility but simply as corporate responsibility and say to the people who are in healthcare whose core business is to run a hospital you run better hospitals you provide great health care at affordable prices"*
- *"I am creating longevity I am creating a sustainable way to address an enduring problem I am creating you know an advantage which is there forever."*
- *"what is it that I can do in the business that I do every day not in my CSR but in the business that I can do every day to address some of these endemic issues"*
- *"doing well and doing good is conscientious capitalism now conscientious is a word like listening perhaps that has just gone out of our vocabulary and conscientious simply means that I do with great genuineness and great authenticity that which I am meant to do"*
- *"it is not about business versus society it is about business and society coexisting"*