CSR – Today’s Perspective

In contemporary management literature, the issue of alignment of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative with the core business to ensure that the same is meaningful and sustainable on a long term basis has been highlighted. Presently, many organizations believe that CSR is the extension of their business and vice versa and that good CSR has to be sustainable and should create long term impact even in small dimensions.

It is important for Organizations to ensure that their respective CSR model are in line with the strategic initiative and should align the core business needs of the organization with a relevant ISR (Individual Social Responsibility) angle. The model should address some of the key differentiators for the Company such as Sourcing, Readiness, Cost, Retention, Redundancy etc which are the core ingredients of any business as this is the key to make it sustainable and value driven for the Organization.

To me a model is long term and sustainable only when it teaches to fish instead of giving fish as this is one of the biggest challenges with most of the CSR initiative around us. In addition a model should also help us to reach out to a larger mass providing direction in life which maybe negligible as of now but certainly rewarding in the days to come considering the impact it will have on several families directly and indirectly.

The scale of a model at the beginning can be small but it should be scalable and replicable for a large section of the society. However one should start with an idea however small it maybe as referring to what Mr. Robin Sharma said in his book “Who will cry when you die?” “The smallest of action is always better than the noblest of intention.”

Contributed By:
Ranjan Sarkar
(Vice President - HR & Corporate Communication)
Acclaris Limited