CSR and Sustainable Development:‑
Corporate Sustainability is a business approach that creates long term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments. Corporate sustainability lenders achieve long-term shareholder value creation by gearing their strategies and managements to harness the markets potential for sustainability products and services while at the same time successfully reducing and avoiding sustainability costs and risks.
The quality of a company strategy and managements and its performance in dealing with opportunities and risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments can be quantified and used to identify and select leading companies for investment purposes. Leading sustainability companies lead their industries and set industry-wide best practices in the following area: strategy, innovation, governance, shareholders, employees and other stakeholders.
CSR and Triple Bottom Line in Business: an International endeavour.
The triple (Economic, Ethical and Environmental) bottom line evaluates a corporation’s performance according to a summary of the economic, social and environmental value the term is a framework for measuring and reporting corporate performance against economic, social and environmental indicators. Recently a broader meaning as been attributed to the term in that in that the concept is used to capture a whole set of values, issues and processes that corporations must address in order to minimize any harm resulting from their value adding or destroying activities. This including clarifying the corporation’s purpose and taking into consideration all stakeholders.
Examples of corporate social Responsibility.
Aptech Limited
Aptech Limited, a leading education player with a global presence, has played an extensive and sustained role in encouraging and fostering education throughout the country since inception. As a global player with complete solutions-providing capability, Aptech has a long history of participating in community activities. It has, in association with leading NGOs, provided computers at schools, education to the underprivileged and conducted training and awareness-camps.
Aptech students donated part of the proceeds from the sale of their art work to NGOs. To propagate education among all sections of the society hrdughout the country, especially the underprivileged, Aptech fosters tie-ups with leading,NG’Oi throughout the country, including the Barrackpur-based NGO, Udayan, a residential“ school for children of leprosy patients in Barrackpur, established in 1970.The company strongly believes that education is an integral part of the country’s social fabric and works towards supporting basic education and basic computer literacy amongst the underprivileged children in India.
Avon Cycle Limited
The poor and ignorant of India’s rural population turn to nearest towns and cities for healthcare. They face ‘indifference and exploitation. Hope gives way to despair. This gave inspiration to AVON for locating MATAKAUSHALYA DEVI, PAHWA CHARITABLE HOSPITAL Mr. Sohan Lal Pahwa, AVON’s Chairman and Principal Trustee of the hospital spent a good part of his working life devoted to philanthropy. The hospital, in its 5th year of inception, has risen to serve a model healthcare facility boasting of some bold experiments in its very early years of existence. It’s support since inception has been of the order of Rs. 3 crore to date and it continues uninterrupted. Reaching out to the needy farther afield, the hospital holds regular camps in surrounding villages to propagate scientific approach to healthcare. Recently the hospital took the social responsibility concept a step further and formulated a scheme titled Celebrated Female Child’ to enable and inspire positive and enduring environment for society’s all–consuming passion for’sons only’ to end.
Infosys Technologies Limited
Infosys is actively involved in various community development programs. Infosys; promoted, in 1996, the Infosys Foundation as a not-for-profit trust to which ;t contributes up to 1%PAT every year. Additionally, the Education and Research Department (E&R) at Infosys also works with employee volunteers on community development projects. Infosys leadership has set examples in the area of corporate citizenship and has involved itself actively in key national bodies. They have taken initiatives to work in the areas of Research and Education, Community Service, Rural Reach Programme, Employment, Welfare activities undertaken by the Infosys Foundation, Healthcare for the poor, Education and Arts & Culture.
Tata Consultancy Services
The Adult Literacy Program (ALP) was conceived and set up by Dr. F. C Kohli along with Prof. P N Murthy and Prof. Kesav Nori of Tata Consultancy Services in May 2000 to address the problem of illiteracy. ALP believes illiteracy is a major social concern affecting a third of the Indian population comprising old and young adults. To accelerate the rate of learning, it uses a TCS-designed Computer–Based Functional Literacy. shod (CBFL), an innovative teaching strategy that uses multimedia software to teach adults, to read within about 40 learning hours.
Larsen & Toubro (L & T) Limited
Considering that construction industry is,40second largest employer in India after agriculture, employing about 32 million-strong workforce, L&T set out to regulate and promote Construction Vocational Training (CVT) in India by establishing a Construction Skills Training Institute (CSTI) on a 5.5 acre land, close to its construction Division Headquarters at Manapakkam, Chennai. CSTI imparts, totally free of cost, basic training in formwork, carpentry, masonry, bar-bending, plumbing and sanitary, scaffolder and electrical wireman trades to a wide spectrum of the rural poor.
As a result of the good response it received in Chennai, CSTI set up a branch at Panvel, Mumbai, initially offering training in formwork, carpentry and masonry trades. The Manapakkam and Panvel facilities together provide training to about 300 candidates annually who are inducted after a process of selection, the minimum qualification being tenth standard. Since inception, these two units have produced about 2,000 skilled workmen in various trades, with about sixty percent of them being deployed to L&T’s jobsites spread across the country. The success of this training-initiative demonstrates that adoption of systematic training techniques are bound to yield efficient and skilled personnel in the shortest possible time, and in the power to convert the potential of the Rural Youth in Construction and upgrading Rural Economy in a small way.
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