CSR Romania, Romania

Focus on a Partner - November 2011

As new National Partner in the NPO network, can you please give us a short overview of CSR Romania, in terms of your key milestones in the past and your priority areas in 2011-2012?

In 2006, at the time we started our CSR Romania programme, sustainable development and CSR were exotic concepts on the Romanian businesses agenda. For years, CSR was considered as a synonym for philanthropy so we had to work very hard to change this perspective. This was one of our main challenges and we put a lot of time and effort into explaining all aspects of the concept. A very effective tool for reaching this has been our online platforme CSR Romania, a two-way communication vehicle for exchanging know-how, researches and best practices in the field of sustainable business.

Today, most of the Romanian companies understand the fundaments but we are still a long way from a strategic approach that integrates the concept in the every-day business operations. There are still companies using CSR as a public relations tool rather than for its ethical value, mainly due to the fact that the majority of CSR people in Romania are still operating under the communication/marketing department. Our organization has been trying to address this issue by sending Romanian companies the message that to be socially responsible does not mean sporadic philanthropic actions or public relations activities, but a business philosophy voluntarily accepted, manifested as a continuous behavior.

A look at the annual Awards organized by our organization gives clear indications about the progresses Romanian companies have achieved over the last years. There has been a major growth of consciousness and actions about sustainable business in Romania including a more strategic approach to CSR issues, the integration of the concept in every-day business operations, joint-activities of NGOs and business sector in order to implement successfully the concept of CSR, better alignment of the CSR business agenda with the local communities’ needs, use of reporting standards in order to ensure transparency.

As part of its efforts to strengthen the stakeholder dialogue and to facilitate access of the Romanian companies to the emerging trends and developments in the field, CSR Romania has conducted regular researches on key CSR topics with the support of international CSR organizations. In this context, a series of conference panels, debates and informal meetings have been organized to ensure the sharing of best practices among relevant stakeholders.

Our priorities for 2012 include the further development of member's services, using European CSR success models as an example and guide. Best practice examples from Western countries are welcome and valuable for us. A more strategic and systematic CSR approach needs best practices and relevant tools and we at CSR Romania want to be the top provider of these for our members.

According to a European Commission Study "CSR-National public policies in the European Union" in 2007, in Romania social responsibility is seen more as an image building instrument, than an essential element of success in the long term. Given your experience, how do Romanian citizens and companies view CSR nowadays? What are the main challenges?

Companies have always sought to use PR muscles to extract maximum competitive advantage from a given situation. The concept of sustainability is no exception to the rule.

So, in its first phase of development, CSR concept was perceived and used by Romanian companies more as a public relations or media relations instrument. But later, it became clear that to be socially responsible does not mean an expensive PR campaign but an ethical business philosophy manifested in a day-by-day organizational behavior. Nevertheless, there are still many companies that use to spend big money for communicating CSR activities rather than focusing their efforts on the social or environmental cause they address.

However, we should not try to set artificial borders between disciplines. For instance, if we take a close look at a CSR Report, on the one hand it is undoubtedly an instrument of corporate communications. And in most cases the corporate communication department is responsible for the structuring and the publishing of a CSR report. And its purpose is to stabilize and improve a company's reputation – so it is PR. On the other hand the issues dealt with in such a report reflect real social and environmental engagement – so it is not only PR but responsibly managed business.

Thus, we find in one of our previous surveys the strange fact that a CSR report is and is not public relations. Conflicts arise when critical members of the public allege a public relations approach to CSR reporting. They often suspect reporting companies are not taking their social responsibility seriously but are simply engaged in polishing their public image. These conflicts can be avoided or solved by stakeholder engagement strategies.

Communication is in my opinion an important element of CSR, particularly supporting the values of transparency and dialogue with stakeholders. It is also invaluable in allowing organisations to maximise the benefit to their corporate reputations. But organisations must be very worry of seeing CSR only in terms of marketing or PR. Before communicating CSR, it is vital to have a real programme in place, and companies should always be honest about what they aim to achieve.

Does the Romanian government support companies that develop and intend to carry out social responsibility? If yes, how?

The Romanian government has not been active enough in promoting CSR issues and creating enabling environment. Although the legislation in the field of environment, employment, restructuring of local authorities underwent some changes, there are still many requests from the civil society and from the business sector for improving legislation and fiscality in order to support organizations for CSR actions.

CSR Romania has conducted a study on transparency and accountability in CSR practices in Romania. Could you share with us some of the outcomes of this research?

The main outcome of our study was that credibility and transparency describe two overall impressions stakeholders should have after reading a CSR report. Reasonably identified reporting topics, a sound reflection of the firms´ general sustainability context and clear information about the reporting boundaries are typical indicators of materiality, relevance and completeness.

Other outcome highlighted that stakeholders need not necessarily be only the recipients of a CSR report. They also could be closely involved in the process of generating, selecting and evaluating the reporting content by engaging them in a stakeholder dialogue process.

According to the survey, in a climate of low trust Romanian businesses have still a great deal of difficulty trying to demonstrate their performance or activities within the sustainability field. If the objective of a business is responsibility for responsibility’s sake then demonstration is not so important. However, if as in the majority of cases, the company concerned wants to avoid risks and perhaps extract competitive advantage then this becomes of great importance.

Over the last years the practice of reporting on environmental and social performance has developed rapidly in Romania. Initially companies started to reveal just few data, but over the last years reporting became more sophisticated and the companies involved were seeking some form of standardization. More and more Romanian companies begin to report along the triple bottom line, i.e. to report holistically on environmental, social and financial performance. CSR Romania estimates that there are approximately 15 reports published annually.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is the most high profile and successful international standard adopted recently by Romanian companies.

For more information about CSR Romania visit www.csr-romania.ro.

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