Business Leaders Forum Serbia

This month, Neven Marinović, executive director of Business Leaders Forum Serbia, discusses the state of CSR in Serbia and the challenges and opportunities for Serbian businesses. He also looks back at the CSR Forum, an event organised in March by Business Leaders Forum Serbia and Smart Kolektiv.

The concept of CSR is quite new in Serbia, as it is in many countries in transition. However, local companies can potentially benefit from gaining insight into best practice examples from Western countries. How would you describe the situation of CSR in Serbia?

In addition to being new in transition economies, the concept of CSR is also still often confused or associated with mere philanthropy. This is one of the main challenges for us, and something that we spend a lot of time on - explaining all aspects of the concept to the actors from all three sectors: NGO, public and business.

Businesses may be the most aware of what CSR encompasses, since a lot of multinationals are present now in Serbia, bringing their global CSR guidelines with them. What multinationals are facing, on the other hand, is significant level of distrust and suspicion from the local communities and general public, caused by often non-transparent-enough process of privatisation.

Another common feature of CSR development in transition economies is the lack of national framework or platform for CSR.  In this context, business networks, such as Business Leaders Forum, are often the only institutionalised bodies for the strategic affirmation of CSR practices. As you mentioned, best practice examples from Western countries are therefore extremely valuable for us, and so are our international partnerships, such the one with CSR Europe.

Still, regardless of the difficult starting point I described above, I would say recently there is more and more interest in CSR, both from multinational and local businesses, as well as from government and NGOs. This will eventually lead to further development and integration of the concept in every-day business operations and public policies. Currently, CSR hot topics are slowly shifting from all-social issues, such as poverty reduction, towards environment and good corporate governance.

The Serbian Business Leaders Forum was established quite recently. What would you consider to be the main challenges in anchoring your organisation in the Serbian business community?

It is important to mention that in the countries in transition, networks like the Serbian Business Leaders Forum are often established through support of international organisations and foreign donors, in contrast to Western countries where the sole financiers of these networks are member companies.

This was the case in Serbia too, where we had and still have the support of USAID and the Institute for Sustainable Communities. Our main task for the following period will be to ensure self-sustainability of BLF's programmes and activities.

The network was established in June 2008, only a few months before the economic crisis emerged. We considered this to be very challenging for strengthening the network and developing our programmes in this early stage. However, it turned out to be even motivating for our members to be in this kind of association, and all of our originally planned activities were carried out.

Of course, we cannot expect significant growth of the network in this period, and that is the main challenge that the crisis brought. Otherwise, I am very optimistic - our programmes and activities are being very well responded to by the Serbian business community. 

Who of the following, in your opinion, plays the most important role in stimulating CSR in Serbia: NGOs, government or the business itself?

Unfortunately, the government has not been active enough in promoting CSR and creating enabling environment. The national CSR strategy was adopted just a few weeks ago, so hopefully the situation will improve in the upcoming period. There are also some important initiatives of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, such as proposing the law on employment of persons with disabilities, whose enforcement has started in May.

NGOs and business sector, on the other hand, are being more and more active in promoting CSR, and more importantly, they are more and more aware of the necessity of cross-sector cooperation in order to implement the concept of CSR successfully. In my opinion, this will be crucial for stimulating CSR in Serbia in the future.

How aware are citizens of Serbia on CSR-related issues? Would you see the pressure of customers/consumers as one of the main driving forces for companies to introduce CSR strategies?

This is still not the case, and I would attribute it to the lack of good watch-dog NGOs and the fact that the correlation between CSR and their personal civic interests is still unclear for the majority of people. But this will inevitably move further as we develop as a society. BLF's activities are mainly aimed at the business community, but working with NGOs to raise public awareness on this matter is also high on our agenda.

In March, Business Leaders Forum Serbia and Smart Kolektiv organised the CSR Forum, an annual event in Serbia. What were its major outcomes?

It was our first event of this kind, and a very successful one. The idea was to treat relevant CSR issues through different formats, allowing visitors to gain and share knowledge in a dynamic and diverse way.

The keynote presentation on CSR trends was given by Lord Michael Hastings, international director of corporate citizenship and diversity at KPMG. The presentation was followed by a discussion on perspectives of CSR in Serbia, in which relevant stakeholders from all sectors took part, while Lord Hastings acted as moderator.

The participants could also attend workshops and trainings on different topics, such as "How to communicate CSR activities" or "How to involve employees in company's CSR programmes". As a side event, CSR MarketPlace was organized, where companies presented their projects, while NGOs presented initiatives that companies can get involved in.    

This event raised BLF's profile and therefore also gave a push forward to our other programmes: employee volunteering and business mentorships. In the city-wide volunteering day "Our Belgrade" that followed in June, we had more companies and volunteers interested to join. Also, more and more top managers from various companies are applying to act as mentors to young entrepreneurs, through the programme we launched this year in partnership with Serbian Ministry of Youth and Sports and Youth Business International.

Our plans now include building up on these grounds, and starting one new programme within the Forum, which will tackle environmental issues, with special emphasis on business action against climate change.

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