Excuse me, what is Corporate Social Responsibility

Interview to Adriano Ruchini, innovative entrepreneur, President and CEO of Minerva (www.minerva.it). He holds an Executive Master of Business Administration from the MIB of Trieste and he is Ambassador of Excellence to EVP for EFQM. From May 2010 he is President of the Commission Energies and Renewable at the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce in Budapest. He is also President of Confapi Gorizia (Italian confederation of small and medium private industry). In 2005 he received the National Award for Corporate Social Responsibility.

You are an expert and for you this question may sound strange, but how would you define “Corporate Social Responsibility”?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the combination of sustainability and success. In other words, the success of an organisation is tightly bound to the active involvement of the territory it operates in. CSR aims at creating value both for stakeholders and the community, paving the way for a future sustainability. CSR has not to be interpreted as an ephemeral trend but as a chance to redistribute wealth in the territory. CSR has to become synonym of success, it should teach everyone to act responsibly, safeguard the environment and protect innovation and security.

There is an aspect we would like to focus on, do not you think that the welfare system and corporate world are in contrast with each other?

In some cases, or unfortunately in many of them, they are. Obviously, excellent organisations that base their success on transparent practices do not fall in this category. Since I am one the European assessors for Excellence for the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), I have the chance to verify personally how the most important European organisations relate to these elements. I have to understand how they conceive the internal and external welfare, from the relation with employees and entrepreneurs to that with the whole community. When a company cares about the community and tries to safeguard it, social strains tend to decrease, satisfaction grows and the absenteeism rate drops. In the longer term this leads to higher productivity and profits and to an increasing possibility to reinvest in that territory. The problem is that non excellent organisations often focus on immediate profit rather than on a long-term one.

So, according to you, today social policies rise within companies. You say that there is a strong relation among all the subjects involved. Could you please explain in details the reasons of such an evolution?

This important change can be attributed to a new idea of collaboration between employees and managers. It is rather more difficult to involve in this transformation other actors who do not want to lose their role in the prevention of conflicts. Through a socially responsible policy, adopted both within and outside the companies, indeed, they might lose their position leading to direct economical interests that, sometimes, do not respect the community well-being.

Could you please give some examples of positive results in the field of CSR?

If we talk about the examples related to our organization, I can mention the investments we made around twenty years ago in the cultural and sport education of youths. This is a crucial aspect because social responsibility cannot be separated from education. We also offered grants for our collaborators’ children concerning the theme of social responsibility and ongoing information. We want to be a “role model”, an example for everyone. Our commitment to social responsibility is constant on the international level too. We promote, indeed, sustainable measures such as “acqua al mondo” (water for the world) which are an example for others.

Why in Italy, is CSR not so well known?

In Italy CSR is often considered a sort of fad and is regarded with distrust. As for the first case, companies tend to adopt CSR principles, without assimilating them properly. As for the second case, since people are much more used to situations of social irresponsibility, it is difficult for them to understand that behind such an approach there is a real attention to people, the community and environment. Unfortunately, this problem involves a large part of the society and is one of the reasons why Italy is now living a very difficult moment. Italy is unable to find a way to change this situation and waits for someone else who takes the first step. In other word, it wants someone else to take the responsibility of new actions.  Therefore, we see situations that deeply damage even those who firmly believe in CSR and who do not want their commitment to be considered as marketing model. They simply want to be a positive example of what can and must be done for the community, because they are really socially responsible and love the place they live in. It is quite obvious that this represents another brake for corporate world growth. In order to change this situation, mass media play a crucial role. Indeed, they often prefer talking about scandals and ignore all those positive examples that would rebuild confidence among people.

(Interview by Roberta Picchi)