CEO Talks: CSR vs. Profitability

2016-09-22GoldenBeeadmin0010

On August19, 2016, The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC) hosted the CEO Talks: CSR vs. Profitability forum at House of Roosevelt in Shanghai and released the 10th Anniversary White Paper of Social Responsibility Forum 2016. Mr. Yin Gefei, Vice President of China WTO Tribune was invited to attend this forum. More than 40 CSR managers and CSR professionals from member companies and non-membership companies of EUCCC and other service organizations attended this forum.

Mr. Zhang Hui, Chairman of the EUCCC CSR Forum and CSR Director of United Technology Corporation, delivered the opening speech; in particularly, he mentioned three key elements for dealing with the challenge of sustainable development are “trust, sustainability and innovation”.

Mr. Mats Harborn, Executive Director of Scania China Strategic Office made another speech about the release of white paper on behalf of membership countries of EUCCC. He reviewed the significant changes of China society towards the awareness of CSR since China has become a member of WTO, as well as how EUCCC pushes those member enterprises to combine practices with the value of CSR by cross-field collaboration. He affirmed the positive influence of Chinese government in promoting the development of CSR, and said that the 13^th Five-Year Plan of China has included the concepts of sustainable development, and each organization contributes to realizing the goal.

During the section of CEO TALK, Mr. Mats Harborn identified himself as the decision maker of Scania China to explain his own understanding about the relationship between CSR and enterprises’ profitability. He said, the profitability is at the priority position and also is deemed as the guarantee of sustainable development; but enterprises should not only bring benefit to itself, but also help their customers to be profitable as well. Eventually this forms a cycle that contains all stakeholders.

Moreover, Mr. Mats Harborn clarified the management techniques of Scania China is value-orientated, and the gaining of value is the cornerstone of business operation.

To the management system of Scania China, there are two vital principles: the first one is to guarantee the individual working quality, in other word, each employees should hand high quality intermediate goods over to the subsequent level employees. Otherwise, waste and low efficiency will be raised. The second is the demand-oriented output to reduce the waste within the production line. Another important principle throughout the entire value chain is “keep changing” which means learning and upgrading from differences between positive and negative sides to improve efficient and quality.

Additionally, Mr. Mats Harborn believes that by adapting sustainable energy, intelligent transportation and efficient energy utilization, most of sustainable issues will be addressed in future; for instance, climate changing, overgrowing population, sustainable energy, CO2 emission, noisy pollution and so on.

During the CEO Talk, Mr. Yin Gefei, Vice President of China WTO Tribune made congratulation to the white paper, and displayed another similar report Enterprises for People or People for Enterprises? Harmony Creation and Sustainable Society. As a pioneer and promoter of CSR development in China, he introduced the four stages of CSR development over the past five decades; meanwhile, he affirmed what EUCCC did in “Five-in-one” CSR development pattern in China ,in which government, sector, enterprise, society and international cooperation have formed five forces in promoting CSR development

There were some subjects about CSR have been argued deeply in the conversation, like “whether CSR should gain more profitability”, “does CSR conflict with the profitability in some cases”. The participants also proposed some other questions, such as how to measure the profitability of CSR, how to allocate resources between profitable and non-profitable projects and so on.

By the end of the forum, Mr. Yin Gefei made a summary on the profitability of CSR; he said, sometimes CSR is conformed to the profitability of enterprise, however they are conflicted with each other under some circumstances. It’s easier to make a choice while they match each other; nevertheless, if they cannot fit each other and when they are out of the range of legislation, a long term strategic way of thinking for integrating CSR into the value of enterprises will benefit the sustainable development of society and further help enterprise achieve the goal of sustainable operation through the responsible competiveness, eventually the conflict will be solved.

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