Voluntary approaches tackling social and environmental challenges have had limited success in the Asia Pacific region and the future will see increased pressure from governments via new regulations. These are likely to embrace environmental issues and labour issues and provide new requirements for CSR reporting. Regulations in place in Europe covering mandatory reporting and disclosure are likely to be replicated in Asia. Other regulatory pressure is likely to come from stock exchanges, securities regulators and institutions tasked with tackling the social responsibility and good governance of companies. These are the findings of CSR Asia's latest research into stakeholder expectations with regard to CSR in the region. It is particularly interesting that at a time when governments are now intervening more than ever in markets, stakeholders expect this to be extended to CSR. Indeed, the 2009 survey results that will be released in full at the beginning of June indicate that govenment is now seen as the institution most likely to infleunce the CSR agenda replacing NGOs which toppped the 2008 survey.

I'm in the UK at the moment and the big issues are executive pay and MP's expenses.  Many institutional shareholders are raising questions about executives (through the remuneration committee) still electing to award themselves bonuses despite the fact that the performance targets haven't been met.  Governance experts are advising shareholders to vote against such awards and to closely monitor the issue of executive pay.  Similarly elected representatives are in the spotlight for their expenses claims - perhaps companies will be next to take a very close look at what their senior staff claim on expenses as well.  Ultimately the issue of trust is on the board room table and it would seem that most are choosing a big bonus above trust from employees, customers, shareholders and other stakeholders.

A recent article appearing in the Phillipines' Business Mirror starts with the statement that "corporate philanthropy, popularly known as corporate social responsibility (CSR), has emerged as an important factor in influencing consumers’ buying patterns". The confusion between the two concepts continues to be a problem in Asia. Philanthropy is just a small part of CSR. Such a small part, indeed, that our work at CSR Asia suggests it is probably the least important aspect to most stakeholders (take a look at our research). Philanthropy is about what you do with your money. CSR is about how you make it in a responsible and ethical way that protects the environment and society. Nevertheless, the rest of the article is interesting and it points out, for example, that 99 percent of the respondents in the Philippines rated social responsibility as important, the highest result among countries in Asia. Overall Asian results suggested 78 percent of respondents rated social responsibility as important and would influence their purchasing decisions. However, Hong Kong and Singapore residents saw only 67 percent of them rating CSR as important. You can see the article here and details of our upcoming event in the Philippines here.

If you have got time to do volunteering then you are not busy enough at work. That was the view expressed by a manager to a friend of mine who asked if they could organise an employee voluneer team in their organisation. And, the manager went on to say, that if she and her colleagues were not busy enough at work then it was clear that there was room for more staff cuts. Well, where do you start? The manager in question clearly does not recognise the potential benefits (internal and external) of employee volunteering and neither does he seem to understand that there can be a strong business case for supporting communities through volunteering efforts that can enhance corporate reputation and brand. But I do not blame only the manager. The case for employee volunteering is still poorly made in Asia and it must be seen as more than a 'nice thing to do'. We need to promote employee volunteering as a strategic part of a well managed and well measured community investment process and as I said in my blog last week, that has to go beyond simply counting volunteers and counting hours. And for all those people who asked me about how you properly measure the impact of employee volunteering and community investment I would invite you to attend our event in Manila on 28th May.