CSR Initiatives of Private Sector Companies in Turkey: Main Approaches, Issues and Motivations

Transcription

1 95 CSR Initiatives of Private Sector Companies in Turkey: Main Approaches, Issues and Motivations Abstract Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become one of the most important agenda for private enterprises in Turkey specifically in the last decades. The aim of this paper is to examine CSR initiatives (programs, activities and projects) of private sector companies in Turkey by focusing on main approaches, themes, motivations, stakeholder dialogue and engagement. Through this purpose, corporate web sites of 22 companies thoroughly investigated to seek information on CSR and 43 CSR projects are identified which still in practice at the time of this research conducted. Findings of the study revealed that private sector companies have some shortcomings to sustain multidimensionality in CSR conceptualizations and comprehensive approach in CSR initiatives. Keywords: Corporate social responsibility (CSR), private enterprises, stakeholder dialogue, public relations, Turkey Özet Anahtar kelimeler:

2 96 CSR Initiatives of Private Sector Companies in Turkey: Main Approaches, Issues and Motivations Corporate social responsibility (CSR) concept has attracted vast attention among academics and business professionals after 1970 s and it has grown rapidly especially during the last decades. In the early years CSR was conceptualized in the frame of business related social problems and grounded on the idea that business is an actor in the environment and should respond to social problems and demands (Wood, 1991: 384). Starting from 1980 s attention has shifted to how companies tended to respond to business related social issues (responsiveness) as well as what was considered ethical behavior (Clark, 2000: 366). Main reason behind recent interest in CSR has aroused from the development of globalization and international trade which have produced more business complexity and new demands from business side such as transparency and corporate citizenship (Jamali and Mirshak, 2007: 243). In today s competitive business environment, private enterprises widely accepted the importance of CSR as a vital component of business philosophy and practices. CSR can be defined as a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis (Commission of the European Communities, 2001:6). European Commission puts forward a new definition of CSR as the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society. According to this conceptualization, enterprises should integrate social, environmental, ethical, human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close cooperation with their stakeholders (European Commission, 2011:6).

3 97 There are some obvious benefits for companies to engage in CSR. First of all, companies can build and develop more positive relationships with various stakeholders through CSR initiatives. They can enhance their legitimacy, ensure loyalty and differentiate themselves from their competitors, encourage employee loyalty and goodwill, attract investors and promote community goodwill (Portney, 2008: ). Developing positive social responsibility image can contribute to the profitability of the company and help to achieve future goals. Besides, engagement with internal and external stakeholders through CSR provides important advantage to adapt to the changes in the market and also anticipate future transformations thus facilitates sustainability. Although the concept of CSR extensively discussed in the literature, implementation issues and perspectives differ from country to country (see Habisch et al., 2005; Ararat, 2006; Matten and Moon, 2007). According to Jones (1999), national socio-cultural environment and the level of national economic development are important variables influencing the perception of CSR. Besides stakeholders expectations may also vary in different country contexts. Borrowing concepts from Whitley (1999), Matten and Moon (2007: ) argue that political system, financial system, education and labour system and cultural system frameworks which structure business systems can explain the CSR systems differences between the countries. Thus, it is important to conceptualize CSR in the frame of the contextual background. For instance, Ararat pointed out that there were significant differences

4 98 between American, European and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) contexts in CSR issues; Matten and Moon (2007) also illustrate differences between CSR in the USA and Europe. This paper attempts to uncover the CSR understanding and practices of private sector companies in Turkey. Thus, CSR conceptualization in Turkey business context and private enterprises perceptions on CSR will be discussed. Corporate web sites constitute the research unit of the analysis. Web sites are important medium for companies to communicate various stakeholders about their CSR initiatives thus convey valuable information concerning the CSR acts. The private sector companies involved in this study were selected from Turkey s Corporate Social responsibility Leaders index which appears annually in CAPITAL Business and Economy Journal since CAPITAL Business and Economy Journal prepared latest 2012 public survey in cooperation with GFK Turkey and total people over the age of 15 participated to the face to face interviews. From latest 2012 rankings 19 Turkish private enterprises are selected and from the previous six years index three most listed Turkish private sector companies also added to the research sample. Total 22 companies CSR initiatives are covered in the study and corporate web sites are thoroughly investigated to seek information about CSR (see Table 1). In the frame of this study, CSR initiatives consist of projects, programs and activities of the companies. Corporate web sites are examined in order to investigate the following research questions (RQ): RQ1: To what extend do companies give place to CSR initiatives in their web sites?

5 99 RQ 2: How many specific CSR projects that the companies still have in practice? RQ 3: What are the main themes of the CSR projects? RQ 4: Which stakeholders are at the target of CSR projects? RQ 5: Which motivating principles are employed by companies in their selection of the CSR project issues? RQ 6: Are there any research conducted to learn stakeholder expectations about CSR initiatives? RQ 7: Is there any information about CSR initiatives apart from CSR projects? RQ 8: To what extend the conceptualization of CSR initiatives of companies are coherent with CSR definitions in the literature? Total 20 companies included social responsibility to their corporate web sites. Only one of these companies covered CSR under different heading social activities. These finding indicate that, CSR is considered as sufficiently important initiative to be worth mentioning in corporate main web page and important component of corporate communication practices for developing relationships with stakeholders and self-representation as socially responsible company to the public. On the other hand, only eight company web sites convey comprehensive information about CSR through including CSR principles and CSR reports. Rest of the companies only cover basic CSR concerns, approaches, projects and activities. This finding point out that most of the private enterprises still do not consider CSR as a part of their public accountability process. Thus, it can be inferred that CSR is more

6 100 align with corporate communication rather than being a part of business philosophy in Turkish business context. From 22 private sector companies, total 43 CSR projects were identified which still in practice at the time of this research conducted (see Table 2). Detailed explanations about the CSR projects were available in corporate web sites in terms of project aims, focus, partners and scope. Some companies also gave place to their past CSR projects in their corporate web pages and mentioned the solid results and outcomes. On the corporate web sites, CSR heading mostly allocated for CSR projects and does not cover other CSR initiatives such as employee rights or work ethics. Thus it can be inferred that, companies mostly conceptualize or realize their CSR practices in the form of projects. Overall 43 CSR projects, only two CSR projects are related with internal stakeholders and aiming to value innovative and entrepreneurship ideas of employees, subsidiaries and suppliers. There is a wide gap between target stakeholders of CSR projects which can be interpreted as a result of companies giving more emphasis to developing positive relationships with external audiences. 41 of the CSR projects target external stakeholders and mostly community and customers. CSR external projects theme distribution is; 19 education, 6 environment, 4 culture-art, 4 employment, 2 technology-innovation, 1 entrepreneurship, 1 sports, 1 domestic violence, 1 child development, 1 financial literacy, 1 disability (see Table 3). is the prominent subject in examined CSR projects. Most of the education projects are regarded with disadvantaged social groups, similar to employment themed projects. Culture-art projects have also strong connections with educational processes. Half of the environmental projects belong to one specific company. Most of the

7 101 companies mention on their corporate web site that education, culture-art and environment are their main interest in CSR initiatives. The reason behind these preferences is related with companies CSR motivations. However it is noteworthy that, according to Turkish legislations companies may have some tax advantages in their donations to education. State s tax encouragement of private enterprises can be interpreted as a significant drive to develop and/or contribute to CSR projects about education (UNDP, 2008:8). Issues such as employee rights, investment in human resources, safety and health at work, product safety, human rights, social justice, democracy were not included in CSR projects themes. This finding should be highlighted as one of the most striking shortcoming of CSR projects in Turkish business context. As mentioned in corporate web sites, main motivations for CSR initiatives of private enterprises contributing to Turkey s development, creating public value, development of life standard, resolution to public difficulties, seeking solution to the main developmental problems and contribution to the public welfare. Companies mentioned on their web sites that most important criteria to develop and support CSR activities were the CSR targets relevancy with companies establishment mission. These expectations were explicitly stated most of the corporate web sites and well defined relationship were linked up between missions and aim of the CSR projects. Cooperation with NGOs and public bodies are quite common in CSR projects. Private enterprises were giving financial and/or technical support to governmental institutions projects, supporting NGOs practices and collaborating with NGOs in their CSR projects. Cooperation with universities and research institutions are also common practices in companies CSR projects. In some macro CSR projects mostly lead by NGO s and governmental institutions, companies develop partnerships and contribute together to these projects.

8 102 From 22 private companies, only five of them have voluntary groups consist of internal stakeholders. This finding indicates that including internal publics to the CSR initiatives were limited among private companies. On the other hand, cooperation with opinion leaders is common practice in CSR projects. Opinion leaders communicate wider publics about CSR projects aims and processes so that CSR messages can produce greater impacts. In most cases, CSR projects leaderships were executed by CEOs or owner of the private enterprises. Private and personal leadership induces CSR initiatives in Turkey. According to CAPITAL Business and Economy Journal s 2012 listing, CEOs and leaders supporting CSR projects about education, health, culture-art and societal problems are regarded as most socially responsible leaders. According to the CSR information on corporate web sites, only one company stated that they are monitoring media, utilizing internal correspondence, conducting perceptional surveys and collecting employee views besides sector research reports and customer satisfaction survey data to identify the issues to focus on CSR initiatives. Other companies mostly took for granted the expectations of stakeholders. CSR projects grounded on basic urgencies of society, suppose the main interest of stakeholders were meeting these needs. CAPITAL Business and Economy Journal is an important source for the companies to uncover the main expectations of the external stakeholders. According to the results of the latest research of the journal (CAPITAL, 2012), public demands from private companies to invest in and support CSR projects primarily about education (27,9%) and then health (20,9); environment protection (11,9%); domestic violence, women and children rights (9,9%) and philanthropic issues (8,5%). Since the majority of the CSR projects are dealing with educational issues, it can be inferred that projects mostly derived from stakeholders expectations and contribute more to the corporate reputation building.

9 103 Since most of the CSR initiatives focuses on external stakeholders, there were no data available to explore internal stakeholders expectations from companies. This was another notable shortcoming in CSR initiatives. Apart from CSR projects, companies define philanthropic issues and sponsorships as a part of their CSR initiatives in their corporate web sites. Most favored CSR activities of the companies can be listed as follows: ships, aids; sports clubs; constructions; cultural activities (biennales, festivals, displays etc); When CSR activities concerned, it is apparent that companies mostly focus on philanthropic issues in their practices. This result indicated that initiatives excluding CSR projects were out of the general frame of CSR definitions (Birkmen, 2004 cited in Özturan, 2011: 5). From the examined CSR initiatives which appear on corporate web sites, it can be argued that most of the companies still consider CSR as a public relations practice and have some important shortcom-

10 104 ings to develop comprehensive view. Thus it is possible to define that most of these initiatives are instruments of corporate reputation management and brand building practices. Particularly including philanthropic activities and sponsorships to the frame of CSR; concentrating only on specific issues and stakeholders through neglecting some important ones, signal that conceptualization of CSR is far from grasping multidimensional nature of CSR. Indeed, there is still lack of balanced multi-stakeholder perspective in CSR which is also apparent in the main tenets and themes of the practices. Nevertheless according to principles and guidelines presented European Commission (2011:7): CSR at least covers human rights, labour and employment practices (such as training, diversity, gender equality and employee health and wellbeing), environmental issues (such as biodiversity, climate change, resource efficiency, lifecycle assessment and pollution prevention), and combating bribery and corruption. Community involvement and development, the integration of disabled persons, and consumer interests, including privacy, are also part of the CSR agenda. The promotion of social and environmental responsibility through supply-chain, and the disclosure of non-financial information, are recognised as important cross-cutting issues. Actually when we consider the improvement in CSR, the developments are very promising in Turkey. During the 1950s, CSR first initiated in the form of philanthropy and later companies have started establishing foundations (CAPITAL, 2012:80). It is observed that there were seven foundations belong to companies included to the sample. Today, CSR initiatives are transformed to larger programs and projects in which leaders or CEOs actively participated; NGO cooperation has become more prevalent and companies are getting more inclined to express their CSR concerns in terms of sustainability focused company strategies rather than CSR projects (CAPITAL, 2012: 80-82). Yet, companies should pay more attention to distinguish public relations practices from CSR and put emphasis to implement CSR acts based on and foster stakeholder dialogue.

11 105 Ararat, Melsa (2006). Corporate Social Responsibility Across Middle East and North Africa. Date of access: 15 th February CAPITAL Business and Economy Journal (2012). Türkiye nin Kurumsal Sosyal Sorumluluk. Mart-2012: Clark, Cynthia E. (2000). Differences Between Public Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility: An Analysis. Public Relations Review 26(3): Commission of the European Communities (2001). Promoting a European Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility. com/2001/com2001_0366en01.pdf. Date of access: 15 February European Commission (2011). A Renewed EU Strategy for Corporate Social Responsibility. id=7010. Date of access: 15 February Habisch, Andre; Jonker, Jan; Wegner, Martina and Schmidpeter, Rene (2005). Corporate Social Responsibility Across Europe. Berlin: Springer. Jamali, Dima and Mirshak, Ramez (2007). Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Theory and Practice in a Developing Country Context. Journal of Business Ethics 72: Jones, Marc T. (1999). The Institutional Determinants of Social Responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics 20(2): Matten, Dirk and Moon, Jeremy (2008). Implicit and Explicit CSR: A conceptual framework for a comparative understanding of corporate social responsibility. Academy of Management Review 33(2): UserFiles/File/KSS%20Vaka%20Analizi_P_Ozturan%20(2).pdf. Date of access: 15 th February Portney, Paul R. (2008). The (Not So) New Corporate Social Responsibility: An Empirical Perspective. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 2(2): Network_material/CSR_Report_in_Turkish.pdf. Date of access: 15 February 2012.

12 106 Whitley, Richard (1999). Divergent Capitalisms: The Social Structuring and Change of Business Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wood, Donna J. (1991). Social Issues in Management: Theory and Research in Corporate Social Performance. Journal of Management 17: Table 1. Private Sector Companies Turkcell 13 Avea 3 14 Vestel Akbank 6 17 Efes Pilsen 7 Teknosa 18 8 Eti 19 Turk Telekom 9 Enka Zorlu Group

13 107 Table 2. CSR projects CSR Project Company 1 Snowdrops Turkcell 2 Turkcell 3 Turkcell 4 Turkcell 5 Turkcell Power to Entrepreneur Turkcell 6 Employment Turkcell 7 8 For My Country Literacy 12 Teknosa 13 Teknosa 14 Eti 15 Eti 16 Eti 17 Eti 18 Eti 19 Eti Forest in 81 City Project 21 Chess Firefly Mobile Unit Avea 26 Avea 27 Earthquake Emergency Response Project Avea 28 Idea of My Life-Entrepreneurship for the Youth Project Avea 29 Avea Erzincan Call Center Avea 30 Avea Information Technology Classes Project Avea 31 Avea 32 Dad Send me to School Campaign 33 End Domestic Violence 34 Akbank 35 Akbank

14 Sea Stars Project 37 Teacher Academy Foundation 38 Turk Telekom 39 Turk Telekom 40 Turk Telekom Stationary Sport Campaign 43 Para Durumu

15 109 Table 3. CSR themes Culture-art Culture-art Culture-art Culture-art Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment Environment Technology-Innovation Technology-Innovation Employment Employment Employment Employment Domestic violence Sea Stars Project Chess Firefly Mobile Unit Literacy Dad Send me to School Campaign Avea Information Technology Classes Project Stationary Sport Campaign Snowdrops 81 Forest in 81 City Project Earthquake Emergency Response Project Employment Idea of My Life-Entrepreneurship for the Youth Project Avea Erzincan Call Center End Domestic Violence

16 110 Disability Child Development Financial Literacy Sports Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship (internal stakeholders) General (for internal stakeholders) Para Durumu Turkcell Power to Entrepreneur For My Country