Currently, the CSR scene across the Gulf is rather static. Fortunately, some industry leaders believe it has started to “become a main concern” on the “region’s agenda” in recent years, as noted by Mahmud Muhammad al-Tukistani, head of the CSR unit at the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia (NCB). Jamil Ezzo — director general of the ICDL GCC Foundation — stressed that the GCC has “major problems” and is trailing “behind in education.” According to those interviewed by Executive, the most crucial areas where CSR is needed in the Gulf are: youth education reform, environment, human resources/development and health issues. Tackling these issues will take enormous, ongoing efforts from all sides — the private sector, the public sector and civil society.
Knowledge is power
The biggest impediment to any success lack of knowledge, which is exactly what characterizes the GCC in terms of CSR. Najeeb Al-Ali, executive director at the Dubai Center for Corporate Values (DCCV), said CSR is a “relatively new concept” in the region and will gain momentum in the near future. Regardless, the Gulf is in dire need of strategic and well-organized awareness campaigns to promote this rewarding concept. While the business economy of the Gulf is booming, CSR is lagging. While the Levant seems to be more concerned with the need for CSR, maybe because the concerns in that region need more immediate attention — restoring infrastructures from wars, security issues, extreme poverty, etc. — but if the GCC does not identify what its needs are now, they will suffer later.
The Gulf’s plan to expand operations into the international arena must first revamp its business models to suit new markets and novel ways of operating. It is well known that the nations making up the GCC are overflowing with liquidity, yet unfortunately members of the private sector are simply not doing enough in terms of social responsibility. Before starting to branch out, the private sector needs to be ‘in the know’ about CSR.
As Shabib Mohammed Almaamary, executive director of Injaz Oman, noted that the GCC has “a lot of resources, [but] not enough volunteerism.” The first and foremost is the need to create a collective regional awareness campaigns on the definition, necessity, and benefits of devising CSR initiatives and engaging the concerned parties. The GCC’s excess of resources should make this task easy. Also, it is important to ingrain in private and public sector minds that “CSR can always be a vehicle,” according to Al-Ali, to address the issues faced by the region. Next, the question arises as to whose responsibility it is to generate these campaigns and spread the CSR-word. Opinions on this vary: the majority of top industry leaders interviewed believe the government and the private sector both need to do more.
Role of private sector
A recent survey by MVM Events Dubai noted only 18% of companies in the emirate had increased their awareness of CSR issues related to corporate events in the last 12 months. Unsurprisingly, MVM revealed that a mere 15% of those surveyed said media attention relating to conferences and events had influenced them to implement CSR initiatives. Regrettably, of the few GCC companies concerned with CSR, initiative tend to be image-driven rather than issue-driven. Al-Tukistani highlighted this problem, stating in the region “there is a big need for corporations to separate their marketing and PR activities from CSR.”
“In the GCC in general, the private sector hasn’t done enough in terms of CSR,” said Samir Al Shamma, general manager of Intel GCC. It is imperative for the private sector to know that CSR is not a static scene — one essential element to successful initiatives is constant innovation. The private sectors in the Gulf need to grasp the idea that being CSR-savvy is not set in stone — changes, alterations, adaptations and extensions should be made to company initiatives as a company’s surrounding societies, economies, environments, stakeholders and employees change. What is more is the need for the private sector to differentiate public relations from CSR. Al-Tukistani thus upholds that “CSR should run with or without marketing and PR presence.”
One of the biggest challenges noticed by Al-Ali is getting “commitment from the private sector, [and] for them to do their practices.” However, he asserted that, “the picture is changing today, [as] companies are interested in [CSR] and even government departments are [becoming] interested to take part in socially responsible activities.” Overall, most executives find the private sector lacks a desire to get involved. “When you have the interest and the will, things will happen,” emphasized Al-Ali, adding that today the region is “in a better shape” in terms of motivation and inclination towards CSR. Raji Hattar, chief sustainability and compliance officer at Aramex, blamed the unchanged “lack of awareness” of CSR on the private sector and thinks it should ask itself “how it can both benefit the community and satisfy shareholders.” The private sector “has to play a bigger role” and needs “to become bolder in their initiatives,” remarked Hattar.
Similar to other industry leaders, Ezzo finds the biggest challenge currently presented by CSR “is really engaging the private sector,” firmly suggesting that an actual, “closer partnership” between the government and the private sector be formed, as well as a “closer interaction [with] the people, to really see what they are lacking.” Ezzo emphasized that “interaction is critical between the government and the public sector,” and highlighted that “not enough is being done, generally” in terms of CSR. Making sure not to point the finger at one side, Ezzo contended the private sector’s rare presence in CSR is the result of “a combination” of lack of awareness and overall reluctance, as “they don’t seem to understand the win-win equation of CSR.”
With a significant deficiency of socially responsible initiatives in the Gulf, one cannot refute the dire need for the private sector to engage itself much more aggressively than it is doing today, and possibly partake in long-term partnerships with their respective governments.
Role of government
In a tax-free, wealthy region, governments are faced with the challenge of how to motivate the private sector to get involved with CSR programs. Thus, a way to move forward is for the governments to provide incentive formulas for the private sector to participate in CSR. Al-Tukistani believes that “governments plays a big role by supporting all CSR activities […] like helping to develop small businesses, health and educational activities; we believe the government’s role will expand in the coming years.”
Al-Ali of the DCCV noted that the government “is obviously always a stakeholder in the matter,” and provided a comparison of the role it plays in the Gulf versus its role in the West. He finds that in the West governments encourage the private sector by providing tax breaks on CSR programs but, seeing as the Gulf is a tax haven, “that option is out of the way.” The solution thus must be tailored to the local situation. According to Al-Ali, “the government can go out of its way to encourage other initiatives, i.e. by putting their own index on board in terms of ranking companies; the stock markets can introduce an index within the markets.” Also, governments can “introduce incentive schemes for companies and organizations who are socially responsible to encourage more and more companies to actually enter the field [of CSR].” This would be a brilliant task for the government to undertake, and may actually help CSR move in the right direction. Similarly, George Khawam, marketing director of McDonald’s Kuwait, stressed the need for “more governmental support to CSR in general, and to socially responsible companies.” Khawam suggested that governments can play two major roles in the implementation of CSR: “They can depict needs that require social responsibility and raise those needs to the corporate attention, and set new rules for CSR applications as opposed to commercial and promotional applications. Doing this would help socially responsible companies in their CSR implementation.” Also, he added, “it would yield more corporate penetration [in]to the CSR field.”
Steve Vaile, founder and CEO of H2O New Media, insisted that the government’s role in CSR implementation is critical and called for legislation “mandating CSR policies and an audit policy to ensure compliance, [to make] a country’s commercial infrastructure much more profitable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly.” Generally, whatever the government chooses to do — be it providing legislation, indexes, incentives, etc. — it must act quickly and efficiently for CSR to grow and thrive.
