Collaboration
aims at corporate social responsibility

Yeng Felipe Butler ’92

“Business for Social Responsibility helps companies develop responsible business practices. We proactively work with our member companies on a diverse set of issues related to corporate social responsibility; How do we do this? We encourage cross-sector collaboration between business and civil society. Obviously I’d rather work with companies that try to integrate these practices with overall corporate strategies, rather than with those for whom these are simply a part of PR strategy.”

Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) today is a unique hybrid organization that evolved in the early ’90s out of an advocacy organization started by former Stride Rite CEO Arnold Hiatt, who has long argued in numerous public pulpits that “the well-being of business cannot be separated from the well-being of the community and the nation.”

Global trade has brought many multinational corporations to the realization that to sustain business growth they have to pay attention to the environment, economic development and human rights. Main-stream business must worry about the impact of problems such as climate change, access to clean water, reducing conflict and promoting the rule of law.

“BSR is a membership organization,” Yeng explains, “with a consulting practice and a research and development group.” Compa-nies from several sectors in particular join BSR: consumer goods; information and communication technology; energy and mining; pharmaceuticals and biotechnology; food and agriculture; transportation. As Yeng notes, these sectors are heavily scrutinized by media, investors and the public. They look to BSR for help, for instance, with stakeholder engagement to further inform their decision-making process. In turn, BSR helps them map out a plan and then implement it. “One of our recent projects involved a large U.S.–based agricultural company thinking about sourcing bananas from Africa,” says Yeng. “We’re helping them identify the various risks related to this possible business venture—and that includes defining sustainable practices, relaying and teaching these requirements to the growers, as well as monitoring their progress.”

Members (AstraZeneca, Chevron, Cisco Systems, IKEA International, Intel and United Parcel Service, are examples) get issue expertise, consultative help, training and up-to-date research on trends and innovations. BSR has, for instance, just published a Report on Corporate Climate Strategy, reviewing a range of business reactions to climate change.

Perhaps most important, BSR members connect with a network: industry peers, partners, stakeholders and thought leaders interested in dealing with the environmental challenges and social inequities that are unsustainable.

What are socially responsible business practices? Can they be defined, measured and reported? “That’s a hot debate,” Yeng says. “It’s hard to apply metrics to work that is qualitative, and the link between using socially and environmentally responsible practices and the bottom line hasn’t been firmly established yet.” The BSR Web site announces that social research analysts from 23 investment firms have released a brief that explains how companies “can use the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to increase the credibility, comparability and utility of social and environmental reporting.” “Reliable and commonly used metrics are important,” Yeng says. “They’re part of how companies should be reviewed by investors, investors who look at a triple bottom line: economic impact, environmental impact, and social impact.”

Yeng’s next project for BSR will be leading their own first corporate social responsibility (CSR) report. She will need to help the organization come up with the right metrics, take a close internal look at what is working and what isn’t, and measure how they model what they promote. There are good examples of CSR reporting, done by peer organization, Accountability, and in other sectors by British Telecommunica-tions, GE, Shell, and Starbucks. “The BT report is best in class,” Yeng says, “for correlating internal strategy with CSR practices.”

Last November, Yeng managed the annual BSR conference in New York—the largest forum for corporate social responsibility practitioners. More than 1,000 business leaders came from more than 50 countries and joined colleagues in the independent and public sectors. She took on directing the conference, having only joined BSR the previous summer. Arnold Hiatt, in fact, was the person who suggested that working at BSR would give Yeng the experience she was seeking—learning the practices of a top-rate nonprofit organization.

When she spoke with Arnold, Yeng had completed a mid-career master’s program in public administration from the Kennedy School at Harvard. While at Harvard, Yeng was interested in social entrepreneurship and public and private sector partnerships. She helped found a nonprofit that set up business-plan competitions to increase the number and quality of new business ventures in developing countries. Her non-profit, Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), awards prizes to the most innovative ideas, that is, those with significant growth potential to serve local or global markets. Besides cash prizes, GEN helps top teams get advice from experienced professionals, introduces them to potential investors, and sends them to the Harvard Battle of the Business Plan competition in Cambridge.

Prior to her master’s program, Yeng was Head of Strategic Marketing and Vice President of Sales and Marketing at the Institutional Investment Services business unit at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers. At Merrill, she founded the Responsible Citizenship Board, which enabled and encouraged employees to get involved in local community service. Her eight years at Merrill Lynch began immediately after her graduation from Dartmouth, where she majored in government and Asian studies.

Part of Yeng’s diverse experience includes a Rockefeller Grant, which she used to pursue an internship with the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, where she facilitated an empowerment training program for students. Just prior to Harvard, she volunteered for three months as Senior Project Advisor to the South Pacific Business Development in Apia, Samoa, a microfinance institution modeled after the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

Looking out and looking forward, as Yeng characteristically does, she sees her next area of interest as socially responsible investing—perhaps further developing a financial services practice for BSR. “It’s an important and growing field, not quite mainstream yet, but just about to experience some real growth,” she says.

www.bsr.org


Cathleen Everett

 

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