Corporate citizenship: top managements' responsibility

Monday, April 16, 2007

MANAGING FOR SOCIETY By Evelio G. Echavez Corporate citizenship: top managements’ responsibility

While growing up, our elders and teachers counsel and admonish us to become responsible citizens. There are several ways to manifest responsible citizenship. We can obey the laws of the land, pay the correct taxes, contribute our efforts to community building, treat with respect our fellow-men. Corporations are also considered citizens particularly in the area where they operate. In doing business, they utilize human resources and for some, natural resources, that they source from their place of operation. Companies can either be a source of environmental preservation or degradation. I have personally known companies or industrial plants which for a long time have been doing acts of responsible corporate citizenship. One such plant was Davao Union Cement Corp. (DUCC), which is now known as Holcim Philippines—Davao Plant. Long before the Adopt-a-School Program of the Department of Education was implemented, DUCC was already assisting public schools within its area of operation. It helped some public schools in the repair of classrooms and buildings; construction of perimeter fence, pathways, and additional facilities; supply of potable water system and sanitary facilities. It also donated equipment and materials to upgrade a public high school’s chemistry laboratory. Moreover, it trained about 2,000 out-of-school youths in vocational courses, such as automotive mechanic and dressmaking. The company also assisted members of the community in developing and operating their own livelihood projects such as rope, paper bag and hollow block-making. Additionally, with an initial fund of half a million pesos coming from its mother company’s foundation, it initiated a micro-lending project to assist the small entrepreneurs in the area in accessing low-cost capital. This freed them from the hold of the 5-6 loan sharks, and allowed them to eventually manage their own micro-lending cooperatives. The company provided its employees and families medical and hospitalization benefits that were considered one of the best in the region. Also, the plant had one of the lowest accident rates in the cement industry as a result of the emphasis given to occupational health and safety. From time to time, the company shared part of its profits with its employees through the grant of bonuses and incentives. For its exemplary performance in this area, the company was given recognition as one of the best employers in the region by the local chapter of the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP). The company also acted proactively in lowering its dust emission to a level many times better than the prevailing government standard and in implementing an international Environmental Management System known as ISO 14001. Moreover, it planted more than 630,000 seedlings covering a total of more than 330 hectares of deforested and barren land. As a result of all these activities, the company was awarded the Platinum Achievement Award of the Presidential Mining Industry Environment Award in 1998, the first cement plant ever to receive such recognition up to that time. Corporate citizenship is not an accident. It is a product of the internalization and actualization of the philosophy and values of the corporation, particularly the collective judgment and decision of top management, with the active support of the rest of the workforce. I know this to be true. I was part of the management team that made DUCC truly a responsible corporate citizen.