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6. Findings
6.1. Sustainability Becomes the Responsibility of PR
An official who works for an international bank responsible for sustainability first stated in the interview that “corporate social responsibility should not be owned by corporate communications department. It is important for corporate planning”. Reason for this is that many elements with corporate social responsibilities are closely linked with business and operation and “this should be deeply embedded to the DNA of every staff and manager”. She took “Equator Principle” as example. The principle is used to evaluate the impact to environment when doing due diligent of a financing project. This is the responsible for business and the compliance team.
However, due to severe margin position under the over-banking environment in Taiwan, these lending projects still tend to put profit as the first priority. Business side always regards donating money or volunteering as corporate social responsibility. From time to time, employees rely heavily on the timely profit machine and they may not be able to align with this guideline. To compensate this, companies still tends to use philanthropy as key CSR initiatives, aligning media exposure. The responsibility will gradually goes to a department with capability in event planning and media relations, that is corporate communications team.
6.2. Award and Media Exposure as Important KPI for CSR
Financial institutions, no matter local or international, are eager to apply for CSR awards. As Common Wealth and Global View are two reputable magazines in Taiwan, the awards granted by them are regarded as endorsement to their CSR effort. While some companies are even
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designing a program to fit the criteria of gaining the awards, it shows that some financial institutions are still not craving their CSR strategies in a right way, since the awards has apparently become the benchmark of CSR practice.
However, some criteria of being the award winner are to evaluate a single project versus a holistic corporate social responsibility approach. These awards should not be regarded as endorsement of CSR effort. Leveraging the reputation of these magazines, corporates would also use the award winning for their marketing or public relations plan by distributing press release, placing advertorials in these magazines as well as making use of the name on their marketing materials such as mail drops to clients.
Besides awards, media exposure is also a vital performance indicator of these CSR activities.
Press release, media interview or advertorial are always seen as a way to profile corporate image as a responsible company by leveraging CSR efforts. As the output of corporate citizenship is intangible, media exposure are used to measure the effectiveness of CSR initiatives since it is easy to be noticed. A local financial corporates is even using its charity fund to profile a management who were sued for bribery and advertorials are often seen on Commercial Times, one of the newspapers read by government official.
6.3. Room for Improvement for Local Corporates
When interviewing various financial institutions and the PR agencies, we can found that due to an integration of resource from group or mother companies, international financial institutions are having a more comprehensive corporate social responsibility scheme. They are always with an all-round program driving from back office to front line to cover various pillars such as environment, corporate governance and community engagement. This also
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thanks to better acceptance and thicker culture in CSR overseas that offers more flexibility in developing social citizenships. When these international corporates entered Taiwan, they brought along this mind set and are gradually influencing local corporates about what corporate social responsibility is.
Corporate social responsibility didn’t emerge in Taiwan until 2000s. Local financial corporates embrace the concept about rewarding the society. However, they are not getting the essence of corporate social responsibility. There is lack of systematic planning on their initiatives across every operation in the companies. They tend to start planning CSR in a less painful way by replying on the corporate communication department. Therefore philanthropy seems to be easily defined as CSR in a company. More than 85% local banks in Taiwan have their charity funds. Public also tends to notice the charity events with senior management attendance and publicity from these local banks. Form time to time, local financial corporates see the benefit of holding these charity events that they would try to leverage these events for their branding, since they wish to have a cost-efficient approach when donating money for charity.
Moreover, as listed companies are obliged to the CSR regulations of TWSE and OTC market, some listed financial holdings would just meet the minimum requirement on CSR by spending less effort and capital just as to meet regulator requirement.
6.4. Public Is Still Lack of Understanding CSR
Corporate social responsibility is still a green idea among public and corporates. This concept emerges when multi-national corporates are introducing the concepts to Taiwan when they entered Taiwan. With internet and information explosion, public is getting information about
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CSR easily. However, sometimes public would still mix philanthropy with corporate social responsibility. Being employees of a company, an individual itself is a member to execute corporate social responsibility as this is embedded in the policy, such as internal control and audit, and code of conduct. Public doesn’t aware of this and tends to recognize charity event as CSR. Donating money, publishing CSR annual report or volunteering day are only parts of CSR initiatives. From the survey results, we see that not many public sees the full picture of corporate social responsibility. The misconception of both public and corporates may hinder development of corporate social responsibility in Taiwan, since more work may need to be done in directing the mind set to a correct way.
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Corporate social responsibility is still a new concept to public and corporates. When Taiwan is known for its over-time culture and low salary, this reflects a lack of understanding about how working environment should be included as CSR. However, employment benefit and reasonable working environment is also a vital part of social responsibility. There should be more education to public, or employees on what CSR is so they can also monitoring the corporates they are working for.
Financing company and people for wealth creation are the key business of financial industry.
When talking about CSR, obligation to regulations, ethical selling and conducts should also be included. Financial institution should not only focuses on how much money and how much media value generated from the CSR event, but a holistic and comprehensive social responsibility implementation in their business. Being an industry that is so vital to our daily life, financial industry should also focus on how they should oblige to CSR on daily operation.
They should also focus on how the obligation could help the society to develop, rather than media value and the branding effect.
Especially, when Taiwan is linking with international market, CSR can serve as a guideline to improve the society. Finance and insurance industry accounted for 14.8% GDP of Taiwan in 2013. The percentage may not be high but financial industry is the backbone of support economic growth by making international cash flow available. Taiwan financial industry could help Taiwanese corporates to expand overseas. Behind them, a sound financial system is to support these international cash flows. By adapting an all-round CSR system into their operation, financial industry could protect themselves and corporates from risk as well as