5. Survey Analysis
5.2. Quantitative Analysis
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year and request us to design a CSR strategies for them”.
NGO/ NPO
These Non-government organizations or non-profit organizations welcome the contribution from financial institutions and their good cause, “but sometimes I feel stressful when they are pushing hard for media exposure”, all the interviewees revealed. The partnership with these financial corporates would help them for better visibility to public due to better publicity on media and this resulted in better donation received. “Sometimes it’s not easy to persuade public to donate for a special cause. Their donation would help on this. However, they are sometimes too focus on media values and may not be able to deliver the donation to the right person”. For example, the media sometimes reported a special social problem, such as insufficient lunch boxes for elementary schools in remote areas, these companies would allocated their donations to the item and neglect other needs.
Another example is volunteering. “They want to maximize the resources and would leverage volunteering events for their staff engagement. For some volunteering events such as the volunteer zoo keepers, mentally handicapped bakery helpers, you can see the ratio of volunteers is too high”. For the NGOs or NPOs, they appreciate the event initiated by financial institutional but would also appreciate a larger variety of good causes.
5.2. Quantitative Analysis
Besides understanding the thought of stakeholders from these corporate social responsibilities, a quantitative survey was conducted to understand how the public perceives the “good cause”.
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The first question is to test knowledge of public on the social responsibility. The names mentioned include those with high profile (Fubon, CTBC), with low profile (Seeing is Believing from Standard Chartered, Prudential Spirit of Community Awards) as well as more internally obliged initiatives (Equator Principle). As expected, for those CSR initiatives with media and publicity efforts are more well-known to the respondents. Taking Fubon Cultural &
Education Foundation as example, more than 75% has heard about it. On 3% of respondents have heard about Equator Principle, since this is more operational CSR initiatives. (Table5.1)
Table 2
Although many of them have heard of these initiatives, more than a half (53%) respondents are not aware of the beneficiaries of these CSR activities. This may imply the messages communicated through the CSR are mostly about the corporates itself rather than the content of the activities, or the content of the initiatives is not properly communicated that leads to the lack of understanding to the event.
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 CTBC Charity Foundation
United Way Prudential Spirit of Community Awards Fubon Cultural & Educational Foundation Equator Principle Seeing is Believing None of the above
Have you ever heard of these CSR initiatives?
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When looking at the good cause, 70% of respondent think that corporates should be high profile for their CSR initiatives. Among these 70% respondents, 51% think publicly talking about CSR could help promote the good cause to society and attract people to join together.
This may reflect that public still hope to leverage corporates’ effort to improve the society and are having expectation on what a corporates can do to the society.
Interestingly, some indicators for CSR do help a company for its image among public. A respective of 83% (Table 5.2) and 76% (Table 5.3) respondents would change their perception to a company in positive way if the company has gained a CSR award or published CSR annual report. This may because these reports offer public with a better understanding to its corporate social responsibility, while the awards serve as endorsement to their CSR and help build up a positive image to public. This also tells why financial institutions in Taiwan are so eager to hire a PR agency for CSR award winning strategy.
Table 3 Table 4
When the respondents were asked to look deeper in CSR, 60% regards philanthropy as the same to CSR, showing that public is not aware of what is the intrinsic value of CSR. Among
Yes 83%
No 17%
Does CSR awards help improve your preception to a company?
Yes 76%
No 24%
Does CSR annual report help improve your perception to a
company?
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the other 40% who stated other CSR initiatives, most of them understand there are other components in CSR including reasonable working environment and package, code of conduct, environmental protection, transparent corporate governance and reasonable pricing to clients and suppliers. This reflects there is still room to improve public understanding to CSR.
Besides, when corporates are eager to gain media exposure, 82% still regards this as marketing tactics to promote corporate image. Only 54% think the publicity is aiming to encourage positive values to society (Table 5.4). This may implies public is getting used to the CSR activities from corporates as marketing tools. It is quite contradicted that respondents are fine for corporates to be high profile in CSR while they regard this is as tools for brand building. Is corporates, or financial institutional overusing CSR that public is having inertia to the good cause they are doing? This is what corporates should rethink as corporate citizenship is more than brand building.
Table 5
In order to test the how CSR would change their perception to a company, some scenario questions (table 5.5) were asked including “Will CSR offset the negative feelings to a
0 50 100 150 200
Encourage positive value to society Promoting corporate image Minimizing negative news Part of public relations For tax deduction Others
What do you think is the purpose of promoting CSR?
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company with poor service?”, “Will CSR offset the negative feelings to a company which management is with scandals?”, “Will CSR offset the negative feelings to a company laying off staff in large scale?” and “If a company does no charity event but are with good employee benefits, will it affect your positive feeling?” The finding is interesting. Though 83%
respondents would have a better feeling to corporates with CSR awards, CSR initiatives would not offset the negative image of companies. Over 70% would not change their perception to companies with large-scale layoff (76%) and management in scandal (77%).
When some companies are using CSR to conceal the negative image, public is still clear about what they are doing is for corporate image, as shown in previous questions.
Table 6
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Will CSR offset the negative feelings to a company with poor
service?
Will CSR offset the negative feelings to a company which management is with scandals?
Will CSR offset the negative feelings to a company laying off
staff in large scale?
If a company does no charity event but is with good employee benefits, will it affect your positive feeling?
Yes No