John O'Keeffe, Managing Director of Diageo Russia and Eastern Europe Hub, asks the leaders about the role of business in society.
Do you have any specific question to other CEOs?
One of the questions I'm grabbed with at the moment is what is the role for business in society? And what more should business be doing beyond giving jobs and paying taxes? What more business should be doing to contribute the society it's operating in? and what exactly should that be? And when I try to answer it myself, if I take our industry, and we work in alcohol, I'm very proud of the brands we have and I'm also aware that people abuse our brands. It's an area that doesn't make sense from a corporate point of view, from the society point of view and from the personal point of view as a father of three kids to have people abusing alcohol. We're trying to encourage people to drink more responsibly, and people abusing alcohol is a big issue in society, especially in Russian society. We're trying to go beyond just paying taxes and giving jobs, we're sponsoring don't-drink-drive campaigns, we're ruling out drive sensible programs, we're training bar staff across Russia how to train and how to say no to people who had drunk enough, etc. we're trying to do that and I think there's more we can do. We've encouraged our people twice this year to go and spend a couple of days on business's time working in hospitals and giving back the community. And we've got a lot of positive feedback on that. And I think for me the whole area of the question about what business should be doing in the society it operates in is very important. Nowadays business plays a much bigger role in society now that it did 15 or 20 years ago, and I think that's the question the business should probably be contemplating.
Esther Dyson long-time catalyst of start-ups in information technology in the US and other markets, including Russia answers John's question about social responsibility in business...
I mean, according to the law, the business has to serve the interests of its shareholders, but the people in the business have to do what they think is right, personally, and businesses need to obey the law. So, it's a complicated question. You know, I don't particularly want the businesses that I own to be spending my money, my shareholder's money on, you know, doing good works. I don't really want to see them go give money to the Red Cross or something. On the other hand, it can be very good business to give money to the schools that your employees send their children to. It can be good business, actually, to advertise green marketing and sell more products because people think you're green or in the case of text4baby - if you are a vitamin company, to say we support text4baby, buy our vitamins. But I think mostly, what companies should be doing is being good businesses, which means treating their employees right, thinking about the long term, selling good products and being honest. Both because that's the right thing to do and because long term it pays off for the business. And so, as a shareholder, I want for my business to think long term, I don't want it to make short term profits by lying.
... and about what companies should do when it comes to social responsibility
The most important thing companies can do is to find interesting problems and solve them and to range you what that is, it's very very large. But mostly they should be socially responsible within their own sphere. That is how they treat employees, where they buy things from, the quality of their products, the support they show to their own employees and, of course, their business practices. But, you know, giving money to a charity I don't think is a very good way of being socially responsible. Letting your employees pick a charity to work for, for 5% of their time, doing something that's one of their work skills, I think that's a great way to be socially responsible because it brings value to both: to the recipients and to the business. And it makes the employees feel more valuable and it makes the employees feel more autonomous. Again, they're doing something they choose to do; they are working with a charity they want to work with.
