Social Responsibility and HRM

On December 4th, Hong Kong’s Cyberport hosted “Cyberport Venture Capital Forum 2007”. This year’s theme, “Building Creative Businesses that Can Do Well and Do Good” attracted a number of quality speakers sharing their approaches to creating a double-bottom line; a social return on investment (SRI) and traditional economic return on investment (ROI). As in the past, this forum also focused on entrepreneurial ventures, their challenges, and “best practices”. A few key points from that day include:
• The Chinese proverb, “Give a man fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” was the motto communicated by several speakers. The essence of social entrepreneurship lies in creating bottom-line value through solving social problems (for example illiteracy) as opposed to disbursing shares of a company’s profit to various organizations that offer fish-like support (typical for large corporations).
• The entrepreneur’s and investor’s value system and vision determine whether or not they will get involved in social entrepreneurship.
• The entrepreneur’s approach to managing his/her people fairly is a prerequisite of social entrepreneurship.
• Social responsibility can become part of a company’s marketing/branding effort.

Jumping from these key points to strategic HRM, some conclusions drawn include:
• Social responsibility not only resonates with local communities, underprivileged individuals or minority members, but also drives a company’s workforce initiatives including, for example, increasing financial literacy and skills set of low-wage employees or offering them stock-ownership.
• In terms of implementation of any HR initiative, any entrepreneurial company is at an advantage vis-à-vis a corporate giant because the manager/entrepreneur is usually the “owner” of the initiative from the onset. Therefore, every initiative enjoys conviction through “management buy-in” to make it happen.
• To deliver social impact, a company needs to achieve critical mass either in terms of revenues, profits, and/or customer base. Otherwise, the contribution is insignificant. The metrics challenge and the pressure to deliver value/impact exists for any activity.

By the way, the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference held in Malaysia has integrated pitch session for social entrepreneurs seeking investment.