中国社会责任投资 China SRI

In the past two weeks, I was in Guangzhou, my hometown in southern China, stayed with my family during Spring Festival, the most important holiday in China. During those days, I took some time to visit friends from manufacturing company and consulting firm to understand their thoughts on CSR. 

To most manufacturing companies or factories, CSR is quite remote to them still. Perhaps this is because my friends are working for small and media size enterprises. Anyway, their points gave me a feeling that the business operational environment in the south is very different from the one in the north. When talking about corporate credit, and corporate image. my friends simply said that they would not, and need not consider these issues. Normally, they would not send out the products until payment has been finished. And, in terms of corporate credit, as it is a very small community, one would know the other easily, so that they do not need a third-party credit service. In general, CSR is a bit far away from them yet. 

However, when I discussed a friend from local consulting firm that is focusing on labor relation issues, I heard a different voice. She said, if a company grew to be bigger, then it must face critical challenges of CSR as they need to sell goods to western buyers. At that time, they need to consider CSR and accept relevant auditing no matter they want it or not. This consulting firm provides consulting, training and other supporting services to clients consisting of global buyers and local producers. She added, the key is whether our service can add values to our clients. Local producers would need help if they want to increase productivity by improving labor relation. 

Well, it seems that once we focus on a right market and provide value-added service, we can find the profits.