Hsun-Yin Huang
Word Count- 1101 /PIN-10321
What can CSR be in Taiwan? About most enterprises in Taiwan, and the banks
Hsun-Yin Huang
Introduction Now the CSR-Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming a slogan in the world, we ask the entrepreneur to do more feed back to the society, including protection of the labors, the sustainable operation of business, more important, to take more responsibility to the society, all those things need more money and to take more efforts to do. Every country has its own limitations and business structures, that we can’t ask the all business do things equally. Today, I’d like to share my thoughts about how can enterprises do the social responsibility in Taiwan. Firstly, I would introduce the characteristics of business structure in Taiwan and what can those enterprises take social responsibility without sacrificing the profit, the second part is about the bank’s social responsibility, and also the most important part is what the government should do. Think globally, act locally The concept of the Corporate Social Responsibility could be separated to 4 layers, first it needs to build the economic responsibility, which the enterprise exists for; the second layer is about the law responsibility, including obeying the law, building the safe industry for workers, etc. After achieving those goals, the third and the forth layers are ethnical and philanthropic responsibility, which are the final goal of corporate social responsibility, the concept includes sustainable development, for example, in order to save the trees, the enterprise advocates “no paper” activity. For most large enterprises, they are more willing to do social responsibility because they can save the cost or even create more profit after 10-20 years, all we know that, it takes some time to enjoy its benefit. Nowadays, the government tries to persuade the enterprises to take more social responsibilities, by doing that, the enterprise can have some advantages, for instance, they can free from the examinations of the Council of Labor affairs, and they can promote their products with the certification, that way they can build better image of the enterprise, and reach the goal of sustainable operation.
Hsun-Yin Huang
In Taiwan, the middle and small scale of enterprises are the bone of the business structure, it accounts for 97.8 % of the business and their average sustain year are not over 15 years, I think that is unreasonable for them to donate money and build the green factory, before they can make benefit from it, they may close the enterprise first. So that’s why the small and medium enterprise wouldn’t like to take efforts on it, moreover, it may eliminate their will to invest or run business in Taiwan. With the increasing regulations and costs for running a business, how can we create a win-win situation for tripartite? The labors can work, the enterprise can make profit, and the country will be prosperous. First, the company can lower their cost by sharing the factory and corporate with each other. Secondly, they can build the better image to the society by grouping the trade union. Through grouping the trade union, they can do more things than we can imagine, for example, they can build a small foundation for collecting money from the companies, and they may arrange a new department for handling with the fund, and use it to help and do the social responsibility to the society, or things could be more easier that they can authorize NGOs (non-government organization) or NPOs (non-profit organization) those well-developed institute to do social responsibility to the society. About the bank Bank is the most important institute for normal people like me. After we graduate from school, we begin to work hard to make living, moreover, to settle down in somewhere raising the family and grouping our own new family. If we want to buy a house or do some business, In Taipei, for example, the cheapest price of a 99-square-meter house cost you average 8,000,000-10,000,000, it is less possible for a youth have so much money on hand. The only way is to loan, borrow money from the bank. Even as the interest rate gets lower, the rate of the loan is still over 2.5% a year, for a youth raising a nuclear family, even with 20 years payment, he still need to pay about 34,000 to 42,000 dollars a month, now the average income per person in Taiwan is about 44,000, that we can see how unreasonable for the price of the housing and the rate of the loan. Many persons couldn’t pay the loan so commit suicide, and we may wonder the bank is the saver or the killer? The worse situation, most of people don’t have the immovable property or real states for mortgage, so they turn to the loan shark which lend you money with much higher rate, and violence. Actually, many countries like Singapore, most of Singaporeans live in the Global Initiatives Symposium in Taiwan 2009
public housing flats, which were built by the government. This policy does not only decrease the burden of the family but also make them able to have their own sweet home. In Taiwan, most of the prices of houses are controlled by the real estate business, and all they want to do is level up the price. That way, only the rich can buy the house, the poor can’t buy their own house, so they just rent the house from the rich, finally, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. After all, I think the most important responsibility of the bank is to lower the rate and extend the years of the payment, the government should guarantee it. Just like the winner of Nobel Economic Prize in 2006-Muhammad Yunus, who has built the Grameen Bank running the microcredit for the poor. For the government The government should pursue three kinds of values – justice, fair, and equal. Speaking of the price of the house, the government need to set regulations to control the price, and let anyone can afford to buy a house. Moreover, the government not only encourage the enterprises including bank take more social responsibility to the society, but also need to build more mature and completed social security system in order to protect the minority.
References 1. http://www.sbiac.org.tw/origin.jsp Taiwan small business integrated assistance center 2. http://www.dgbas.gov.tw Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan, R.O.C.(Taiwan) 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit Wikipedia- about Microcredit 4. http://www.moeasmea.gov.tw/mp.asp?mp=1 Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs 5. See Carroll, A.B.(1991), “The Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility: Toward the Moral Management of Stakeholder Organization”, Business Horizons, (July‐August 1991), pp39‐48. 6. http://csr.moea.gov.tw/ Department of Investment Services Ministry of Economics Affairs about the Corporate Social Responsibility
Rethinking of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Social Entrepreneurship
Hsun-Yin Huang
Global Initiatives Symposium in Taiwan 2009