National Values &
Corporate Social Responsibility
Stephen B. Young,
Global Executive Director
Caux Round Table
Portoroz, Slovenia
April 4, 2008
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The Challenge:
What are the cultural foundations for CSR Management?
Does CSR Management fit within a national development strategy?
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What is CSR Management?
• Business decision-making that includes anticipation
and measurement of a wide range of consequences
• Incorporates cultural and moral perspectives into the
financial metrics of successful firms
• Normative standards derived from global perspectives
(Caux Round Table, UN Global Compact, GRI, SA
8000)
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What is National Culture?
• Customs, habits, values, priorities that create a
psychological comfort zone for individuals
• Predispositions and dispositions of personal character
• Core concepts – axial principles - expressed in language
and apprehended through language use
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What Are Axial Principles?
• Core principles about human purpose and reality that
influence many attitudes, behaviors, and expectations of
right and wrong, good and bad, close and far
• Cultures have unique axial principles
• Axial principles shape national character
• Axial principles are expressed in language but carried out
in behavior
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From Normativity to Facticity
(Jurgen Habermas)
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Other-Regarding
The Moral Sense
Self-Regarding
Self-Interest Considered upon
the whole
Self-Interest Narrowly
considered
Basic physical and Ego needs
Self Interest
Virtue
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Stewardship
Service
The Moral Sense
Exploitation
Power for common good;
Ethical leadership; Kyosei
Fear
Power only for self
Dysfunctional Leadership
Dominion 9
Cosmos
The
Basic
Self
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Virtue Self interest
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Mutuality/Reciprocity “Jen”/“Shu”
Social Office of Business;
lord lords; minister ministers;
father fathers; son sons;
CRT Principles
Personal responsibility;
concern for consequences; achieve goals
CRT Arcturus
Sustained Social Justice & Wealth Creation
Customers
Quality
Employees Agents Owners/
Investors
Fiduciary;
Transparency
Suppliers
Share Risks
Competitors
Compete on quality;
No fixed markets
Community
No Corruption;
Good Environment
Proposed Chinese Business Value Pyramid
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Conclusion:
CSR Management will be most successful when CSR
norms are integrated with axial principles of a national
culture
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The Cultures and Axial Principles
of Southeastern Europe:
•The past controlling the present
•We live our lives walking back and forth on the Value
Sediments left by History
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Value Sediments Left by Conflict
Living At the intersection of value empires:
• Between Rome and warrior tribes
• Between Slavs and Ural-Altaics
• Between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy
• Between Islam and Christianity
• Between Turks and Slavs (with Albanians as well)
• Foreign Rule from Venice, Budapest, Vienna, Istanbul
• Smaller Imperial visions: Greater Serbia, Greater Bulgaria, Greater Romania
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Value Sediments left by Family Structure
• Dinaric family system – the Kuca (Dinko Tomasic,
Personality and Culture in Eastern European Politics, . Stewart, NY
1948)
• Patrivilocal house cycle with complexity (Karl Kaser,
Introduction: Household and Family Contexts in the Balkans, The History
of the Family, Vol. 1, 1996)
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• Daughters-in-law and granddaughters-in-law come to live with
husband’s family; multigenerational household cycle
• Sons stay together as an economic/social unit; paternal
property (the ocevina) not divided with marriage or death, but
only after generations when the family group divides.
• Kuca ruled by the Starjesiva – domineering head male elder
• “Where the elder is not obeyed, God does not help.”
• “The young to obey; the elder to command.”
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Family Dynamics within the Kuca
• Oscillation between overindulgence in affection and
over strictness in punishment
• Ambivalence between love/hatred; submission/defiance
• Desire for self-maximization coupled with keen
resentment of accepting dictation from others
• Frequent conflicts: Father/son & Parent/child
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One Consequence:
• Too good an opinion of oneself; pride can become
quite boundless
• Desire to win a place of their own in the world can lead
to unjustified personal and national claims
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Second Consequence:
• Alternate between activity and passivity
• Lack of emotional balance
• Hope and Despair equally excessive
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Third Consequence:
•Rivalry and Antagonism
•Cunning manipulation of others admired
• Submission yet waiting to exert own power
• Mistrust from fears of disloyalty on the part of others
• “He who does not trust will not be duped.”
• “Woe to him who trusts a man.”
• “He who has force has justice.”
• “Force is stronger than a kind word.”
• “He who knows how will gain double.”
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Value Sediment Left by History
• Power is not accepted as automatically legitimate
• Determination to preserve core values against rulers
• National/linguistic/ethnic/religious sub-cultures in the
region most important for sustaining individual identity
and family solidarity
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Turning Lead into Gold
• Every value has its good and bad aspects
• What is a strength can become a weakness
• What is a weakness can become a strength
• Yin/Yang approach to the flow of power and circumstance
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• Self-assertion side of Dinaric family pattern
• Keen Awareness of self and values held dear by self
• Deep respect for importance of values
• Search for value-based solutions in the face of power,
cruelty and cynicism
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Positive CSR Management Orientations:
• Predisposition to please customers, to innovate, to seek quality
• Role as favored suppliers in global supply chains
• Provide employees with opportunities to excel
• Employees willing to step up to challenges if they get personal freedom and
recognition
• Emphasis on training and workforce development
• Respond avidly to competition in free market setting
• Concern for quality of life in local community
• Resistance to abuse of political authority
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Less Positive CSR Management Orientations
• Less concern for quality of public goods provided by the state
• Less concern for far-off environmental issues
• Mistrust of investors, partners, suppliers
• Mistrust of government
• Need to be powerful and arbitrary in dealing with customers
and employees, rivals and outsiders
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CSR Management Advantages in
Southeastern Europe Value Sediments:
Recognition of importance of individual achievement
use this to promote human capital formation
• Education
• Training
• Inventions and innovations
• Hard work
• Easy ability to articulate thoughts and feelings
• Respond quickly to opportunities
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