Beyond Business, Not Beyond Government - is a new research of SKOLKOVO

The government initiative on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the number of CSR-related reports in China and Russia have increased dramatically in the last decade. It is important to specify the government’s role when people try to understand CSR dynamics and even answer a fundamental question of “what is CSR” in these countries. The report reveals how the government in China and Russia is not only guiding CSR efforts in general, but also shaping the specific way for companies to talk about government in CSR reports and actually do philanthropy.

This work is of significance to: 1) readers who want to have an updated picture of the CSR leaders’ philanthropy activities in China and Russia; 2) readers who are interested in how CSR in emerging markets is taking shape under the government influence; 3) readers who are interested in the variation of CSR development modes in China and Russia.

This report targets on a group of Chinese and Russian multinational corporations (MNCs) who leads corporate social responsibility (CSR) in their countries. These companies take on three overlapped roles:

1. Easy targets of the government intervention;
2. Global actors heavily exposed to international demands on CSR
3. Most visible and recognized domestic CSR players.

The transformation of companies from domestic to multinational creates new demands for them to take on global CSR standards. Russian MNCs’ global expansion has been acknowledged to contribute to much of their CSR efforts. Also, the rapid development of merger & acquisition in foreign markets seems to force Russian companies to adopt the global rules of the game in doing CSR. Meanwhile, China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council claims that one reason for it to call for CSR among large state-owned enterprises is that “the social responsibility performance has become an important indicator the international community uses to evaluate enterprises” and doing CSR helps establish “China’s image as a responsible developing country”. Under this background, top Chinese and Russian MNCs are playing a pioneering role to set examples for other domestic companies in doing CSR.

The key results from the report include:

• Most Chinese MNC CSR leaders, as large state-owned enterprises, organize philanthropy through bureaucratic connections, under a pro-government rhetoric and following government’s administrative requests.  
• Chinese MNC CSR leaders target on poverty reduction and disaster relief. They primarily do this by fulfilling duties in the aid program requested by the government and making donation through government-organized charities.
• Russian MNC CSR leaders to a large extent conduct philanthropy as part of the public-private partnership projects or social-economic agreements with regional governments.
• Russian MNC CSR leaders focus on conventional domains of social infrastructure such as sport, culture/art, healthcare and education where local governments introduce the business resource by forging a formal partnership arrangement.
• Popular philanthropy areas for Chinese and Russian MNC CSR leaders are those where government-led frameworks are established or the government support is available.

You can read a full text of the research here