Role of business is constantly evolving in an everchanging phase of Globalization. Along with the economic factors and guidelines driving thebusinesses, organizations today are bringing out new innovations and services, so that they can maintain a…
Role of business is constantly evolving in an everchanging phase of Globalization. Along with the economic factors and guidelines driving thebusinesses, organizations today are bringing out new innovations and services, so that they can maintain asynergy with the society within which they co-exist. Now is the time that organizations should move onfrom boardroom discussions and half hearted approaches of the traditional concept of CorporateSocial Responsibility (CSR), to adopt a focused approach towards the concept of external engagementwith much greater emphasis on the Triple Bottom Line i.e. Environmental, Social and Financial aspects. Before discussing further, let us understand first the definition of an external engagement. External Engagement is a step that organizations take in orderto develop and foster a relationship with an external world constituting of direct and indirect customers,competitors and society where it thrives. The external engagement is not just limited to social activity and philanthropy, it is about involving the society in the company's operations and an overall functioning, thus creating and innovating products and services for the benefit of the society.“We are finding out quite rapidlythat to be successful in the long term we have to ask: what do we actually give to society to make it better?We've made it clear to the organization that it's our business model, starting from the top”. This is a statement by Pual Polman, CEO of Unilever, echoing the importance of integrating external engagement of organization with an external world. As one of the external engagement practice, is the recent example of Unilever's partnership and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, under the leadership of its CEO, Paul Polman. Under this association a project will be undertaken with approximately 500,000 people invillages of 10 countries in Sub Saharan Africa, in order to encourage hand washing with soap and making it alife saving habit.The culture of an organization is driven by its leadership, thus proportionally effecting the external engagement and its integration into the mainstream philosophy of an organization. This is the reason why a traditional approach to corporate social responsibility is not successful, unless the organizations cease to treat CSR as an exercise to flaunt their reputation and the CSR activities end up becoming a job of one of the department in an organization. CSR becomes verydifficult for employees to implement unless it is made apart of their everyday work schedule.The success of a business completely depends on the way it develops and nurture its relationship with the external world comprising of stakeholders, clients,customers, policy makers, staff etc. Relationship andengagement at any level is necessary and absence ofthe same can jeopardize the functioning of anorganization. Thus, while organizations today arefocusing on internal employee engagement, at the same time, external engagement must also be on the top agenda of company's policy and must run parallel. In one of the Mckinsey Report, there are four areas that organizations must focus on to excel in the field of external engagement. These are: defining your contribution area; knowing who your stakeholder is;applying world class management and engaging radically.Complete alignment with an external environment, is the key element of external engagement for any business. Thus, it is imperative that the organizations today, must adopt a philosophy of integrating external engagement into the company's management system,business goals and vision. As Phill Stubbs very aptly said, “When the wind blows there are those that build walls and then there are those that build wind mills”.