A request, not limited to the heads of the organizations but including all those who are making these organizations great, to rethink, perhaps, on corporate organization social responsibilities please.
I am not assuming anything here as to whether some of it is already happening or some of it is in the works. My concerns stem out of the recent developments around the world where technology could have been used to better identify the social responsibilities on larger scale and for a large number of organizations around the world. I may not have a vantage point, but my experience tells me to pen this down as my concerns before it is too late.
I am not limiting this concern to any demographics. I am including all countries that I was fortunate to visit, work and live. With a depth of understanding emanating from such an experience, I have observed the diversity of languages spoken, traditions followed and religious customs that are sometimes misunderstood. I am attempting to establish a perspective for all of these organizations to view the world from a slightly different purpose in mind.
We are welcoming a new century by accepting the existence of these diverse organizations including that are profit, non-profit, government, local, global, regulatory, entrepreneurial, and, spiritual – all existing with different purposes in mind and their deaths and births are as important as the deaths and births of human beings (legendary or otherwise). These organizations are capable of changing civilizations with lasting impacts, and, often changing the landscape altogether to usher in newer civilizations.
If we can recognize their presence and accept their contributions to take the world in a direction of growth that can bring humanities together, we can be rest assured that the assimilation process of varying cultural backgrounds will color the landscape than muddying it.
When we recognize families as the fundamental units of existence with a desire for such units to persist through the chaotic nature of growth, we should move on to recognize and re-emphasize that these organizations play an even greater role. From that perspective, I request them to consider some concerns to help humanities enjoy the cultural diversities around the world without off-loading such tasks to communities or other entities to sort out.
I often find intertwined into this diversity factor, a fear factor emanating from the unwanted and unwarranted terrorism activities that have grown from attacking transportation networks initially to cultural centers, to social gatherings, to workplace environments, and, to schools (where one can parallel that to Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars falling to the dark side killing Jedi younglings as a consequence of that). Each and every activity of this nature is escalating to target yet an other fabric of social structure that is bonding humanities together. Organizations may have an opportunity here to rethink on their social responsibilities to find ways to build trust amongst the workers with respect to their individual responsibilities, grow the communities that support their existence and engage political systems to win the trust as purposeful organizations working with the 21st century landscape as active participants.
Even if there exists a governance, either an implicit or an explicit, that directs a certain percentage of an organization’s revenue towards their social responsibility, many organizations seem to spend a greater percentage of those monies at places where they either expect to benefit from an increased exposure or on causes that may not relate to a cause closer to their root demographics. I understand the complexities and complications resulting from a multi-national operating in both developed and developing countries to decide on putting the monies back into the communities, but rethinking may be necessary to understand its global responsibilities to put the money where it is needed including those countries where it is not operating.
Many workers may view the workplace as a place to earn some income and get away from that place as fast as they can when they see an increased value placed on making money for share-holders than creating opportunities for the workers to make money. In certain countries, government employees are protected by constitutional laws, making it difficult to fire the employees, and, along with it comes workers’ complacency and other work-related inefficiencies. Workers have an opportunity to rethink on their workplace habits to recognize that the times spent at workplace belongs to the organization they are working for and must be spent at the workplace similar to the quality times that they look forward to spending with their families, friends and relatives. In other countries, the senior management gets compensated irrespective of the results they achieve creating a mistrust that has far reaching implications even if they try to dampen it by creative means and publicity. The workforce is gaining strength with greater number of knowledge-workers and I am afraid these practices by senior management are only feeding the downward trust spiral.
Many charity organizations end up spending 90% of the monies received on administering a paltry 10% on the real cause. This may not be true with all the organizations, but when you look at the number of charity organizations doing the same kind of work, why not rethink on outsourcing the administrative work to pool the resources to deliver the maximum to reach those who are really the beneficiaries of such charities?
Many foundations exist, created by sports celebrities, TV and movie celebrities, lottery winners, and, entrepreneurs, spending monies on some social causes that are closer to their hearts than that are to a major percentage of the causes affecting the community. If there is a rethink on spending those monies on the root causes of social evils, I would say many independent educators would benefit from that to be able to create learning environments that may entirely squash such evils to sprout from, including evils like terrorism, domestic violence and evils which either jeopardize the growth or tear the structural integrity of such communities..
I may dare to include many spiritual organizations that are already benefiting in many different ways, but have lost the visibility of the purpose for which they exist. Grandeur celebrations of some religious events are often targets of ridicule on one end of the spectrum and the other end terrorism on a tit-for-tat basis. I am afraid over time the practices and traditions that were once followed were becoming irrelevant and these organizations have lost their perspective on time and on their contributions towards an overall health of the community. Some deep unlearning is necessary to uproot some age-old traditions to change wasteful celebrations to resourceful celebrations to sustain the world for the future. Time and again, these organizations have proved to rise to the occasion and I think we are at the critical juncture where we need their help to become part of a solution to a larger problem than becoming a bigger problem.
I feel a rethink is necessary from all fronts at this crucial juncture. The worlds are connecting, societies are integrating, and, geographical boundaries are becoming meaningless. It is time to establish an awareness on global responsibility that is not fragmented across various types of organizations and their purpose, but responsive enough to take advantage of the technological growth and other large scale initiatives around the world (like big-data analysis) to make sense of the worlds that are changing at different speeds to deliver a strategy for global responsibility – as one entity.
Please ‘make learning happen’ as one of your global responsibility strategy to alleviate the threats that are currently consuming the world resources unnecessarily to deal with unwarranted displacements of humanities, unforeseen acts of terrorism, and, most importantly destabilization of trust, when once ‘my word is my bond’ would have sufficed to get things done quickly and responsibly. Changing times need changing perceptions, and, technology as a tool is one of the greatest assets we have. It can either doom us or dare us to the possibilities of unlearning and relearning, but only when ‘make learning happen’ is viewed as a social responsibility and as a global strategy.