FINLAND: Consumers Demand Responsible Corporate Behaviour

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Linus Atarah

HELSINKI, Oct 5 2007 (IPS) - Corporate social responsibility is beginning to influence consumption behaviour in Finland, according to a survey published here this week.

Environmental issues and employees’ welfare were considered the most important indices of socially responsible corporate behaviour, according to the TNS Gallup survey.

Nearly three-quarters of Finns (73 percent) named each environmental protection and maintaining jobs as top priorities in assessing corporate social responsibility.

Nearly half said that whether a company behaves in a socially responsible manner has an impact on its reputation.

Thirty-five percent said a company’s commitment to social responsibility will affect their decision to buy its products, while three-quarters said that companies should be more transparent about their activities.

The poll conducted late last month was commissioned by the biggest Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat. A total of 1,036 people aged 15 and above were surveyed.

Nearly half (46 percent) said companies should also behave responsibly in the global arena, which means observing core labour standards, respecting human rights, and avoiding the use of child labour.

Dairy products company Valio was selected as the first among 10 large companies most engaged in socially responsible behaviour. The global mobile phone giant Nokia figured fourth.

The survey announcement Oct. 2 was followed by a gathering of more than 500 business leaders and social activists at a seminar on corporate social responsibility.

The seminar jointly organised by child welfare organisation Plan and Helsingin Sanomat, was part of a campaign to raise awareness among Finnish companies to contribute in fighting global problems such as poverty, the organisers said.

“Finnish businesses have been too focused on advancing, moving forward, and making better business, they tend to forget the world beyond them,” said Reetta Meriläinen, editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat.

“Their awareness of global poverty always comes later in a second phase, when they have become rich enough to become actors in society. Then they realise that there are issues where they can make an impact,” she told IPS.

“For a media corporation, the first corporate social responsibility is to give publicity to the problems of the world including poverty,” said Meriläinen.

Critics take a dim view of corporate social responsibility undertaken outside proper regulation.

“Voluntary commitments will not help, they can in fact be harmful if they get in the way of legally binding regulation which we need,” said Thomas Wallgren, senior lecturer in philosophy at Helsinki University.

A huge media conglomerate like Sanoma Corporation, owner of Helsingin Sanomat, “will do better by raising concern about the lack of public attention to the decisive difference between corporations that regulate themselves as they see fit and the democratic rule of law,” Wallgren told IPS.

Teivo Teivainen, professor of international relations at Helsinki University, said corporate social responsibility only provides cosmetic dressing to take the harsh edges off capitalism. Nevertheless, it can help people think about corporations in political terms, he said.

“Talking about corporate social responsibility redefines the discourse a little bit in political terms, and that can be helpful in identifying corporations also as political actors that can bring about democratic change, instead of seeing them exclusively in economic terms,” Teivainen told IPS.

Bob Geldof, the Irish rocker and political activist, acknowledged in his keynote address at the seminar that “the first moral responsibility for a company is to take in the interests of their employees, their shareholders and their customers.”

But corporations also carry a moral responsibility of investing in poor countries, he said.

Geldof said one reason that companies try to be socially responsible is to attract talent. “They need to have values and be able to attract kids.”

Geldof told IPS later that western companies are not doing enough to tackle poverty in Africa. And unlike the Chinese, western companies have not invested enough in Africa, he said. “What was it that the Chinese saw that we missed? Where were our businessmen?”

Investing in Africa would be good in the interest of business, and also “the moral way to behave,” Geldoff said.