10. Corporate Citizens at Work: An Introduction

The companies have been selected based on a survey conducted by Dr. Shashank Shah between 2008 and 2010 to explore organisations which are known for their Stakeholders Approach to Business. This survey received 700 responses from management executives belonging to organisations from diverse industries, sectors and geographies in corporate India. Respondents belonged to different functional and hierarchical levels within these organisations. Such a methodology was also used by Sivakumar (1995) while studying organisations in India with a focus on values-based management.

Detailed analysis of the respondents of this survey has been included in Appendix I.

A detailed list of interviewees from each of the companies has been provided in Appendix I.

BPCL has a 61.65 % share in NRL, Government of Assam has 12.35 % share, and Oil India Ltd. has a 26 % share in the refinery.

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Details of the concept of grain bank, agricultural assistance and cattle care are based on the information provided on the company website.

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A BPCL Report on Community Development Initiatives.

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Calculated as 2 % of the average of the profits after tax (PAT) for the last three financial years (2009–2010, 2010–2011 and 2011–2012) as provided in the Company Annual Reports. This is as per the methodology as mandated in the New Companies Bill, 2011, by the Government of India on mandatory CSR spending by companies with a net worth of Rs. 500 crore or more, or turnover of Rs. 1,000 crore or more, or a net profit of Rs. 5 crore or more, during any financial year. BPCL qualifies this bracket.

Prime Minister of India (2004 onwards).

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Founded in 1998, the Naandi Foundation is a non-profit organisation in India and works in the fields of children’s rights, education, sustainable livelihoods, midday meals and safe drinking water. It was started by eminent industrialists including Dr. Anji Reddy and Mr. Anand Mahindra.

Nirman Foundation is an NGO engaged in educational and socio-economic transformation of the society of Mumbai through its various activities in the field of education, health and medicine, agriculture, environment, youth and women empowerment and other related service projects. Formed by a group of public-spirited professionals, industrialists and social activists, it believes in the philosophy of regeneration of society through the moral and ethical regeneration of individuals.

Established in 1952, the National Association for the Blind (NAB) has been one of the premier institutions for undertaking multifarious activities for the benefit of the visually challenged people in India. It has received patronage and support from a number of governmental and corporate organisations and has positively contributed through its activities in the area of blindness prevention, education, rehabilitation, vocational training, employment, research and training, women’s welfare, development of braille-based books and many more exclusively focused on the welfare of the visually challenged population.

An ISO 9001:2000 certified organisation, SAI SEVA, is one of India’s first exclusively rural BPO established in the pilgrim town of Puttaparthi in the state of Andhra Pradesh in 2005. Started by the alumni of the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning (Deemed University), SAI SEVA’s vision is to improve the Indian economy by bringing about significant improvement in unemployment rates across rural India by effectively leveraging the resources in the villages to support the business requirements of companies.

‘HDFC Bank’s rural BPO initiative’, Information for Development, January 6, 2009; accessed at http://​i4d.​eletsonline.​com/​?​p=​11488

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Calculated as 2 % of the average of the profits after tax (PAT) for the last three financial years (2009–2010, 2010–2011 and 2011–2012) as provided in the Company Annual Reports. This is as per the methodology as mandated in the New Companies Bill, 2011 by the Government of India on mandatory CSR spending by companies with a net worth of Rs. 500 crore or more, or turnover of Rs. 1,000 crore or more, or a net profit of Rs. 5 crore or more, during any financial year. HDFC Bank qualifies this bracket.

Refer to the case studies on L&T Construction and Wipro where their initiatives on the National Academy of Construction (NAC) and Mission 10X respectively have been elaborated.

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CARE India is a leading national developmental organisation with an extensive global network. Through its pro-poor programmes, it has worked on extreme poverty and social injustice in India by working with poor women and girls from the most disadvantaged communities. With women at the heart of its community-based efforts, for over six decades, it has focused on improving basic education, boosting maternal and child health, preventing the spread of HIV and tuberculosis (TB) and expanding economic opportunity. It also delivers emergency aid to survivors of natural disasters and helps people rebuild their lives.

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Founded in October 1997, Development of Humane Action (DHAN) Foundation is a professional development organisation that brings highly motivated, educated young women and men to the development sector. The organisation’s focus is on making new innovations in development to root out poverty from the country, which is the mission of the organisation.

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Calculated as 2 % of the average of the profits after tax (PAT) for the last three financial years (2009–2010, 2010–2011 and 2011–2012) as provided in the Company Annual Reports. This is as per the methodology as mandated in the New Companies Bill, 2011, by the Government of India on mandatory CSR spending by companies with a net worth of Rs. 500 crore or more, or turnover of Rs. 1,000 crore or more, or a net profit of Rs. 5 crore or more, during any financial year. HUL qualifies this bracket.

As per Census 2011, India had 640 districts.

Dalal, Sucheta (2008) ‘AM Naik - A rare interview to MoneyLIFE’, Money Life.

Survey conducted by Engineering News Record Magazine, August 2007.

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L&T Construction was the chief contractor for some of the landmark projects undertaken by the Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust (a public charitable trust established in September 1972). Some of these projects included Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences and Super Specialty Hospitals at Puttaparthi (Andhra Pradesh) and Bangalore (Karnataka); Sri Sathya Sai Drinking Water Supply Projects for the Districts of Anantapur, Medak, Mahbubnagar, East and West Godavari in the state of Andhra Pradesh, and the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, covering a population of over 12 million people; Sri Sathya Sai International Centre for Sports, Sri Sathya Sai Airport; Chaitanya Jyoti Museum and many others. All of these are public welfare projects providing services absolutely free of cost to all beneficiaries.

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Calculated as 2 % of the average of the profits after tax (PAT) for the last three financial years (2009–2010, 2010–2011 and 2011–2012) as provided in the Company Annual Reports. This is as per the methodology as mandated in the New Companies Bill, 2011, by the Government of India on mandatory CSR spending by companies with a net worth of Rs. 500 crore or more, or turnover of Rs. 1,000 crore or more, or a net profit of Rs. 5 crore or more, during any financial year. L&T qualifies this bracket.

The Akanksha Foundation is an NGO with a mission to impact the lives of children from low-income communities, enabling them to maximise their potential and transform their lives. In 2012, it reached out to over 4,000 children through 40 centres and 13 schools in Mumbai and Pune.

Project Nanhi Kali is an Indian NGO founded in 1996 by Mr. Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra and Mahindra Group, that supports education for underprivileged girls in India. It is jointly managed by the Naandi Foundation and the KC Mahindra Education Trust, which is part of the corporate social responsibility activities of the Mahindra Group. In 2012, Project Nanhi Kali supported over 57,000 students.

Established in Mumbai in 1994 to provide preschool education to children in slums, Pratham is the largest NGO in India. It works towards the provision of quality education to the underprivileged children in India and has activities in 21 states of India and supporting chapters in the USA, UK, Germany and UAE.

Teach For India, a project of Teach To Lead and based on the Teach For America Model, is a nationwide movement of outstanding college graduates and young professionals who commit 2 years to teach full time in under-resourced schools and become lifelong leaders working from within various sectors towards the pursuit of equity in education. In June 2009, the organisation placed its first cohort of fellows in low-income municipal and private schools in Pune and Mumbai. In 2012, Teach For India was in five cities—Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai—and had a total of 550 fellows and 196 alumni working towards eliminating educational inequity.

Started in 2001, by Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy, Ummeed is a non-profit organisation set up with the objective of helping children with developmental disabilities like cerebral palsy, mental retardation, learning disability, autism and attention deficit disorder. It is Mumbai’s only interdisciplinary resource for children with developmental disabilities and in 2012 had 50 professionals affiliated to it.

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The Dwarakadheesh temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Krishna situated at Dwarka, Gujarat, which is believed to have been built after the historical Dwarka city, the kingdom of Krishna himself which submerged into the ocean after the Mahabharata war. The main shrine of the five-storied building is believed to be 2500 years old. The present temple was built in sixteenth-century CE and became part of the Char Dham pilgrimages considered most sacred by Hindus in India, after Adi Shankaracharya, the eight-century reformer and philosopher, visited the shrine.

Located in the Aravalli hills, on the banks of the Banas River, this town is famous for its temple of Krishna which houses the idol of Shrinathji, a fourteenth-century, 7-year-old form of Krishna. The idol was originally worshipped at Mathura and was shifted in 1672 from Govardhan hill, near Mathura along River Yamuna in order to protect it from anti-Hindu fanatic iconoclastic Islamic policies of Mughal ruler Aurangzeb. Nathdwara is a significant Vaishnavite shrine pertaining to the Pushti Marg or the Vallabh Sampradaya or the Shuddha Advaita founded by Shri Vallabhacharya, revered mainly by people of Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Navratri is a festival dedicated to the worship of the Hindu deity Durga. The word Navratri literally means nine nights in Sanskrit. During these nine nights and 10 days, nine forms of the feminine aspect of Divinity are worshiped. The tenth day is commonly referred to as Vijaya Dashami. Navratri is a major festival across India, celebrated with much zeal and reverence.

It is celebrated on April 1 in Odisha in the memory of the formation of the state as a separate province on April 1, 1936.

A major festival dedicated to Lord Shiva.

Founded in 1989, Vishwa Gujarati Samaj (VGS) is an International Organization of the Gujarati community settled world over and holds the membership from 101 countries. It provides platform for the interaction among the Gujaratis world over and works for the growth, prosperity and progress of Gujaratis settled in different countries of the world and inspires them to cultivate the spirit of brotherhood and cooperation and to promote and preserve Gujarati language, traditions, culture and heritage.

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Calculated as 2 % of the average of the profits after tax (PAT) for the last three financial years (2009–2010, 2010–2011 and 2011–2012) as provided in the Company Annual Reports. This is as per the methodology as mandated in the New Companies Bill, 2011, by the Government of India on mandatory CSR spending by companies with a net worth of Rs. 500 crore or more, or turnover of Rs. 1,000 crore or more, or a net profit of Rs. 5 crore or more, during any financial year. Reliance qualifies this bracket.

Bharti Foundation’s Satya Bharti School Programme providing end-to-end free and quality education in rural India is a case in point. Details about the same have been given in Chap.​ 8.

(1839–1904); Belonging to the Zoroastrian Parsi community hailing from Navsari, Gujarat, India.

This comprehensive document serves as the ethical road map for Tata employees and companies and provides the guidelines by which the group conducts its businesses. The Tata Code of Conduct is based on the value systems as advocated by the founding fathers of the group. All Tata companies using the Tata brand and logo are expected to uphold the Tata Code of Conduct.

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An attempt has been made to highlight the initiatives of the Tata Group and the Tata Trusts. It is difficult to capture the diversity of the CSR initiatives of each of the individual Tata companies, 96 of them. However, some of the major initiatives at the group level and some unique initiatives at the company level for few of the Tata Group companies have been compiled.

Evolved during the early 1990s and implemented since 1995, the TBEM (modelled on the lines of the famous Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award) has been developed for attaining ever improving standards of business and achieving excellence in diverse aspects of business in the Tata Group including leadership, strategic planning, customer focus and market focus, workforce focus and process management, among many others. It is an extensively detailed, measurement-based and result-focused working framework.

Rodrigues, Cynthia (2010), ‘Taj Public Service Welfare Trust’, Tata Review, February 2010 Issue.

Based on the information and documents received from the Office of the Tata Council of Community Initiatives, Mumbai, 2011.

While each of the 9 points has been allotted scores and weightages with respect to the TBEM process, these have not been included here.

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Wadia, Jai (2011), ‘Making Adults Literate’, Tata Review, October 2011 Issue.

Based on an interaction with the Executive Vice President (TCS).

Menon, Sangeeta (2011a), ‘Strong bonds’, Tata Review, December 2011 Issue.

Menon, Sangeeta (2011b), ‘Taking the long-term view’, Tata Review, December 2011 Issue.

Menon, Sangeeta (2011c), ‘The all-round approach’, Tata Review, December 2011 Issue.

A joint venture between Tata Power and Delhi Government.

Lala, R.M. (2004), The Creation of Wealth: The Tatas from the 19th to the 21st Century, Penguin Books India.

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All the statistics are based on the details given on the SST website (http://​www.​tvssst.​org).

These have been sourced from the annual reports of SST and various published information.

Li, Xue Shirley et al. (2011), ‘Srinivasan Services Trust: Combating Poverty with Entrepreneurship’, MIT Sloan Management, 11–113.

Information sourced from Annual Reports of SST.

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A modified version of this case study was originally published by Dr. Shashank Shah in Prabandhan, Indian Journal of Management, Vol. 4(8). Reproduced with permission.

Chief Executive (Indian Operations) for Wipro Infotech from 2003 to 2008 and was subsequently associated very actively with the Azim Premji Foundation. Founded in 2001, the Azim Premji Foundation is a non-profit organisation, with a vision to significantly contribute to achieving quality universal education that facilitates a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society. The foundation worked in the area of elementary education to pilot and developed ‘proofs of concept’ that had a potential for systemic change in India’s 1.3 million government-run schools. A specific focus was on working in rural areas where the majority of these schools exist. In December 2010, Mr. Premji donated US$ 2 billion for improving school education in India by transferring 213 million equity shares of Wipro Ltd. held by a few entities controlled by him to the Azim Premji Trust. This donation was the largest of its kind in India.

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A similar project was undertaken by Microsoft’s Working Connections in partnership with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). Microsoft’s US$ 50 million 5-year initiative was aimed at all three problems: non-standardised IT curricula across community colleges in the USA, outdated technology in the classrooms and no professional development programmes for the faculty. In addition to contributing money and products, Microsoft sent employee volunteers to colleges to assess needs, contribute to curriculum development and create faculty development institutes. Volunteers and assigned staff were able to use their core professional skills to address a social need. Just like Wipro benefitted the IT industry in India, Microsoft achieved results that benefited many communities while having a direct—and potentially significant—impact on the company and the industry.

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‘Swadhar, Institute for Development of Women and Children, Pune’ was a registered NGO, established in July 1995 as a branch of Swadhar, Mumbai. It focused on help women in distress, irrespective of their caste, creed or religion.

Door Step School, an NGO, was established in Mumbai in 1988 and later expanded to Pune in 1992. It was started with the aim of addressing literacy among the marginalised sections of society. The organisation built its programme to address three major problems: non-enrollment, wastage and stagnation. Since its inception, it impacted the lives of over 50,000 children.

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Calculated as 2 % of the average of the profits after tax (PAT) for the last three financial years (2009–2010, 2010–2011 and 2011–2012) as provided in the Company Annual Reports. This is as per the methodology as mandated in the New Companies Bill, 2011, by the Government of India on mandatory CSR spending by companies with a net worth of Rs. 500 crore or more, or turnover of Rs. 1,000 crore or more, or a net profit of Rs. 5 crore or more, during any financial year. Wipro qualifies this bracket.

This framework development is based on the doctoral work of Dr. Shashank Shah (2010) titled ‘Corporate Stakeholders Management: A Study of Contemporary Practices for Stakeholder Welfare and Development of an Implementation Framework’. Such frameworks, based on triangulation of data, have been proposed by me for multiple stakeholders including shareholders, customers, employees, society and local community, natural environment, government and regulatory authorities, suppliers and dealers and competitors.

Unlike the standard definitions of the term, the term CSR has been used in this framework to refer to only those policies, projects and programmes that corporate organisations follow with respect to the society and local community stakeholders. It has been observed in most annual reports of Indian corporate organisations that activities relating to the society and local community alone are included under the section on Corporate Social Responsibility. Activities relating to employee welfare and the environmental performance of the organisation come under the HSE (health, safety and environment) category and the sustainability initiatives. In triple bottom line reports, CSR activities are clubbed under the social section, and environment-related initiatives are clubbed under the ecological section. This framework and study at large has focused only on the society and local community stakeholders to ensure greater focus and clarity on this constituency.

These interactions consisted of interviews ranging between 30 and 90 min with each of the executives at their respective corporate offices in different parts of India.

The variables contained under each of these parameters have not been quantified in terms of their relative importance to the organisation or to the stakeholders and have also not been tested for statistical frequency across the companies. The variables under each of the parameters, stakeholders and companies have been stated randomly. There is no order of ascending or descending importance that has been followed. Since the data have been gathered from very senior and reliable sources, both at the primary and secondary levels, no attempt (beyond the stated methodology) has been made to cross verify the actual implementation of the proposed alterables/noteworthy practices by each of the organisations or even the identified needs, challenges/constraints, strengths and future focus areas with respect to each of the organisations. However, the triangulation of data ensured that no claims at any level have gone unverified by the other two sources of data. Thus, it evened out dichotomies that could have existed in the responses to a certain extent or from information from a particular source.

In the extant literature reviewed, such an analysis based on triangulation of data, especially in the Indian corporate scenario, has not been attempted hitherto. This compilation attempted to bridge that existing gap in the existing body of knowledge.

Case study on this organisation has been included in Chap.​ 11 of this book.

The Godrej Group in India is another example of a unique organisation structure similar to that of the Tatas. 25 % of the Godrej Group’s holding company is owned by a trust that invests back in the environment, healthcare and education. These trusts have been established by the founding fathers of the group over a century ago with a focus on society and community welfare. Biographical accounts indicate that the virtues of charity and philanthropy promoted by the Zoroastrian faith to which they belonged influenced the founders of both these eminent Indian Business Groups to set up such unique corporate structures, which continue to benefit the society and local community for over a century.

Theoretical underpinnings of each of these variables have been covered across the book in various chapters.

While these options as part of the ‘Society and Local Community Welfare Framework’ were recommendations when this study was undertaken, it is now mandatory as per the New Companies Bill, 2011, in India to have a board-level CSR committee, report on the impact of the activities undertaken and share details with the larger group of stakeholders through the annual report/sustainability report and company website.

Many of the CSR activities suggested under the New Companies Bill, 2011, have also featured as part of this framework.

Accessed at http://​www.​skilldevelopment​.​gov.​in/​about/​adviser

Accessed at http://​www.​skilldevelopment​.​gov.​in/​

It is encouraging to note that almost all the corporate citizens presented in this chapter have undertaken a number of initiatives with respect to skill development, capacity building and rural empowerment in their respective industry categories and geographies.