Transformation also comes from the small ones

The effort to raise major businesspeople’s awareness about the relevance of responsible management in their organizations is a fight that has been going on with reasonable success. However, a program aimed at small and medium-sized companies could make this change even more effective. The theme panel “Corporate social responsibility in the Americas: developments of the Forum Empresa-BID Project”, held in the 2007 International Conference, gathered representatives from Brazil, Peru, El Salvador and Chile to talk about their experiences in the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) training program.

Pablo Miguel Frederick Santibáñez, executive director of the Promotion of Corporate Social Responsibility Project at Forum Empresa, explained the methodology applied by the program: “The project’s idea is to facilitate the application of CSR by small and medium-sized companies, showing that adopting sustainable processes is a competitive factor in the market.”

The project developed by the Forum Empresa, a network of 22 CSR business organizations in Latin America, started to pick up in 2003 and is supported by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Organization of American States (OAS). The first step was to create CSR training and communication tools in the form of a manual of contents and courses for individual consultants in the four countries involved in the project (*). Now comes the implementation phase. Altogether, 41 companies have been selected, and this figure is likely to increase a lot.

“We’ve learned a lot about social responsibility in my country, but we need more. Many businesspeople still don’t believe in the advantages of being responsible, and that’s scary,” said Henri le Bienvenu, executive director of Perú 2021. In spite of that, Henri stressed that the positive outcome was the strengthening of the concept in the pilot groups of companies involved.

León Guzmán Gatica, general manager of Acción RSE, from Chile, believes that this project could touch the heart of businesspeople, but an increase in resources is still necessary. He also highlighted the approval of an outsourcing law in Chile, according to which the large corporation becomes responsible for its suppliers.

According to Rhina Reyes, executive director of FUNDEMAS, from El Salvador, concepts systematization was critical for the consolidation of CSR. Rhina said that the businesspeople always ask what they will gain from the paradigm change, but they know this is an investment. “Latin Americans aren’t used to measuring or defining strategies. The adoption of a methodology that enables a higher level of control over the actions and their results is essential nowadays, because foreign investors value transparency in free trade agreements,” said Reyes.

João Gilberto dos Santos, International Relations Manager of Instituto Ethos, stressed that one of the great merits of the project is that, besides raising awareness, it guides SMEs strategically. “The greatest challenge is to deepen this work in small and medium-sized companies and attract the large ones to fund the training project.”

(*) All the material used for training the SMEs will be accessible in English, Portuguese and Spanish on the website of Forum Empresa (www.empresa.org), as of December 2007.