Public Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Dubai
Published by DubaiLime October 6th, 2007 in Work.Some believe that attending to CSR issues ignores commercial reality and will eat into profit. But growing ethical and environmental concern can create opportunities for businesses and being ethical doesn’t mean you can’t make money, grow and survive as a business – after all there is nothing unethical about making money, just how you go about it.
CSR involves looking at issues like marketplace transparency, community involvement, respect for staff and environmental issues. Any Public Relations company, for example, would identify its energy bills as affecting profit and its community involvement as being mutually beneficial.
Dubai is not without its CSR cynics. Some corporates would argue that it is the governments responsibility to safeguard the economic and social welfare of the people and that corporate social responsibility has nothing to do with the bottom line.
Yes, governments should be doing all they can and more but the responsibility should not be bypassed by corporates and PR companies in general. True CSR should come from a companies values and beliefs and not being told what to do by the powers that be.
CSR is not just the responsibility for banks and large corporations. Small companies and those supplying a service should not be absolving responsibility.
Strawberry PR is a public relations company trying to lead by example and certainly not passing by their social responsibility. They have implemented several initiatives based on what it will do for the community and not so much what it will do for Strawberry PR. Now one thing you could point out is that a company displaying good CSR will receive good PR for themselves – and this could be construed as a selfish act. But lets not forget the effort involved in CSR.
For Strawberry PR it has been a lot of hard work. As CSR is a new initiative to most companies, many activities require a lot of effort in the beginning. There are many new ropes to master and essentially it is like start a new business within a business. And of course there is the streamlining throughout all business practices – rather like implementing a new computer system, this takes time and money but in the long run will make you business “feel” better.
Strawberry PR have CSR activities at Mannar al imman school and Gulf for good.
In addition Strawberry provide CSR PR to companies. Corporate sustainability reporting is the most rapidly growing form of business performance reporting. In 2006 more than 70% of S&P 100 and 60% of Dow Jones 30 companies reported their non-financial, Triple Bottom Line metrics across one or all of the three key performance areas: economic, social and environmental performance. This trend is expected to continue with a further 20% growth expected in reporting in 2007/2008. By 2009 non-financial reporting will be a top priority for all companies and it will be essential that this is communicated with their customers.
About Strawberry PR
We like to think that we break the typical PR Agency mould with our down to earth and intelligent approach combined with a genuine enthusiasm for our work and our clients businesses.
We pride ourselves on listening to our clients and gaining a real understanding of their business. We work with our clients to become an integral part of their in-house capability rather than an add-on. We believe in taking an integrated approach to marketing communications and are used to working alongside other client agencies.
Strawberry PR & Events is a boutique PR agency which provides a range of creative media, events and public relations services to the GCC, North Africa and Middle East regions. A highly motivated and independent agency, we take an enthusiastic and proactive approach to our work.
