Newsletter
Corporate & Business
�

Community Responsible Company Septiembre 2011

�

What is a Community Responsible Company?

�

When addressing the concept of Company in Mexico, it is understood as an organization dedicated to industrial, commercial or services activities with lucrative purposes; that is, the company�s responsibility was to produce a profit. Nowadays, this idea is neither sufficient nor acceptable. In addition to its obligation of producing a profit to its shareholders, the company must take into consideration that its activities affect, in a positive or negative way, the quality of life of its employees and of the communities in which it executes its operations.

As a consequence, a growing number of companies recognize social responsibility as a subject which is not restricted only to the social or environmental actions carried out by the company within the community; rather it also implies the dialogue and interaction with various groups of people related with the company. In order for a company to act with social responsibility, from a systematic and extensive perspective, it is necessary to incorporate such concept in its management procedures and, therefore, to become an integral part of its business strategies and of its internal planning system1.

Although the company�s community responsibility is intrinsic to the company, it has recently been included as a new way of doing business, in which the company bears that its operations are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, recognizing the interests of the different groups with which it is related to, seeking to preserve the environment and the sustainability of the future generations. It is a business philosophy that includes the respect for people, the ethical values, the community and the environment with the company?s management, independently of the products or services offered the sector to which it belongs, its size or nationality.

In Mexico, 572 companies display nowadays the Distinction ESR� becoming the vanguard of a business tendency which extends to global scale.

The ESR� Distinction is a graphic element obtained through an auto diagnosis process of the company, sustained with documents by the company through an electronic system and

verified by the Centro Mexicano para la Filantrop�a A.C. (CEMEFI).

The achievement of the ESR� Distinction is a consequence of the implementation of a community responsible management en four areas of the company�s community responsibility:

1. Quality of life in the company
2. Business Ethics
3. Relation of the company with the community
4. Care and preservation of the environment

During the application process to obtain the ESR� Distinction, the CEMEFI shall assign to each company a questionnaire that shall be answered by the company considering its size and year of participation. The applicant company must answer the questionnaire and attach the evidences which support the given answers.

The diagnosis and documental evidences are verified by a technical team incorporated by experts in matters regarding social responsibility and sanctioned by the Community Responsibility Commission.

¹Cajiga Calder�n, Juan Felipe. El Concepto de Responsabilidad Social Empresarial. Disponible en: http://www.cemefi.org/esr/images/stories/pdf/esr/concepto_esr.pdf

�

�

�

For additional information, you may contact any of the members of our Corporate & Business Practice Team.