Complementary visions of CSR with one purpose

With plural contents, Complementary Visions (“Visiones Complementarias”) summoned the largest number of Venezuelans who had something to say about CSR, thinkers with professions who put a significant portion of their intellectual skills and affective commitment, training and different visions to the service of this matter.

Roxanys Paredes Rivas

The book “Complementary Visions” (“Visiones Complementarias”), a special publication and memory in the matter of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been edited to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of VenAmCham’s Social Alliance. In whole, its goal is directed to favor a human corporation in a sustainable society where each particular vision of the authors is complemented and enriched with the contribution of the other participants.  

CSR has achieved a wide and preferential public spot in our country, affirms Dr. Victor Guédez, a teacher, university professor, international consultant and president of CERSE (Advisory in Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility) who has published several works about this issue in his teaching and professional career and who took charge of the structuring, coordination and compilation of this anthology.

In Venezuela, there have been important initiatives in the development of CSR, as well as reflections with respect to its scope and the number of persons who, from their respective positions and professions have focused their beliefs, thoughts, feelings and desires in favor of the design, implementation, development and evaluation of CSR is truly amazing, says Guédez.

Visiones Complementarias is proof of this affirmation, because it gathers a representative number of colleagues that, from their academic, teaching, research, consulting, managers or student obligations generally, have made and intellectual and affective commitment to this matter.  Among them, Armando Janssens, Clemy Machado de Acedo, Charo Méndez Rivas, Mireya Vargas, Luis Ugalde s.j., Emeterio Gómez, Arnoldo José Gabaldón, Adolfo Jarrín, Margarita Méndez de Montero, Rafael Arraiz Lucca, César Peña Vigas, Italo Pizzolante Negrón,  Zaira Berti Ávila, Yonaide Sánchez Ferrer, Josefina Bruni Celli, Rosa Amelia González, Isabel Llorenz, Mauricio García Araujo,  Benjamin Tripier, Antonio López Ortega, Juan Carlos Sánchez M., Feliciano Reyna Ganteaume, Rosario Anzola, Tomás J. Sanabria, Iraida Manzanilla Guerra, Oscar Bastidas, Rocío Guijarro, Tomás Páez, Victoria Vigio, Pedro Sosa Mendoza, Oralyn Caldera, Manuel Reyna Jiménez, Dennys Montoto, Sonia De Paola Gathmann, Johann Gathmann, Elizabeth Martínez, Lozada, José Bernardo Guevara, Eliseo H. Sarmiento,  Alexandra Millán, Ramón Sosa Mirabal, Perla Putterman, Víctor Maldonado, Daniela Toro Carnevalli, Luis Eduardo Niño Monró, Daniel Mogollón Muñoz, Karina Zavarce, Xiomara Zambrano, Carlos Rivas, Roger Santodomingo, José Armando Mejía Betancourt, Francisco A. Vásquez G.,  Isabel Licha, Marsha Díaz de Felicianos, Sary Levy-Carciente,  María Angelina Rodríguez Gallad, Rubén Darío Canelón, Thais Bonsanto, Rafael Gallegos, Anaiz Quevedo, Carolina Tapia, Katheryne Molina, Ana Martínez, Rodrigo Aaron Núñez Serfaty, Roxanys Paredes Rivas.

The book has three basic characteristics. The first refers to the plural nature of its contents, by incorporating an open range of issues on all matters concerning CSR; the second is the multidisciplinary sense of each approach, by putting together the largest amount of persons who have reflected on CSR matters from all ranges of its polyhedron conformation; and the retro-progressive scope of the contributions, where the incorporation of each one was important, regardless of its preparation or publication date.

Nevertheless, with respect to the first characteristic, Guédez states that they wanted to break down the contributions into eighteen chapters but at the end, XX chapters resulted as a consequence of the analysis and classification of the articles. “Also, we wanted to have three authors in each chapter and the result came out different, as can be appreciated from the corresponding index.  We also had the expectation of placing many collaborators in a certain chapter, but then the contents made us place them in chapters different from the one originally envisioned”, he says.

Certainly, the number of collaborators increased as well as the volume of the edition, says Guédez, while other chapter disappeared, others were merged and others were subdivided.

Definitely, this book represents coverage of CSR from the outside. Most of the authors gathered here are followers, students or helpers of these matters. For that reason, the publication does not identify directives or representatives of corporations who have led, undertaken or managed CSR strategies in their respective corporations, he adds.

“When reaching the finish line, it is gratifying to feel satisfaction for the results: both the country and the people who have worked on these matters, on the one hand, as well as the social development corporations and organizations, on the other, which deserved an anthology such as this. Also, the real and potential benefits of social actions, just like the students, teachers and new entrepreneurs who required a compilation of the thoughts of Venezuelan authors who have reflected on CSR issues, says Guédez, satisfactorily.

CSR in continuous rise
In the opinion of Guédez, the importance achieved by CSR is so significant that it has been attributed a good portion of the blame for the recent financial crisis. But it is interesting - he warns – because now, “everyone refers to it to overcome that same crisis and to assure the improvement of the economic, social and environmental sanity. The fact is that the cause and the solution of the same situation has been attributed to it.

“CSR is not the finish line; it’s more about a transit in continuous rise. It’s not an abstract idea, it’s more of a revelation of concrete experiences that always have room for improvement”, he says. 

Guédez emphatically admits that CSR is a notion in open development and consequently, it demands speakers to structure its own judgments and to select contents within the framework of its particular demands. “In this context, the notion that the wider the more comprehensible and the more comprehensible to more innovative works well”. 

The contributions of the XX chapters and pages are: Chapter I: Conceptual and historic concepts of CSR; Chapter II: Ethical dimensions and Strategies of CSR; Chapter II: Public policies, Social Laws and CSR; Chapter IV: CSR as an integrated management system; Chapter V: CSR Strategies, Modalities and Instruments; Chapter VI: CSR and Inclusive Businesses; Chapter VII: Government-Corporations-Civil Society Alliances within the CSR framework; Chapter VIII: CSR and Good Corporate Governance; Chapter IX: Internal Social Responsibility; Chapter X: CSR and action areas; Chapter XI: CSR and the Environment; Chapter XII: Standards, Indicators and Sustainability Memories; Chapter XIII: Corporate Volunteering and CSR; Chapter XIV: Social Marketing and Responsible Communication; Chapter XV: CSR Education and Training; Chapter XVI: A prospective vision of Corporate Responsibilities.

These chapters argue that we are facing a CSR notion that admits multiple views and that any intention of enclosing it escapes us. In effect, for Guédez, CSR avoids any set definition; it is a live matter because all of its questions are incapable of being answered with absolute interpretations.

Guédez refers to the ecosystemic sense of CSR, which relates to the kind of society that we want, with the concept of corporation that we profess, with the scope we give to public policies, with the vision of the organizations of the so called “third sector”, with the very interpretation of the market economies and the role assigned to social economy, among other things. These links increase the complexity of the matters and proposes heightened levels of interpretation.

What is fundamental is that, from the specific perspective of the matter, “we assure unity in the essential, diversity in what is important and complementation in what is emerging”.

Within these reflections, this book produces complementary visions that, as a whole, point towards the same goal: favoring a human corporation for a sustainable society, under the reflective testimonies of each author, changing standards by distancing itself from any type casted and stiffened intentions.