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The trend toward corporate social responsibility has so much momentum that there may one day be a group called Accountants Without Borders, joked Rob Dintruff, director for global care initiatives at Abbott Laboratories.
Dintruff, who works on the African AIDS program for the drug company, was one of panelists who shared insights with students January 8 at the Hyde Park Center about the ways they can incorporate social responsibility into their careers, an event was hosted by student-led GSB Net Impact. “The trend toward social responsibility is here to stay,” he said. From going green to offering budget advice to schools to renovating a Tanzanian hospital, businesses are stepping up to help and encouraging employees to participate.
Jim Newcomb agreed. A senior brand manager at Boeing, he’s glad the firm has created a more fuel-efficient airplane—the 787 Dreamliner, proposed to debut in August—and developed a highly efficient solar panel. Also, Newcomb was among employees who joined an effort to build a house through a Boeing community fund.
Abbott works on prevention and helping children orphaned by AIDS. Company representatives went to Africa and talked to people about how the company could best be of help. “We got an interesting response,” Dintruff said. “They said, ‘Don’t send people here to put a roof on an orphanage. Give us the money and we’ll do that.’”
Employees saw a staggering lack of infrastructure, and consequently Abbott spent about $40 million renovating a hospital in Tanzania, Dintruff said. The firm even helped the hospital with its waste management problem.
And to solve a problem of old and poorly working lab equipment, Abbott secured equipment donations and hired a field service engineer to manage the whole system. Today the labs are running properly. “It’s all because we were able to employ the resources of some key employees in just the right way,” Dintruff said.
Bain & Co.’s Chicago office has the highest employee participation rate in volunteering for Junior Achievement in Chicago, said Stefanie Cyr, a Bain manager. Other consultants advise school principals on such subjects as managing budgets or managing political environments for the program New Leaders for New Schools, a nonprofit that sought Bain’s help. Recently, the company studied how businesses can better “go green,” a pro bono project done for the City of Chicago. And Bain itself, when moving to new office space, chose a slightly more costly, but more environmentally friendly route, Cyr said.
Social responsibility benefits not only society but also business, Cyr said. It enhances the company’s image and the community it operates in, while making the company more attractive to recruits and its own employees.
Second-year student Micki Lynn O’Neil, who helped organize the event, interned at Bain last summer. “I was impressed with their careful consideration of how they could use the Chicago office resources more systematically and deliberately, both to give back to the community in a meaningful way and to support their employees’ interests in service.”
What surprised her at the panel discussion was that Newcomb and Dintruff noted that employees have driven much of their firms’ increasing focus on social responsibility, she said. “We shouldn’t forget that companies are just agglomerations of people, and most people want to do good.”
—Mary Sue Penn