Pamela’s Response to the Rana Question in The Economist

Dear Living and Giving Members,

It’s a challenging situation in Rana, but one that we can be honest about. If we want perfection, then we can only operate within our backyard, up to the neighbor’s fence. It may be safe, but is it Corporate Social Responsibility?

As Corporate leaders, I don’t think we can do everything within a perfect boundary and perfect results. We do have to have quality, and we need to take every element of what we do seriously.

With that in place, we take very, very well-educated risks to serve. But we still can’t have perfection. Excellence and honesty, yes.

Please read below for my response to the Economist article on the Rana Plaza, which has been retweeted much in our CSR realm. A link to the full Economist article is below.

As always, we look forward to serving you with excellence, experience and trust, all over the world.

Warm Regards,
Pamela

Pamela’s Comment in Response to Economist Article: “Disaster at Rana Plaza”

Thank you for some good points on the action that can be taken to improve CSR.

However, CSR doesn’t promise to be utopian. There is no setting of expectations in perfection; no business indeed can be.

Companies sometimes release products that are faulty. They make mistakes. They have to recall them.

In CSR, we do strive for excellence. What CSR’s objective is is to help companies operate with effectiveness, both in building their brands, their products, and in helpful service to the community. We do this every aspect of our business: services, manufacturing, marketing, CEO messaging, sustainability, giving and volunteer programs, product donations.

Sometimes in CSR, we have so many battles to fight. We can’t make it our full-time business to go about rebuilding buildings all across the world.

Or, if we locate to a ‘safer’ country — did we just take away 15,000 jobs from people – the most impoverished, starving people and their families, people who are already dying… the people who need it the most?

Places that have safer buildings have a higher standard of living, more resources, higher building codes.

Losing lives is not acceptable.

We’ll have to do better.

There is no easy answer.
Pamela Hawley

See original article and comment here:
http://econ.st/18yHhNs

Photo Credit: Priyo News