CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) IN MALAYSIA: THE PHILANTHROPICAL PRACTICE INSTILLED WITHIN BSNS INTERNAL COMMUNICATION POLICY: MAKING SENSE OF SENSEMAKING

Siti Nur AffniZulhamri Abdullah

Department of Communication, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication,University Putra Malaysia.

Abstract

The relationship between companies and society has been one of the many dynamics ever realized in relation to an organizations transformation from philanthropic co-existences to fulfilling the entire stakeholders mutual interest. The changes within these organizations has becoming importantly significant to its overall well-being especially when it illustrates the evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices and its direct impact towards the internal growth of an organization. There exist two distinct perspectives revolving around the implementation of CSR activities: the institutional theory and the sensemaking perspective. The understanding of CSR by using the sensemaking approach can be regarded as an evolutionary process where many different agents act and react upon each other. From a perspective of sensemaking, organizations are seen as constituted by mental models and social processes of sensemaking, in which meanings are assigned to things and events. Organizations like BSN are seen as constantly evolving, because they rise from the daily interactions of the organizational members including employees and this would often be found in an organizations internal communication policy. Communication within BSN is often substantiated by the channels, modes and approaches used to implement their planned CSR activities. In gauging employees understanding on CSR and employees attitudes towards CSR communication modes, the sensemaking approach was indoctrinated as the main aspect in getting the results of the employees overall acceptance and reactions towards the CSR being propagated and from this, BSNs philantropical practice was found to be deeply instilled within the framework of their communication policy.

Introduction

Corporate Social Responsibility and its inherent ability to effect changes to organizations has received wide attention especially covering considerable amount of space on contemporary academic journals and books, as well as being a major topic highlighted by practitioner on their respective discussions or public forums. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is undeniably ranks high on research agendas, whether it is in response to external pressures from government, civil society, or the public or driven by an internal belief in the economic benefits of responsible business practices, many companies are starting to take concrete steps to deal with social and environmental issues. Supposedly, CSR is the right thing to do, and leading organizations see well-managed CSR as a way to improve their performance and create new business opportunities.The communication perspectives in regards to CSR in general, were to a certain degree, overlooked. BSN is not an exception to the case. Through the publics eye, BSN has maintained its desired image and branding as portrayed in its Annual Report 2010 where it claimed its operation as highly trusted by its stakeholders. The gaps, as identified by the author from preening through official publications on BSNs CSR progress from 2008 to 2012, revolve around the internal communication aspect of the organization. This is where the sensemaking approach would come into place, an active conscious effort to gauge on BSNs internal communication modes or methods in relations to employees understanding of CSR; on whether its employees really understand the term and the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility as well as the whats and hows of the communication process among the employees.

Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) is a fitting example of CSR expansion. BSN is among the active CSR players in Malaysia that focus in the education field. Since education is one of the issues that need attention and part of CSR, a lot of efforts had been put into action for BSN to be able to contribute. The reason why BSN chose education as a field to contribute is because they have branches everywhere including the rural area such as Pulau Tioman and Song, Sarawak that needed a boat as a medium of transportation. With branches everywhere, it is easier for BSN to reach out to the community and consistently contribute their efforts. Education is considered as a long term engagement process and takes a long time to have an impact especially in rural communities. Therefore, all CSR activities or community engagement by BSN have been continuously conducted until now (Bank Simpanan Nasional Annual Report, 2008).

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

CSR and Sensemaking

A. Theoretical aspect

Companies in todays current setting are putting a public face on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity and too frequently these activities are unconnected or, worst of all, go in opposite directions, which for certain types of companies become catastrophes. Generally, sensemaking is an approach to thinking about and implementing communication research and practice as well as the mechanism of communication-based systems and activities. It consists of a set of philosophical assumptions, independent and separate propositions, methodological framings and methods (Weick et al., 2005). In order to understand why some companies undertake certain actions, it is essential to study the shared understanding of meaning within their organization.

Sensemaking has been under development since 1972 and this development of communication-based methodological approaches is based on these assumptions: (1) it is possible to design and implement communication systems and practices that are responsive to human needs (2) It is possible to enlarge communication repertoires in order to achieve number (1).

Sensemaking is the overall theoretical perspective of defining an internal communication policy of an organization, in particular BSN. Sensemaking is used to assist in describing the mental frameworks and understanding that BSN has of CSR. Whilst many different sensemaking analyses are possible, this article builds on the work of Basu and Palazzo (2008). It seeks to describe CSR in the banking sector in Malaysia, and make some recommendations as to how to manage the rhetoric and reality gap especially affecting BSNs internal communication practices within its organisation.

As for the theoretical aspects, the common approach used to study CSR is focusing more on the content of CSR rather than the external side or ways to communicate CSR. Sensemaking is known to be underdeveloped. Therefore, this study is using sensemaking approach instead of using the normal descriptive theories related to CSR or communication. Sensemaking in this study means focusing more on the application part on the real world-view such as attitude of employees towards CSR, whether the employees understand what CSR is and what are the CSR activities conducted by BSN.

B. Bank SimpananNasionalMost organizations, whether private organizations or NGOs (non-governmental organizations) including banking institution such as Bank SimpananNasional (BSN) are assisting the government by playing an active role in CSR as it will provide a significant impact to the community. Bank SimpananNasional (BSN) is considered one of the active players in implementing and conducting CSR activities for the well-being of the society (Bank Simpanan Nasional Annual Report, 2010).

Bank SimpananNasional (BSN) is not only mandated to provide financial access to the community, but also to observe the corporate social responsibility as one of the key elements for the development of a community in Malaysia. Since its inception in 1974, BSN has supported the Ministry of Finance in expanding the corporate social responsibility aspect. In the early stages of its establishment, there are no CSR activities but only to contribute to the government using 30% of the bank revenue in investment funds, including financing the development of national economy.

However, today BSN continuously allocates RM 1 million each year for its CSR activities. In the year 2008 alone, BSN has been appointed by ProkhasSdn. Bhd. (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ministry of Finance) to coordinate the Project AmalJariah (a joint program with Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad). This project was aimed to improve the living conditions of the extremely poor family by repairing their house as well as by providing some other basic needs. The fund/budget allocated for the project was RM 50 million and the program had succeeded in saving more than 3 200 houses in the whole country with the expenditure of RM17.5 million until December 2008. In addition, there are other programs such as Program SekolahAngkat (adopted school programs), Program BSN Prihatin (community relations program), and BSN Tutor Online (tutorial online for primary and secondary school children).

Besides externally enhancing their CSR activities, BSN had also conducted several programs such as seminars, workshops and courses to improve the skills and knowledge of its employees. There were about 272 external and internal courses conducted in the year 2008 alone aiming at realizing the Modal InsanBerilmu of BSN employees and other development programs aiming at increasing the understanding level of knowledge of its employees including the knowledge of CSR. Additionally, the latest programs of the year 2010 were Social Venture Challenge with RM 100 000 as a prize for the finalists (aiming at nurturing the entrepreneurial skill of university and polytechnic students) and Creative Industry Fund (CIF) with RM 192 million fund allocation (aiming at helping the creative industry practitioners to expand their business and invention).

Conclusion

In making sense of sensemaking, it should be fully understood that sensemaking is ongoing and involving a repetition process (Weick, 1995) and it is often small cues, subconsciously extracted from within the organization or from tacit knowledge and perception that can bring about the biggest impacts on attitude and behaviour.

Based on Weicks suggestions that once people reach meaning which is plausible to them; and this happened exactly to BSN employees through its internal communication modes. The CSR meaning is very much plausible to the majority of its employees that their commitment to their work focuses them on action. This could mean that appropriately designed interventions which raise individuals awareness of their sensemaking process and the noticing of cues, could result in realignment of interpretation, plausibility and outcomes with initially instilled intentions.

Overall, BSN employees have high level of CSR understanding of the organization and they have positive attitude towards CSR. However, the employees are only following orders from the management on what to understand. They are not practicing it in their own day-to-day reality world. Furthermore, they do not view certain communication modes of CSR as effective such as annual reports. They rarely read it to get the information about CSR.

The findings from this study suggest that the best results for enacting CSR is when there is alignment of understanding between individual sensemaking and organizational sensemaking, where the employees have to understand first what the organization wants from them as well have the right attitude to implement CSR.

However, these findings should be treated cautiously as only certain cases were studied and the respondents may not be representative of the whole organizations in Malaysia. It is not, therefore, possible to draw any conclusions from this study alone.

Finally, this paper should lead to additional research on CSR within organizations. Issues that may trigger further interest to be investigated include managing the CSR architecture in organizations, comprehensive frameworks that address CSR within the organization; organizational changes necessary for embracing CSR and the organization's functional activities (eg, human resources, marketing and public relations). Furthermore, more in-depth, company-specific research could bring to the surface valuable insights that might challenge some conventional thinking on the subject.

1