Okaz newspaper The second corporate social responsibility forum was held recently. I had the pleasure to participate in a workshop titled ‘Role of the media in corporate social responsibility awareness.' The general understanding of social responsibility is that companies have employees on their roster who get paid once their duty is done at the end of each month. This has been the traditional explanation for social responsibility until recently. The understanding of social responsibility in our society has been always connected to charity work, which provided the investor with no return. This type of social work did not need any motivation as it is encouraged in Islam. Therefore, businessmen built charity houses, schools, hospitals, took care of orphans and widows seeking only divinely returns. This happened when the businessmen individually owned their business. With mergers and companies going public, charitable activities took a back seat to making money. While the concept of social responsibility in the West has been developing and improving for many decades, this concept did not exist with us. There is little demand today for major companies and banks to increase their role in social responsibility, because as they see it, the government is providing society with all its needs. Even when the government has privatized some of its departments, companies and banks claimed that since they paid Zakat money to the government, it absolved them from the need to do further charitable activities. Many citizens today complain of the huge profit earned by companies and banks working in the Kingdom without these institutions providing anything back to society in return. Such companies are not interested in philanthropic activities since they believe that their obligations stop with the payment of Zakat money to the government. Charitable causes on the other hand lose twice: Zakat money does not translate to social services and companies see no point in added social causes once Zakat is paid. I hope that through this forum, the social responsibility of companies is re-energized and their role will once again become more pro-active. __
