Current CSR Practice in Saudi Arabia

As for the practicality of what CSR actually does, a large majority of the private sector

participants agreed that it is used to provide training, education and building of human capacity. A couple of participants emphasised the view that CSR work should be about the provision of training and education programmes and should not take the form of direct financial aid. For example, it was stated that CSR should place an “emphasis on training and development rather than direct financial payments” (PR04), and should be provided in the form of “programmes rather than direct financial payments” (PR08). Examples of CSR programmes run by the private sector included research and vocational training such as:

“For over 20 years, our company has been supporting a programme of post- doctoral research in collaboration with the British Council, Saudi Universities and British Universities. The programme helps Saudi academics conduct research at UK universities in a wide range of fields not necessarily linked to our company’s immediate interests.” (PR04)

It could be debated whether this type of activity should be regarded as CSR or not. While there are some benefits to those individuals who get selected by the scheme

on offer, this provides direct benefit to the firm. The wider benefits to society might be debatable, but it could be envisaged that training of academics benefits the universities they work for and the students they work with. Another example of research and vocational training include:

“Another example of our CSR work is related to the support of vocational education, where we provide opportunities to young graduates to undertake three to six months training to provide them with experience and prepare them to the labour market.” (PR04)

Other examples focused on education and direct community services:

“As part of our CSR work, we have a long-running not-for-profit project based on private schools, which provide excellent level of education using advanced and sophisticated curricula producing highly qualified students many of them are now in leading positions in Saudi organisations.” (PR05) and

“The aim of our CSR initiatives is to provide sustainable services to communities with tangible results. Our CSR work include projects for health development (charitable transport and home care programmes), social initiatives (agricultural and craft training programmes and small and medium business support projects), environmental development and cultural projects.” (PR09)

The private schools mentioned by participant PR05 in the example above invest all of the profit generated back into the schools in order to ensure that they offer the highest possible quality of education with the aim of helping society in the long term. In addition, some of the profit generated by these schools is used to offer bursaries for distinguished students who cannot afford the cost of education, and the schools therefore offer direct help to members of the society. While it could be debated whether or not this should be considered as CSR, it demonstrates the diverse way private sector participants interpret what CSR is. Moreover, the CSR examples provided in the quotation by participant PR09 demonstrate their substantial CSR activities across a wide and diverse range of initiatives. Given that participant PR09

represents a bank, as stated in Appendix 8, this specific example shows that CSR activities are not necessarily aligned with the company’s own activities or direct interest, which suggests that the distinction between charitable and strategic CSR is not always taken into consideration.

Reflecting on the private sector participants’ evaluation of the current state of CSR understanding and practices of CSR in Saudi Arabia, it is interesting to note their clear statement of their own companies understanding and practices of CSR. They see their own work as being related to training, education and capacity building in the community as part of their role in addressing community challenges. Interestingly, only one participant explicitly mentioned religion as a driver for his company’s CSR work, and one associated CSR work with enhancing their company’s reputation. However, contrary to this clearly expressed understanding of the meaning of CSR for their companies, participants provided a much less conclusive assessment of what they thought CSR meant for Saudi companies in general stating that practices were often actually charity, PR and marketing. It is interesting to note that only one participant thought that CSR for Saudi companies meant training graduates to meet market needs. This is interesting because it implies that the CSR activities, which are focused on training, are not widely noticed by others in the private sector. These findings reveal an interesting contrast between the Saudi companies relatively well defined understanding of their own CSR work being focused on training and education and helping the community and their assessment of the lack of clear understanding of CSR amongst other Saudi companies.

The Chamber of Commerce participants claimed that their organisation was among the first to introduce and encourage the practice of CSR in Saudi Arabia starting in

the year 2000, and established the Social Responsibility Council in 2009 with the aim of promoting social responsibility to companies and organisations. It was stated that the Council supports the practice of CSR by “holding meetings, training courses and exhibitions to introduce and encourage CSR culture among Saudi companies” (CHAM02). In their evaluation of the current CSR practices, the chamber of commerce participants agreed that CSR growth was initially slow and suffered from a clear lack of organisation and legislation. However, they emphasised that a considerable progress in CSR practice in the Saudi private sector is taking place. For example, there is a clear, strategic move within the private sector to establish dedicated CSR departments run by suitably qualified staff with the responsibility of planning and executing CSR programmes. Importantly, participants highlighted a significant change in the way CSR is being practiced through realising that CSR training programmes needed to be linked to or leading to employment opportunities, entrepreneurship and innovation. This was expressed by participant CHAM01 as follow:

“Early strategic programmes were focused mostly on training, but these are becoming less important due to increased number of trained people without sufficient number of jobs. New programmes are now starting to focus on specific training leading to employment, while other programmes support entrepreneurships and promote the culture of innovations.”

The views of participants from the NGOs on current CSR practice in Saudi Arabia were largely focused on the idea that it provided training, education and capacity building programmes. They indicated that they worked in partnership with businesses and other NGOs in order to offer grants, equipment and training programmes to specific groups of society in need of help. The emphasis of these programmes is on sustainable development as stated by participant NGO02 “Our aim is to help beneficiaries become less dependent on aid by becoming self-supported, which is

line with current government plans”. An example of one of the specific groups targeted within these programmes is given by participant NGO01 as follow:

“We liaise to help young people start up their business ventures though providing them with initial funds to support their technology-based ideas. We continue to support them by organising exhibitions to facilitate contact between investors and these young people.”

As for their evaluation of the current practice of CSR within the wider Saudi business sector, one of the NGOs participants suggested that CSR in Saudi Arabia was improving (NGO02), while another participant thought that companies were not doing enough (NGO04). However, they both held the view that some of the large Saudi companies such as SABIC and ARAMCO were leading the way in CSR understanding and implementation. According to participant NGO04:

“ARAMCO is a clear exception as it has been involved in a large number of projects helping and supporting communities by building healthcare centres, schools and supporting NGOs and farmers”.

In their evaluation of the current CSR practice in Saudi Arabia, government participants appeared to be not very satisfied with the overall scale and impact of existing efforts. For example, it was stated that “some companies are doing good CSR work but more is still needed from the wider sector” (SDC05) and “overall the CSR work of Saudi companies is very weak” (SDC04). Participant MIN02 agreed with these views stating:

“The concept of CSR in Saudi Arabia is not widely practiced. CSR initiatives need to be a lot more effective and the private sector do not appear to be clear about their role in this context. Current CSR Activities are scattered and not long-term and they are mostly ineffective and not related to social development.”

A participant from the Ministry argued that there was a need for a change of mind-set in the way CSR is understood and practiced adopting a more positive attitude and thinking of CSR as being “social contribution instead of responsibility” (MIN01).