Industry CSR Perception and Practices: The Case of Russia

Abstract

Russian Federation Constitution states that the government should act according to the principles of social responsibility, though in fact social sector becomes the one which is being cut dramatically and driven into the private sector of the economy by means of private-state partnerships which turn out to be almost pure private companies. This leads to dramatic decrease in social goods and services availability to a significant share or Russia’s population—in this setting socially responsible behavior of the companies becomes an important issue of national socio-economic development. The situation was not always the same way: within the Russian empire one can find a lot of examples of CSR, which was valued and approved by Russian Orthodox Church and society as well; however, in the times of USSR society percept social activity and social responsibility as solely state responsibility. Russian Federation throughout the period of its existence had shown controversial attitude towards CSR: on the one hand, in USSR, employers were responsible only for providing social services for their employees, while community service was a part of state’s responsibility, in new Russia employers got rid of some social obligations they used to have in USSR times (such as kindergartens for employees’ children), but became responsible for providing services to community (such as street Christmas decorations or cleaning streets in post-winter period); on the other hand enterprises pay relatively high total corporate taxes that do not impose any incentives for socially responsible behavior. Emerging CSR practices are new to the country, and were developed and spread mainly in twenty-first century—when economic turbulence became much lower, and companies in the new Russia started seeing their responsibility not only in the area of profits (to illustrate this just one figure can be given: in 1994 major Russian charity funds were happy to attract 400 USD per month, now they raise about 40 million USD per month). This chapter presents analysis of Russian CSR development trend evaluated in both qualitative and quantitative ways.