Question

In order to contribute to societal issues, causes and/or goals, business may collaborate closely with civil society organisations. However, there are concerns about the potential limitations of this collaboration. Discuss benefits and risks of business collaborating with civil society organisations from an ethical perspective.

Answer 1

First of all, we have to understand what are civil society organisations, they are not-for-profit, voluntary entities from the group of social people working for the benefit of society in a particular direction without any state help. Basically, they work for the betterment of society in healthcare, education, unemployment or empowerment of weaker section of the society.

Let's understand the business, in simple words, we can say, creation of products or services and selling them for earning of profit by individual or group of people in an organization is called the business.

After understanding both, we must understand how both can help societies collectively. Well, civil societies organization want to uplift a section of society in a particular sector like education, to do this they need funds and technology to use them in their day to day routine to get the desired result. Whereas, business looks for building its brand value so that their product or services will be in the mind of every prospective buyer. By collaborating the business and civil societies organizations, both can fulfil their requirements by taking advantages of each other's strength. Business houses can provide funds and technology to civil societies to work in their sector and their association will provide a social branding of products or services to the business organization. This will create a win-win situation for both the entities as some of their goals are getting fulfilled by this collaboration. If business houses are also in the same sector as the associated civil societies then it will help them to understand the market in a better way and in creating a product or service which will be tried and tested by these civil societies. Both have some kind of synergies to get benefitted with each other.

Now the risk could be the level of involvement of each other in the management and day to day working. Also, civil societies incur a cost, they don't work for profit, whereas business work for profit. These different goals can create a conflict of interest in the association between these two.