CSR in the digital era

By Dr. Rana Singh 

The CSR activities are going on for a long time. The changing times have posed new set of challenges and opportunities to individuals and organizations. The most important aspect of the changing times is to envision the changes in advance to conduct an exhaustive research to analyse the pros and cons of the proposed course of action. The organizations should have well evolved mechanism to evolve the CSR activities which are recommended after the overall analysis of challenges and opportunities.

The economy is making a transition towards becoming a highly competitive digital economy. The technological changes are opening new vistas of opportunities in the various domain areas of business and CSR domain as well. The main thrust of the CSR activities in the digital era should be to leverage and integrate the modern and latest technologies in the process of delivery of CSR projects, programs and initiatives.

The integration of technology in CSR domain area is an uphill task and is quite challenging. The changing times are changing the expectations of people at an exponential rate. It is important to understand the varied expectations of all the stakeholders in the CSR domain.

The economy has to travel a long way to accomplish the envisioned dreams of Digital India. The corporate houses should start making their contributions by focusing on the various digital initiatives to make their optimal contribution to the process of nation building.

The corporate houses of India should chalk out a short-term, medium-term and long term action plan for the contributions which they plan to make in the area of digital technologies and its applications in the field of CSR.

I strongly feel that there is a lot of scope for the corporate houses to leverage the challenges and opportunities in the areas of information technology. The companies can integrate their domain expertise and IT competencies to produce systems, processes and applications to contribute to the holistic development of the society.

The government can play the role of an enabler or facilitator to the various corporate houses in delivering their contributions in the area of information technology.

I wish the CSR professionals and corporate houses a grand success in their initiatives.

(Dr. Rana Singh is Co-Founder &  CEO IndiaCSR Group. He can be reached at ranasingh.org )