Vol. 3 No. 1 (2023): Patrimonial, Business Civil Law and Corporate Social Responsibility using technology
When talking about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), one usually thinks of companies that produce tangible goods whose production activities cause a visible or measurable impact to a greater or lesser extent.
It is worth asking what happens in the case of companies that produce intangible goods, particularly information technology (IT), where the impact is neither visible nor measurable in such an obvious way, but it is nonetheless irrelevant. since the actions of such companies affect -whether directly or indirectly- a large part of the economic and cultural aspects of society.
The concept that companies have responsibilities that extend beyond their shareholders is as old as the shareholders themselves. In the 19th century, many companies built special housing for their employees, believing that an employee living well would be more productive than one living in precarious conditions.
Since its inception, companies have had an economic contract with the companies in which they acted. Said contract assigned the former the function of producing goods and services efficiently, generating and maintaining jobs, obtaining profits (part of which were reinvested in the production process) and complying with the tax charges and contributions that allowed them to maintain these companies.
Classical economic thought maintains that in a market with ideal operating conditions, compliance with the economic contract by companies would allow a general welfare state to be achieved. But since these ideal conditions are not verified in practice, the functioning of the markets is not carried out efficiently and market failures occur. This is due, in large part, to the fact that the economic system ignores all those phenomena that are not expressed through a monetary exchange. These phenomena produced by companies and that affect those who are not part of them, are known as "externalities".
At first glance, it could be assumed that there are no links between CSR and computing activity, since they are apparently dissimilar disciplines. However, and as has been exposed, there are numerous points of contact between both disciplines. Computer science has a historical and philosophical basis based on principles of collaboration, transparency (free access to information) and contributions to society and, although these principles are not inherent to the activity (that is, it can be carried out even without apply these principles), knowledge of them constitutes a solid foundation to apply in the definition of CSR policies and programs in ETIs.
In our country, CSR is a discipline of recent appearance, particularly in medium-sized companies. Due to this, and added to the fact that the activity of the ETIs does not produce visible impacts, the challenge of generating awareness is presented here so that CSR practices become one more part of the actions of the ETIs. .
In order to carry out this challenge, the participation of all interested parties (stakeholders) is necessary, in such a way that the actions related to CSR cover the widest possible spectrum. However, this will not be possible if CSR is considered as a corporate fashion lacking real and deep support, and whose sole purpose is to improve the image of the company in order to increase sales. It is in this aspect that a change of vision must take place that extends to the entire company, originating from the management and expanding from there to all sectors.
It is the wish of the person who writes this that the mentioned challenge can materialize in the coming years.
Maria Gabriela Zuleta
Published:
2023-03-02
