The reality of shared value
“SHARED value” is a new phrase for many of us; but it is a day-today reality we are all confronted with.
Take the case of impoverished families. They face the same problem: they have very tight family finances, indeed so tight that it is often not possible to make both ends meet. For each of the families concerned, the problem is too big and systemic such that if left alone to themselves, they would be unable to find a solution, by which they can get out of the clutches of poverty.
The same reality faced the military sector. After decades of fighting insurgency in rebel-infested areas, they came to the realization that the root cause of the insurgency problem can be traced to the same elements that characterize poverty: Lack of education, lack of access to health and other essential welfare services, lack of skills and income opportunities, therefore perennial hunger and destitution. Military units are trained to fight insurgents; but they have not been trained to become the allaround development workers that the basic problem of poverty absolutely demands.
These are the obvious examples we can easily pick out of the different testimonials contributed for this section on “alliance and social responsibility.” But these examples reveal a basic pattern: In our day-to-day life and work, we find that we are part of a bigger whole, a unit within a bigger, more complex system, only a small piece of a more complicated machinery with many moving parts. For many Filipinos, this “being a part of something much bigger” hits us hard every day: The traffic system does not work efficiently, and we get caught and trapped in long jams; the elevators in some buildings had not been properly maintained, and we need to queue up for very long in order to get a ride up to our offices in tall buildings; the systems and procedures in some public offices have not been ironed out, and we need to wait up — seemingly forever — for license plates or for documents we need to get a passport. Examples can be an almost endless list. But what about the poor and the underprivileged: The daily grind they have to endure has robbed most of them of hope for a better future.
What do all these daily problems tell us? Among others, they tell us the following:
• That the machinery and value chain of which we are a part or which impacts on our daily life suffer many gaps: the value chain is not working properly; there are kinks in the system; there are many bottlenecks that slow the flow of processes; and there may be vital parts of the complex machinery in need of repair.
• There is then an absolute need for the machinery to be repaired and the value chain to be fixed. This is where “social responsibility” comes in: either an outside agent has to come in, such as the Foundation for People Development in the case of the poor families it has banded together; or the different enterprises and sectors that belong to the same value chain will need to reach out to others in the chain so they can work together and be part of the solution (instead of remaining as part of the problem).
• After reaching out to other enterprises and sectors within the same value chain, the enterprises involved will need to forge strong and effective “alliances” with each other. On the basis of their shared value, which is to make their value chain work more efficiently and effectively for the good of all, they can devise concrete ways and means for ironing the kinks and filling in the gaps, etc.
Social responsibility tells us that we are part of a bigger whole, and that each one of us has to contribute to the proper and more efficient functioning of the whole. Alliance tells us that the solution to systemic problems can be effective only through the involvement of many enterprises and sectors with a shared value in ensuring that such a solution is given.