The announcement earlier this month of the establishment of an endowment fund for Zayed University marks an important development in creating alternative funding schemes for the expanding state-financed higher education sector in the UAE. But while such schemes will certainly help alleviate the over-stretched budgets of public universities and colleges, there is another source of income that government institutions of higher education have yet fully to tap: business.
Throughout the world there is a growing culture of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that could bring the private business sector into closer alignment with the needs of the community, including in education. According to the CSR vision, doing business is not just about generating profit; it is also about contributing to sustainable development in its widest sense.
With the changing roles of business in globalised economies, CSR – as defined by an international business consultant – is about how businesses align their values and behaviour with the expectations and needs of “stakeholders”: not just customers and investors, but also employees, suppliers, communities, regulators, special interest groups and society as a whole.
In North America and Western Europe, CSR has become an established practice in national and transnational business operations. Growing consumer-centred business ethics and tighter statutory controls have helped change corporate attitudes towards community development. Western-based multinational companies run their own corporate responsibility departments and publish annual CSR reports revealing their contributions in a wide range of sectors, including education. Many of these CSR initiatives, of course, take place within foundations bearing their mother corporations’ titles.
In the Arab region, CSR is barely recognised as a feature of corporate life, more often being taken as merely an act of charitable donation. However, in the United Arab Emirates, things seem to be changing. CSR culture is making significant breakthroughs in government, corporate and community spheres.
In 2007, the UAE hosted the first Middle East Corporate Social Responsibility Forum. The launch of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Knowledge Foundation and the “Dubai Cares” initiative late last year reflected government determination to integrate CSR into the country’s business traditions.
Recently, the Emirates Environmental Group (EEG) launched its Social Responsibility Network operating as part of the UN Global Compact initiative. Last May, the EEG-CSR Network launched its Arabia Corporate Social Responsibility Awards to honour companies that had made significant contributions to the development of their communities.
In a strategic partnership with the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ADCCI), “Zayed’s Philanthropic Initiative” has launched “Masolia”, the National Programme on Social Responsibility, the first of its kind in the UAE. ADCCI is also planning to convene the Second Corporate Governance and Responsibility Forum for the Middle East and North Africa in Abu-Dhabi in 2009.
Other recently announced developments include the Abu Dhabi Social Responsibility Award, from the Emirate Corporate Social Responsibility Group, and a “Social Responsibility Fund” launched by the Ministry of Social Affairs to foster further business commitment to community development.
Interestingly, this sweeping enthusiasm for CSR in the UAE also draws on deeply-rooted Arab-Islamic traditions that promote endowments and community initiatives. The notion of “ongoing charity” – “Sadaqa Jariya” – has been harnessed throughout history to encourage public, and corporate, contributions to development in areas like education.
This combination of traditional and modern notions of social responsibility, I believe, offers the state higher education sector a golden opportunity to become key recipients of CSR initiatives by national and multinational companies operating in the UAE.
As CSR culture continues to take root in government, corporate, and community mindsets, public universities and colleges need to start thinking about creating means by which the business sector can do more to support them. In other countries, corporate support has taken such forms as the sponsorship of scholarships for distinguished students, funding outstanding research projects, financing the purchase of instructional or library items, dedicating buildings or facilities, even of subsidising exchanges – of professors and students – between universities.
As party of this change of mindset, universities and colleges will need to be more proactive. They will need to undertake aggressive drives to create more understanding among businesses of how higher education can be a source of innovation and creativity and a key to sustainable socio-economic development. University-based business schools, in particular, should be more active in promoting corporate social responsibility in their academic programmes as well as incorporating “universal values” in their teaching and research.
As the UAE develops further into a knowledge economy, higher education will be the engine driving economic change. The country’s corporate sector has an indispensable role to play in providing funds and incentives.
Muhammad Ayish