Corporate social responsibility must be an integral part of the business strategy to be successful and sustainable, CEO of Walmart Asia Scott Price commented during the annual Asia Pacific Economic cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit held in Yokohama, Japan last week. His comments came hard on the heels of Walmart unveiling its global sustainable agriculture goals where it will help buy more from small and mid-sized farmers around the world; reduce food waste and sustainably source key agricultural products.
"Walmart’s CSR activities have become so entwined in our business strategy that you rarely hear the term ‘CSR’ at Walmart," he said. "Being socially responsible is simply a part of our business consideration."
To highlight his point Price cited an example of how Walmart will help small farmers around the world by selling USD1 billion in food sourced from 1 million small and medium farmers by end of 2015.
To be effective, Price said he believes social responsibility efforts must be focused, impact the most people, be long-term, address causes (not symptoms) and relate to the business.
"There’s an abundance of legitimate opportunity to give back, to do right, and you want to be able to help anyone and everyone who calls. But over the last several years, we’ve built a model for making a big difference on big issues," he said.
Walmart has narrowed its focus to a few global platforms: education, sustainability, economic development and empowerment, and health and nutrition, Price said.
"Around the world, we want our operations to align around our global business/CSR platforms, and they are," he added.
The challenge is to develop a global platform that is flexible enough to be relevant locally. Price cited Walmart’s recently announced sustainable agriculture program as an example of innovation, global focus and flexibility. It’s long-term and it ties directly into the business, he said.
It also tackles a huge social issue. "More than 1 billion people around the world rely on farming and hundreds of millions of them live on less than USD2 a day. Globally, with a booming population, food production must increase roughly 70 percent to feed 9 billion people by 2050,” Price explained.
Walmart will focus on two of the major contributors: palm oil and beef production.