Process 3.1 -

3.1 Develop objectives and plan

Where you are ::

Description ::

It is important to understand the context of the exercise. Our aim is to adopt sustainable business practices and achieve our social and environmental aspirations while meeting business objectives and goals. Aligning social and environmental aims with business objectives and goals is crucial else our social responsibility program will meet with early demise.

There are three fundamental issues in this regard:

First issue concerns social and environmental aspirations of the firm. These may have roots in the personal desires and wishes of the owner/top management of the organization i.e. safeguard local biodiversity, combat poverty etc. Alternately, it may be a result of performing organizational contextual assessment, ISO 26000 self assessment or value chain analysis of the firm. All these exercises will yield relevant social and environmental areas of concerns for the firm. These focus areas may not be directly linked with business objectives and goals. Nonetheless these goals may have significant social and environmental impact and they represent owner/top management aspirations. Therefore, a firm must pursue these goals.

Second issue concerns new business strategies that the firm will implement. These strategies need to adopt sustainable solutions.

Final issue concerns existing strategies that the firm has already implemented. Many of these strategies may not be environmentally and socially sustainable. These strategic solutions have to be made sustainable. Much of these solutions are reflected in the existing value chain of the firm and hence by performing exercises such as value chain analysis, firms can identify and rectify areas where organizational activities are having adverse impact on the environment and society due to strategic decisions made in the past.

Each of the above scenarios requires a different approach discussed in the methodology section.

Value ::

Process group 3.1 is the essence of the process model. It is the most important module of the process model. It is in this module that we define the vision and mission of the social responsibility program, frame social objectives, craft strategic solutions that enable the business to achieve its business as well as social objectives and create a base line to measure performance.

Objectives ::

To craft strategic vision statement and define values and principles for the social responsibility program of the organization.
To define social strategic objectives using inputs from phase 1 of the HLS namely – value chain analysis, ISO self assessment, Organizational contextual assessment.
To craft strategic social objectives in alignment with business objectives for the firm.
To craft business strategic solutions (????) taking into consideration strategic social objectives so that both objectives or concerns can be addressed.

Process::

3.1.1 Define vision, mission, values & principles.	3.1.2 Frame strategic social objectives
3.1.3 Craft strategic solutions	3.1.4 Form project base line