Analysis
Standard Bank Group Limited is the South African bank which offers saving, transactional banking, lending, borrowing, investment, risk management, insurance, and advisory and wealth management services. The bank operates three business units of Corporate and investment banking, personal and business banking and liberty holdings limited.
A recent story on the bank reported that the bank had joined the UN movement of HeForShe for championing change in African society. This movement was meant to select leaders from the private and public sector to drive change in the gender quality paradigm. The CEO of Standard Bank has become one of the Thematic Champions of the HeForShe Movement. As per the CEO of the bank, he considers it as moral duty, and business imperative to provide equal rights to half the talent of the worked and more than half the purchasing power of the world as well. The Bank is now committed to increasing the women representation in the Executives in the African region from 10% to 20% by the year 2021. The Bank is also committed to improving the women representation for the executive position from its current 35% to 40% by the year 2021.
South Africa has a good footprint in terms of gender equality and is ranked in the top 20 countries closing the gender gaps continuously. However, for the other Sub-Saharan region of Africa, the case is quite the opposite, Standard Bank enjoys a unique position in this scenario as it has a footprint in more than 20 countries in Africa. As one of the main employers of African countries, the company is committed to diversifying the workforce and providing inclusivity to the women in the working environment (Standard Bank, 2019).
This is not the only community work that the bank is currently doing in Africa. Standard Bank has initiated a Feenix Crowdfunding trust for the retaining and management of the funds from donors to the students. The fees of the students for any programs are paid to the universities directly. The bank has established a platform in which the students register with their information and fees statement (Masweneng, 2017). The bank verifies it and adds the verified list on the platform on which the donors donate the expenses for any of the students. As per these programs, the bank has raised more than R 22 million by which 650 students had been funded for their educational programs (Standard Bank, 2018).
The CSR Framework of the Bank shows that it has been working aggressively to contribute to its community. The six impact areas identified by the bank for convergence of the core business functions of the bank and the needs of the African businesses, people and economies are found to be.
- The continent and accessible digital channels for deepening the financial inclusion across Africa
- Job creation and enterprise development for a start-up business
- Working with development finance institutions and government for providing the financial solutions for infrastructure of Africa
- Facilitating the investment and trade flow between the global and African markets
- Providing the people of Africa with quality education sources, skills training, and learning opportunities
- Providing the employee of the bank with continuous learning and development opportunities
Integrate report for 2017 for Standard Bank shows the Assets of R 2028 billion, earnings of R26270 million, and Return on Equity of 17.1%. The bank showed the cost to income ratio of 55.7%. The bank has strong relations with its key stakeholders which includes its clients, its employees, its employee representative, its regulators, suppliers, and government. The bank also has a strong association with the community and civil society. Most importantly, the bank has good relations with its investment analysts and its shareholders. The company drives value by providing exceptional client experience and making the bank as the best place to work for its employees, it does the business in the right way to ensure mitigation of risks and delivers the financial outcome desired by the shareholders (Standard Bank, 2017).
Theory of Legitimacy is the right theory for the interpretation of the CSR functions of Standard Bank of Africa (Fernando, 2014). The legitimacy theory shows that the behavior of a company in the development and implementation of the voluntary social and environmental disclosure information is for the sake of the fulfillment of the social contract. The social perceptions of the activities of an organization are reported as aligned with society expectations. The organization constantly attempts to ensure that they are perceived by society as aligned with the norms of society. The theory implies that there is a social contract between societies and their businesses (Hawn, 2013). As per this theory, Standard Bank is rightly working for the aim of providing the women of Africa with equal employment opportunity. This is not done only by offering opportunities. The bank is working on building its capabilities by funding their educational programs and training for skill development. Thus, the bank is working by norms of the society and gathering goodwill in exchange for complying with it.
Thus, the Standard Bank of South Africa should continue its work in this regard of empowering the women by giving them access to financial funding of their education and providing them with employment opportunities. This would help them as per the legitimacy theory to remain within the legitimate norms of society and fulfill their social contract.
References
Fernando, S., 2014. A Theoretical Framework For Csr Practices: Integrating Legitimacy Theory, Stakeholder Theory and Institutional Theory. The Journal of Theoretical Accounting, 10(1), pp.149-78.
Hawn, O., 2013. How Social Legitimacy Helps Overcome Low Home Country Legitimacy: Corporate Social Responsibility and Emerging Market Multinationals. In Academy of Management Annual Meeting., 2013.
Masweneng, K., 2017. Standard Bank launches trust to help with student fees. [Online] Available at: https://www.timeslive.co.za/amp/news/south-africa/2017-06-20-standard-bank-launches-trust-to-help-with-student-fees/ [Accessed 9 May 2019].
Standard Bank, 2017. Annual Integrated Report 2017. [Online] Available at: http://annualreport2017.standardbank.com/ [Accessed 9 May 2019].
Standard Bank, 2018. CSR Reporting to Society 2018. [Online] Available at: http://sustainability.standardbank.com/ [Accessed 9 May 2019].
Standard Bank, 2019. Standard Bank stands in solidarity with women as African champion of UN Women’s global HeforShe initiative to drive gender equality. [Online] Available at: https://www.standardbank.com/pages/StandardBankGroup/web/newsArticle/2018/NewsArticle-26September2018.html [Accessed 9 May 2019].
