Integrated corporate reporting has its roots in African heritage
The highly acclaimed Constitution of the Republic and its Bill of Rights are based on the African traditional value of Ubuntu (caring; humane). SA is also taken in high esteem when it comes to corporate integrated and sustainability reporting. Whilst we were commemorating our heritage month recently, we learnt that the World Economic Forum Global Competitive Report revealed that SA leads the way when it comes to auditing and reporting standards.
Traditionally, companies were only expected to provide the financial report (its economic viability) and this became known as the single bottom line. However, recently, several governments and international organisations have made it mandatory for enterprises to provide comprehensive reports which cover three aspects of pertaining to the sustainability - economic, social, and environment. Integrated reporting has become a serious matter because it is not only the shareholders who care about the sustainability of their enterprises.
Other stakeholders who are concerned about this include employees, governments, regulatory bodies, tax collection agencies, and stock exchanges. These stakeholders deem the sustainability of companies very seriously and that is why each company is expected to annually provides reports reflecting on its performance.
Long before there was King Reports for corporate governance in SA, international standards, and laws, African traditional values of Ubuntu and Letsema emphasised the caring of nature and fellow human beings. In Ubuntu, you would care about the fellow human beings by ensuring that your neighbour who has just been retrenched has some food for herself and her family.
You would do this by buying them some groceries or giving them grocery vouchers. They may as well join your family for dinners. However, in Letsema community members will jointly plough each family field together and jointly conduct harvest. These enabled them to consolidate manpower and resources.
The collaboration in Letsema is not just about teamwork amongst community members (people), but it also entails partnership with environment at large. That is why Basotho people have an old say which says: "Re seng: We are all related, all humans and non-humans". The significant aspect of this view is the web of relationships that constitute the whole.
The African people's history of the land and indiginous farming practices are entrenched on the Letsema values and put emphasis on the relationship, interdependence, reciprocity, and collaboration of nature and people. Working on jointly to plough each other's fields or doing a joint community work collaboratively brought a strong sense of rootedness and sense of belonging amongst the Africans.
Other than individuals working together jointly, Africans have always view the land as one of their colloborators (a patriot). The claim of the relationship, interdendency, collaboration, and caring of land by the indiginous African people is supported by indiginous scholars.
Unlike most entrepreneurs of today who mainly respect the environment due to regulatory enforcement of integrated reporting, indiginous African entrepreneurs cared about nature many centuries ago due their appreciation of the Letsema values (collaboration with environment). If current entrepreneurs and other businesspeople could embrace the the Letsema values, the war on rhinos and the environmental degradation will probably be somewhat mitigated.
Nowadays any entrepreneur who does not integrate Corporate Social Responsibility is likely doomed to fail. Other than the legislation and regulatory requirements, consumers are becoming more aware of these issues and some of them are activists.
Consumers use social media, letters to the editors, and radio shows to expose companies that are perceived not honour their social responsibilities, and as a result such a company may lose customers. Because companies are corporate citizens, they are expected to be responsible national and global citizens.
Some analysts argued that there is correlation between social responsibility and the business success (sustainability). In entrepreneurship, social responsibility is not just a matter of public relations, but rather a matter of enterprise life and death. Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability are anchored in Ubuntu and Letsema philosophies. Ubuntu is about caring and Letsema is about working together. You need both caring and collaborative work to sustain an enterprise.
The social and environmental aspects of the sustainability reporting place responsibility on the corporate entrepreneurs to demonstrate that they care about the wellbeing of people and the environment. Companies should report on how their activities have positively or negatively impacted on the environment and society.
It is my view that companies that embrace Ubuntu and Letsema values will find it easy to take care of the environment and to embark on social corporate investments initiatives. Actually, the essence of the sustainability and integrated reporting is that chasing the profit (bottom-line) is not the only determinant for the success of the business. In other words, it is not just in the interest of the society when the company cares (Ubuntu) about the economic life of the community in which it conducts business, but it is also in the best interest of the enterprise.
Matome Modipa is the Founder and CEO of Sebata Group
This article first appeared in the New Age.
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