Corporate Social Responsibility | Academic proposes new strategies to be studied

An academic from Hong Kong has called on Macau’s gaming operators to develop more strategies for their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) measures.

Tiffany Leung, a lecturer at Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Professional Education and Executive Development, noted that the gaming operators’ current CSR measures may have been improved to the point where they are now in line with the United Nation’s international benchmark.

Leung was speaking at a breakfast talk held by the French Macau Chamber of Commerce yesterday.

“There are some areas [in which] they can improve,” Leung told the Times. “When we look at the measures and the benchmark, we can benchmark [against] other industries [to see] whether they have done it in a good way or if it’s underperforming.”

Leung formerly conducted a study on the city’s CSR measures based on 49 semi-structured interviews with internal and external stakeholders of Macau’s gaming industry.

The study showed that these organizations use “strategies to ensure passive support and acquiescence from certain stakeholder groups” and that they “deploy bargaining and legitimacy-capturing strategies to generate active support for the industry.”

Leung also said that the study found firms were emphasizing strategies based on both economic and non- economic contributions in a bid to project a positive image of the industry.

Comparing the gaming operator’s reports from 2009 to 2016, Leung commented: “In terms of the Western gaming operators, they have tried to improve because they have used the Global Reporting Initiative’s guidelines.”  LV