A large firm with a human touch - Mossack Fonseca Group

What is the ultimate goal of every company? Is it only about making money? The answer could be a “yes” or “no”. It actually depends on the company; and Mossack Fonseca Group’s answer to this is a big NO, because they’re also concerned about society’s welfare.

As a global company with a human touch, Mossack Fonseca & Co. established a Corporate Social Responsibility Program to provide necessary assistance to people in need every year.

Corporate social responsibility is a company’s concern for society’s welfare wherein marketing managers are interested in long-term corporate interest as well as society’s well-being. There are two main ideas included in social responsibility for most people; they are sustainability and stakeholder theory.

Sustainability includes a thought that if a company helps society through their business, then they will gain success. They could create products or services that can fulfill a need and help solve society’s problems; so people, in turn, can profit and provide help to the world.

Another approach in which companies can incorporate social responsibility is through stakeholder theory. Its central focus is that social responsibility is really giving attention to every stakeholder in the entire company, including the employees, customers, owners, suppliers, management or the community. It’s more about taking care of all different stakeholders and expecting that this will bring about social responsibility. The following is how each stakeholder would view social responsibility within their company:

- An employee wants to have a good and secure job as well as superb wages

- The management wants happy workers and good profits

- A customer wants excellent customer services and high-quality products

- The community wants a company to pay their taxes, offer their citizens good wages and help support the environment

- A supplier wants his/her business to remain profitable

- A business-owner wants to have a financial return with excellent profit

However, critics have a different view on social responsibility. They strongly believe that the sole purpose of a company behind social responsibility is just to make profit for their stakeholders. They state that taking care of the society and its concern is the job of nonprofit organizations, not for-profit organizations.

Any company can run out of business because of the additional expenses caused by social responsibility. It could also lessen a company’s competitiveness worldwide. Expansion would also be impossible if there are lesser profits, and this struggle could happen to a company which is giving money away. Losing to a company that does not donate profits is also a strong possibility.

There are also entities who support social responsibility. For them, companies should help the society improve for all their stakeholders. They believe that it is the companies’ responsibility to fix some of the society’s problems such as pollution, poor wages, and damaged cities since these issues were caused by them, in the first place. Furthermore, they add that companies have higher chances of success with social responsibility.  There are a lot of companies that have proved this theory since they are able to provide quality products and services and make a good profit that helped better society.

Are you curious about the names of the companies who found success in social responsibility? They’re really huge companies and there’s a bigger chance that you’re familiar with them. Ice-cream maker? Probably the first thing in your mind is Ben & Jerry’s. Well, don’t be surprised as they are on top of the list. They pride themselves in supporting charities and have been donating a full 7.5% of pretax profits to various charitable institutions. The next company is The Body Shop which works with Greenpeace and has helped gather 4 million signatures against animal testing. Coffee? Starbucks is popular in this category, and it’s the last example. It supports Ethos Water, which provided clean water to more than 420,000 people that don’t normally have access to it.

Mossack Fonseca & Co. is highly motivated to contribute to the positive development of human beings. Since the firm is committed to helping communities, their legal experts are providing legal assistance to many organizations, including Rotary Club of Boquete (Panama), The British Aid Society, Aeroclub de Panama, Fundacion Del Club Canino, Fundacion Confederacion Canofila de Panama, and The World Bank. To remind themselves about their responsibility towards society, they’re giving their 100% in fostering change to where it is needed the most.

In particular, The Mossack Fonseca Group works with Piero Rafael Martínez De La Hoz Foundation, Tomatis Therapy and Stimulation Foundation, Art in the Park Foundation, Saint Joseph Parish Foundation of Valle De Antón, Fundacion Soy Capaz, and Panamanian Institute for Family Education – IPEF.

You don’t need to belong to a prestigious company to help society, as a concerned individual; you can actually do a lot of things. Being a volunteer to different community activities is one of your options. More damages to our environment could happen if we don’t work together to make the world a better place. There’s this belief that your success as an individual and the success of a company depends on Mother Nature, because without it, where can we find the basic ingredients to our products and services? Yes, money is a part of life; so is the natural world. The Mossack Fonseca Group is aware of their responsibility towards society, and they are continuing to do their best to improve the lives of numerous people in need. The health of society will reflect upon the health of a company’s future.