Altered images: the 2003 state of corporate responsibility. Understanding and encouraging corporate responsibility in South Asia update three: Bangladesh

TERI-Europe and the New Academy of Business have been working with various partners on an initiative to understand and encourage corporate responsibility across South Asia. The initiative seeks to raise awareness and stimulate a proactive corporate responsibility agenda in three South Asian countries - Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka. The partners are the Centre for Policy Dialogue (Bangladesh), TERI (India), and LGA Consultants (Sri Lanka). The project is funded by the Asia Division of the Department for International Development, UK. Our vision is to contribute to a positive change towards business practices and attitudes that support sustainable development and poverty eradication in the region. The focus is on expanding the knowledge base of corporate practices in South Asia relating to working conditions within factories; living conditions in surrounding communities; environmental protection; and corporate accountability and transparency. In this way, we aim to provide useful information and tools (such as training materials) for South Asian companies and civil society groups, especially the more vulnerable income groups, in the three countries. We hope that this will assist in eventually elaborating a home-grown agenda of corporate responsibility sensitive to the social, cultural, and economic situation in Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka. This report presents the results of the initiative’s third activity - an agenda-setting survey on corporate responsibility in Bangladesh. The survey explored the views and expectations of workers, company executives, and civil society groups towards the social, economic, and environmental responsibilities of companies operating in Bangladesh. It was the first to include workers in a survey on corporate responsibility. The survey was carried out in 2003 through a partnership between TERI-Europe, LGA Consultants, and the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka. The results presented in this report are intended to provide a better understanding of attitudes and practices and develop targeted training materials for company executives, workers, and community representatives.