MOSCOW, February 26, 2008 Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) presents information on what Russian entrepreneurs and Russians on the whole understand as social responsibility of business.

2% of entrepreneurs could definitely state that the level of social responsibility that business has is high, whereas 31% consider it to be very low or close to that. Others predominantly provide average estimations or those close to the average score (based on the scale from 1 to 7), however, there is a clearly seen trend for negative assertions. Estimations that the citizens on the whole provide of the social responsibility of business differ from its own estimations by even greater critical degree. Thus, the sceptics considering this level very low (at the level of 1 point), are much more common among the population: 2.5 times more than among businessmen (23% and 9% respectively). The average score that entrepreneurs provided accounted for 3.01, whereas the score that Russians on the whole gave totals 2.46.

Entrepreneurs indicate that the essence of the social responsibility that business has consists in that business should exercise its main functions (paying adequate salaries, paying taxes, creating workplaces) and not in taking over the burden of solving the social problems that exist in the country and its regions (as 60% versus 39% identify). Social responsibility should be based on a voluntary basis, no compulsion or “bringing to account”, including that coming from the state, should be accepted (60% versus 36%). Moreover, the understanding of the social responsibility as a way of indemnity to the society for the unequal distribution of incomes has now established itself in the business community: 50 % of businessmen share the viewpoint that even if high incomes are results of efforts that people make, they should share with the society anyway (31% of them disagree with it). At the same time, the attitude that businessmen have towards advertising their social activity is a bit ambiguous: there turned out to be a similar share of those who assume that business should widely inform the public of the social programs, thus, improving its reputation, there is an equal share of those who totally disagree with this assertion (47% and 45% respectively).

The relative majority (47%) speak in favour of the selective approach when only large companies should take the responsibility for solving certain social problems, whereas small business does not only need to demonstrate social activity, but requires help itself. However, those who consider social responsibility to be a task equally topical for all representatives of the business community are also quite numerous (38%). Representatives of small business support the selective approach more often than others (54% versus 31%), opinions of representatives of middle-size and large business fall into two nearly equal parts (44% versus 40% and 43% versus 41%).

The population in general and entrepreneurs differently understand the concept of social responsibility. Thus, the majority of entrepreneurs taking part in the survey consider creating new workplaces (58%) and granting additional social guarantees to employees of their enterprises (51%) as well as organizing career development and re-skilling centres for them (44%) to be the most important ways of business participation in solving social problems. Ways of business participation in social activity that traditionally have high PR-feedback, such as money and welfare assistance to representatives of the most vulnerable social groups, developing the material resources for objects of social and cultural infrastructure, paying out bonuses, scholarships to talented scientists and culture workers (30-41%) all belong to the second group. On periphery of interests of business there are the branches of social work connected with supporting the development of civil society institutions (improvement of the state of affairs situation in the field of human rights, supporting social initiative coming from the citizens and public organizations), and also the activity, being the credo of many socially responsible foreign companies, i.e. eliminating the discrimination in the labour sphere, abolition of compulsory and child labour (5-7%).

The population itself primarily expects material aid for the indigent, physically deficient people as well as for other socially vulnerable groups (53%), creating new workplaces occupies the second place here (43%); the people first of all want the development of the material resources for the health services, education and science, culture and sports (39%) and then social guarantees to employees working at the enterprises (28%).

The survey of 1200 Russian businessmen (owners and top-managers of private companies) was carried out in September - October 2007 in 40 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The selection represents the enterprise community according to branch affiliation (based on three macro branches, i.e. the industry and construction; transport and communication; service and trade) and is proportional to their share in the national economy and the size of the enterprises (according to the number people employed).

The initiative all-Russia opinion poll was conducted by VCIOM on November 3-4, 2007. 1600 respondents were interviewed in 153 population areas of 46 regions of Russia. The statistical error does not exceed 3.4%.