Asean's uneven consensus on corporate social causes

AMONG the many things that forecasters got wrong about 2020 was the big upswing in support of social causes from brands, particularly in the West. Multinational corporations endorsed social movements, audited their corporate culture for compliance and created new roles for diversity, equality and inclusion officers.

Their counterparts in Asia, however, continued with business-as-usual - as far as that was possible during the pandemic. And many of the most enthusiastic social warriors among the Western brands have been somewhat less vocal about these causes the further away they moved from the head office.

Pragmatism accounts for some of the dilution of corporate social activism in Asia. The Asean region, for instance, has different priorities and very different concerns even among neighbouring countries. Member-states have struggled with numerous domestic and geopolitical upsets this year beyond the global upheaval of the pandemic, perhaps making them less receptive to the causes championed by Western multinationals. This was one of the clear findings of a September 2020 survey by GlobalData PLC, a UK research firm, of 4,317 respondents across the six largest Asean countries by GDP.