Corporate social responsibilities of Indian public sector enterprises-a case study of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL)

The high level of public accountability attached to Public Sector Enterprises as a result of public ownership makes them socially responsible. The Committee of Public Undertakings in 1992 examined the issue relating to social obligations of Central Public Sector Enterprises and observed that ``being part of the `State', every Public Sector enterprise has a moral responsibility to play an active role in discharging the social obligations endowed on a welfare state, subject to the financial health of the enterprise''. It issued the Corporate Social Responsibility Guidelines in 2010 where all Central Public Enterprises, through a Board Resolution, are mandated to create a CSR budget as a specified percentage of net profit of the previous year. This paper examines the CSR activities of the biggest engineering public sector organization in India, Bharath Heavy Electricals Limited. The objectives are twofold, one, to develop a case study of the organization about the funds allocated and utilized for various CSR activities, and two, to examine its status with regard to other organizations, the 2010 guidelines, and the local socio-economic development. Secondary data analysis results show three interesting trends. One, it reveals increasing organizational social orientation with the formal guidelines in place. Two, Firms can no longer continue to exploit environmental resources and escape from their responsibilities by acting separate entities regardless of the interest of the society and Three the thrust of CSR in public sector is on inclusive growth, sustainable development and capacity building with due attention to the socio-economic needs of the neglected and marginalized sections of the society.

Evaluating competing theories of street entrepreneurship

Conventionally, street entrepreneurs were either seen as a residue from a pre-modern era that is gradually disappearing (modernisation theory), or an endeavour into which marginalised populations are driven out of necessity in the absence of alternative ways of securing a livelihood (structuralist theory). In recent years, however, participa-tioninstreetentrepreneurshiphas beenre-read eitherasa rationaleconomicchoice(neo-liberal theory) or as conducted for cultural reasons (post-modern theory). The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically these competing explanations for participation in street entrepreneurship. To do this, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 871 street entrepreneurs in the Indian city of Bangalore during 2010 concerning their reasons for participation in street entrepreneurship. The finding is that no one explanation suffices. Some 12 % explain their participation in street entrepreneurship as necessity-driven, 15 % as traditional ancestral activity, 56 % as a rational economic choice and 17 % as pursued for social or lifestyle reasons. The outcome is a call to combine these previously rival explanations in order to develop a richer and more nuanced theorisation of the multifarious motives for street entrepreneurship in emerging market economies.