Social Being Determines Consciousness

Автор: Равик *ДЛЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРНОГО КОНКУРСА НА РАБОТЕ; ИЗВИНИТЕ, КТО НЕ ПОНИМАЕТ ПО-АНГЛИЙСКИ*

"Social being determines consciousness", Karl Marx wrote in his "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" back in 1859, meaning that it is people around us (e.g. our friends, family, colleagues) and places we spend most of our time at (home, work), that have the largest influence on our judgments and, more generally, our way of thinking. Not being a fan of Marx (to put it mildly), I find it hard to disagree with his statement.

It was not until I joined TCS when I started caring about sustainability. I was very fortunate to have a chance to work with not only friendly, open-minded and helpful, but also socially and ecologically responsible people. It were my colleagues from the Bloomberg project in Budapest who made me aware of importance of such things as recycling, waste sorting, electricity saving etc. In the office, as well as in the kitchen and common areas, one can find selective garbage bins for paper, plastic and other. Furthermore, all TCS employees receive internal CSR-related emails from their fellow sustainability aware co-workers.

Largely, CSR is openely declared as one of TCS' top values. "The Company’s focus areas are Education and Skill Development, Health and Wellness and Environmental Sustainability", Mr R. Gopinathan, CEO and Managin Director, and Mr N. Chandrasekaran, Corporate Social Responsibility Committee Chairman, emphasized in a brief outline of the Company's CSR policy in the annual report. In addition to sustainability awareness raising activities, TCS have actively sponsored a disaster relief, education support, hospital assistance in India etc, totalling to ₹434 crore spend on CSR during the financial year (refer to the Tata Consultany Servies annual report 2018-2019).

Feels great to be part of an organization participating in and promoting CSR, for only profitable and successful businesses, that TCS is, can afford to spend their resources on philantropic responsibility, which is on top of Archie Carroll's "Four Responibilities" pyramid, an analogue of Maslow's pyramid of needs for businesses, followed by ethical, legal and economic responsibilities. Ultimately, if it was not for my colleagues, whether from Hungary, India or any other country, I might have still been unaware, ignorant and irresponsible in terms of sustainability in my life. Luckily, social being determines consciousness!

Source:
R. Gopinathan & N. Chandrasekaran. Tata Consultancy Services Annual Report 2018-19, page 46, Mumbai, April 19, 2019, URL: https://www.tcs.com/content/dam/tcs/investor-relations/financial-statements/2018-19/ar/annual-report-2018-2019.pdf