The postgraduate university-accredited Security Management Stage 3 Course, currently taking place in the centre of cosmopolitan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is a two-week advanced security management programme looking at how security management integrates with business management at strategic level, and examines ways in which the security manager can increase his/her overall contribution to the organisation.
One of the sessions on day 2 of the course addressed the issue of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and the proactive effect that this can have on security risk mitigation, especially in the extractive sector. CSR is about creating sustainability and improvement to the local environment (social, economic, healthcare and sanitation, education, etc), especially in areas where the corporate footprint is significant and where government-funded infrastructure may be very basic. In such environments, companies that don’t take account of their local footprint, and which don’t become a driver for local improvement, often suffer increased security incidents.
In community engagement in particular, it is often the security manager who is the best-known community local company point of contact, so an understanding of CSR is essential. In fact, a CEO of a major oil and gas national company, addressing an ARC course last year, declared that CSR and security management were “two sides of the same coin”.
One delegate’s company has a simple rule when it comes to CSR: “energy received, energy returned; aspiring people everywhere.” Not surprisingly, the company is a rapidly globally expanding standard bearer in the energy sector.
The course includes security managers from Africa and Asia, from a wide range of sectors including security systems integration, manufacturing, solar power and a multinational cement company. Three of the security managers are CPP certified, and are using the course to earn their full term of recertification credits! Others are using the course as a part of their MSc studies.
The next Security Management Stage 3 Course takes place in the UK, 11-22 May 2009. Click here for details.
