A Strategy Game: CHUSCO

CHUSCO was developed out of Accenture’s work with the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum on the relevance of CSR for multinationals working in emerging and transitional economies. This work, which involved multinationals like ABB, BP, Coca-Cola and GlaxoSmithKline, in Poland and later in China, showed the need for companies to consider relevant stakeholder relationships in all aspects of their operations, and showed that the companies could benefit local communities more by working with them to address issues of concern to both company and community than by taking only a corporate philanthropy approach to CSR. The game, used by London Business School, Templeton College, Oxford and Kenan Flagler (UNC) as a teaching aid for postgraduate management courses and for executive education, is an excellent training aid for managers at subsidiaries of multinationals in emerging markets.

The key point of the game is to make clear that “business in society” issues should not be seen as separate from core business issues. Instead, the two are intimately entwined, and CHUSCO is positioned as a business game concerned with operational strategy and general management. The CHUSCO role-play puts participants in the position of these managers and helps them understand how important it is to corporations to develop the right relationships with all stakeholders.  

The unique power of CHUSCO is that the importance of the business’s relationship with the rest of society emerges from considering everyday business issues, allowing people to draw their own conclusions in a context with which they are familiar.  

CHUSCO demonstrates a more sophisticated and substantial approach to corporate social responsibility in which a business can legitimately pursue its own enlightened self-interest while benefiting society at large; it is simply good for business to take a responsible approach that takes due account of all relevant stakeholders.  

CHUSCO serves as a microcosm for the real concerns facing business leaders.  

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