The rise of CSR

What is CSR
We had a very interesting guest speaker, Adam Garfunkel, who came to tell us about CSR, as it’s his job to convince some companies to raise their Corporate Social Responsibility.
To him the core elements of CSR are:
• voluntary action of business
– beyond compliance, commitment to ethical behaviour, managing processes
• to achieve positive social outcomes
– quality of life improvements for employees, community and society in the long-term
• whilst benefiting its business objectives
– creating wealth

What I’ve retained most from this presentation is that an effective CSR must be core to the brand, not added. Therefore, a strong link is needed between the PR team and the sustainability team, in order to make it consistent; and, as I’ve found out for my stakeholders’ post, consistency is essential as it enables the company to build trust with its stakeholders. Adam gave Mark & Spencer’s plan A as a very good example of this consistency, by having their different environmental initiatives under the umbrella of this five year eco-plan.

Adam also highlighted to us how so many companies, even the big ones that constantly claim that they are innovative, are in fact scared of the changes that having a CSR imply for them: actually, he said that the hardest part of his job was to convince them that it’ll be all right! Indeed, not only companies generally lack ambition, vision, courage, but also communication skills in this area! To support this, he showed us how The Bodyshop, even willing to have a valuable CSR, didn’t manage to communicate it to the public successfully, as their communication tools were inefficient: the too many labels on their actions were confusing and therefore their message was not consistent. So this made me think that there could be increasing PR job opportunities there, as CSR’s importance is rising…

Business dilemmas
According to Rob van Tulder and Alex van der Zwart in International Business – Society Management: Linking Corporate Responsibility and Globalization, there are 4 approaches to CSR: the ‘inactive’ approach relates to Friedman’s theory: the only responsibility for companies is to generate profits; so it’s an inward-looking business perspective, where good business equals to operational excellence: a Corporate ‘Self’ Responsibility! The ‘reactive’ approach is focusing on efficiency as well, but also manages primary stakeholders, so as to keep mounting issues in check. This approach aims to respond to actions of external actors that could damage their reputation, and therefore relates to the concept of ‘conditional morality’. These 2 first approaches are both strongly means and wealth oriented, and so regularly create conflicts of interest with societal organisations; for example, tobacco producers gaining loyal customers by increasing the addictive effect of tobacco…
Opposing these, the ‘active’ approach of CSR is, according to Rob van Tulder and Alex van der Zwart, the most ethical entrepreneurial orientation: the company’s objectives are based on ethical values. Therefore, it’s an outward oriented business, through a ‘missionary urge’ that makes the company a hero to NGOs, but an annoyance to the ‘true’ entrepreneurs. Indeed, this approach implies the risk of neglecting business efficiency; moreover, in a society that is structured around the principles of business production methods, it can also be regarded as socially irresponsible.
Therefore, it seems that a balance needs to be found: like Shumarer said (1973), as societal issues involve a range of interests, a variety of ‘right’ answers are possible. For Rob van Tulder and Alex van der Zwart, the solution could be the 4th approach to CSR: the ‘proactive’ one, as well as interactive business practices. This relates to the ‘discourse ethics’ (Habermas, 1990): actors regularly meet in order to negotiate/talk over a number of norms to which everyone could agree; this approach implies ‘situational’ and ‘relativistic’ ethics.

Why this rise nowadays?
After having read this, I was wondering why companies are nowadays pushed towards the 2 last approaches, whereas the 2 first ones now seem to belong to another age? According to Adam Garfunkel, there are a few reasons explaining why CSR is here now: among them are the globalisation and the information age; these may have created 2 other reasons given by Adam: international agreements and government regulation, as well as a consumer demand. Also, more and more people are environment conscious, as environmental issues are more and more present in the media. Another reason he gave to us is the development of risk and reputation management, which actually relates to my posts about crisis management and stakeholders…

Also, Adam explained that the rise of CSR is also due to the fact that having power, for some companies, also means having responsibilities. I personally also think that it helps them to look good, and to differentiate themselves from their competitors, as nowadays the competition is more and more tight, and the public scrutiny sharper, especially through bloggers. Adam didn’t deny it when this question was raised after his presentation: he said that it can happen, but that it’s usually not the 1st motivation for companies.



Sources:
-Adam Garfunkel’s 12th March 2008 presentation, University of Westminster
-Tulder, van R. and Zwart, van der A. International Business – Society Management: Linking Corporate Responsibility and Globalization, Routledge, 2006