Articles

Knightshift -Tomorrow Magazine January 2002

Pass me the sickbag, I've just read yet another report on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Why are these statements on doing good so boring, so predictable, so nauseating?

Too much CSR is dominated by dreary old programmes that have been recycled so many times they look like granny's sofa. Why oh why? The reality is that most hard-nosed business people really could not give a flying fig about what they see as pinko fluffy stuff that does nothing to boost the bottom line.

No matter how much you argue about stakeholder relationships, most people in business just can't see the connection between their corporate success and the behaviour of their company in its community and the broader society. In other words, they think the business case for doing good stinks.

To most business people, CSR is something you do to scratch the back of the politicians. You also make the right noises when the few but vocal institutional investors send long questionnaires about your policies and actions on child labour, paternity leave and what you do with the used plastic cups from the vending machine.

Cynical, maybe, but true. So how could CSR become sexy? With great difficulty, but it's a noble cause and we should be positive and helpful. The answer lies in the holy trinity of People, Strategy and Attitude.

People
CSR professionals are on the whole good, kind folk who will go straight to heaven and should never be criticised. But many are less powerful than the executive tea person. This is unfortunate and should be corrected.
A recent US survey showed that all the elements of CSR, combined with reputation and brand management, were considered by customers to be the most important factors in the perception and therefore success of a company. If this is indeed so - and it sounds logical - then the people in charge of it should be really hot stuff. CSR should be on the career path of the fast-trackers, just like sales and marketing. And their performance should be strongly linked to reward.

Strategy
If CSR is indeed good for business, then for heaven's sake make the link so that everyone in the company understands. This has started to happen and is reflected in the term social investment (as opposed to "giving"). Instead of the chairperson's wife (sorry, but there are very few who have husbands) doling out corporate largesse to her favourite ballet school, "investment" implies that the company has a clear strategy on how and why it gives its dosh away.

If you run call centres, then why not help to improve the working conditions of those who toil within? If you make cars, help with the mobility of the disabled. If you're in finance, help with educating young people how to understand your complicated financial products. And so on. In this way you can really use your cash and more important, your people's know-how, for the common good. And do yourself some good along the way.

Attitude
What's needed is a fresh attitude that says you must search out difficult but creative people who are outside the old-style charity mindset and unafraid to question convention.
You have to find people who think differently, who see opportunities rather than problems. It's a bit like the way the establishment views skateboarders Building managers do their best to chase the little baggy-pants brats from leaping and lunging on their precious street furniture and curbstones. They put up signs, they hire burly guards. But why don't they take a fresh attitude and turn the obvious demand into a benefit: encourage skateboarding, make a park, make some friends among future customers. It's all about attitude.

If business is really going to connect with its softer side - the community and the environment - we desperately need to prick the bubble of convention. We need people with attitude - those that many in the CSR business would see as wholly wrong.

Peter Knight is a director of Environmental Context, a business consultancy specialising in sustainable development communications.