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Is CR only PR?
Context lunch July 2007

Stimulator: Sefan Stern, Financial Times.

Guests:
Ramon Arratia - Vodafone
Julia King - GSK
Gareth Llewelyn - National Grid
Helen Murley - BAA
John Swannick - Lloyds TSB
Chris Tuppen - BT

We invited the Financial Times columnist Stefan Stern to tell us and our lunch guests why he and many others are sceptical about corporate responsibility. In a sentence, his response was: “If there’s scepticism it’s because people suspect it’s just presentation, or a coating to cover something less attractive, but it’s not part of the ethos.”

He worried that some people in the CR world just want everything to be “nice”. The reality of business, on the other hand, is that there is inevitably a certain amount of unpleasantness. Companies often face tough choices.

Nobody disagreed with that but the discussion focused on whether it will continue to require CR specialists or whether CR is a transitional phenomenon.

On the one hand, businesses and business leaders will continue to need an understanding of how society and expectations are changing, and to respond to that. On the other hand, that task should perhaps be carried out by all managers, not CR specialists. Maybe your view will depend on how much chance you think managers have to lift their heads from the immediate tasks such as getting customers in through the door or products out through the door.

We would like to know – will managers be able to do without CR specialists? Tell me: rogerc@econtext.co.uk

[Please make contact if you would like to join us for lunch].