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Context lunch - 18 January 2002 Our guests were : Sian Allan - Hanson Roger Cowe - Freelance CSR journalist Bill Boyle - BP Julia King - GlaxoSmithKline Chris Tuppen - BT Mike Tyrrell - HSBC We had our first lunch this year in a regular series held in our office. These are very relaxed affairs - more like a Sunday lunch than a stuffy business seminar. We always invite two knowledgeable people to stimulate the conversation: This time, Chris Tuppen and Roger Cowe. Lunch is held under Chatham House rules, but below is a non-attributed summary of proceedings. Annabel Short, our newest recruit, reports: The discussion started by analysing the difference, if there is one, between CSR and sustainable development. One suggestion was that CSR is the specific role of business within the all-inclusive umbrella of sustainable development, that encompasses society as a whole. This led to one of the recurring themes of the conversation: the "responsibility"aspect of "CSR". Where does a company's responsibility begin and end, who allocates it, and how should companies respond to it? The term "corporate social responsibility" is also complicated by its flexibility and intangibility, which lends it to manipulation and therefore to be seen merely as sustainability‚s fluffy friend. A company can claim to have a good CSR record by highlighting just one of the many facets of social responsibility, such as charitable giving, undermining the term‚s credibility. Also raised was the bias of media coverage of CSR issues towards cause-related marketing and away from subtler, more long-term actions. Sustainability, however, when seen within the context of a specific company, can be measured more easily in terms of the company‚s use of resources, its pollution record and technological innovations etc, and is therefore a much tougher benchmark for companies. The boundaries between state and industry "responsibility" were mentioned, in particular the fact they are blurred by corporate lobbying. The need for openness in declaring contributions and lobbying activities in annual reports was emphasised (this issue has been brought centre stage by the Enron case in the USA). When debating the possibility of changing the economic framework - so that companies operating in a deregulated economy are able to assume the role of essential service providers, previously associated with the state and paid for by taxes - it was suggested that CSR could also be understood as Corporate Economic Responsibility. This works, for example, through multinationals transferring some control over financing to the local economies in which they operate. This lead to debate about whether a company can be sustainable (or socially responsible) while operating in an unsustainable marketplace. The example of the haulage industry, that depends entirely on fuel for its operations and therefore doesn't include fuel emissions in its reporting, was given. Again this raises the issue of responsibility ˆ here, it was agreed, the responsibility for change towards a non-fossil fuel based transportation lies more with the policy makers than individual companies. There was much discussion about the role of the financial marketplace and socially responsible investment (SRI), especially the need for a more efficient SRI process. Companies are bombarded with questionnaires from a range of rating agencies or fund managers, and this so called, engagement-process is seen to be one sided and inefficient. Spare a thought for the green analyst though: in the financial markets just as within companies, there are people trying to drive social and environmental interests into a sceptical mainstream. It was generally agreed that the Global Reporting Initiative is not likely to provide a simple solution to reporting CSR, despite its aim to help companies define the boundaries of their accountability by establishing standard reporting criteria. Its emphasis on disclosure overlooks the fact that merely reporting is not everything - its easy to feel that once something has been disclosed the issue has been closed, evading the need to act. A successful and enjoyable lunch but the question, What is CSR?- remains as elusive as ever. Any ideas? [Please make contact if you would like to join us for lunch]. |
