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Much of the current debate about corporate social responsibility is aimed at persuading businesses that there are sound financial reasons to look beyond the bottom line and to consider social and environmental responsibilities to wider society.
But making the business case for helping to tackle poverty is often harder. So does CSR have any relevance to addressing problems for which a near term business case cannot be made? Are there other ways to think about the role of business in development that do not always rely on appeals to immediate self-interest but instead emphasize the duties and obligations of firms to help confront problems facing the societies in which they operate? I suggest there are.
Rather than continually seeking win-win solutions that apply across all settings, all of the time, the challenge for companies should be to explore the potential and limitations of corporate social responsibility in specific settings. Many CSR models assume the existence of a strong state providing an enabling environment for CSR, a business community willing and able to participate in CSR initiatives and a civil society ready to engage with business. The problem is that these conditions do not apply in the majority of the world where poor governance, weak civil societies and a private sector disengaged from CSR is often the norm. In such unpromising settings it is unsurprising that responsible business initiatives take different forms and have differing impacts upon poverty and the marginalization of people from development opportunities.
For example, firms in Argentina, faced with a context of financial collapse in the economy in the wake of the crisis of 2001/2002, have increasingly become involved in programmes that directly tackle the poverty created by the crisis rather than focussing exclusively on more traditional corporate responsibility concerns such as working conditions and the environment. This is despite the fact that, in the absence of an active lead from the state on CSR issues, a strong emphasis on development issues has been relatively hard to achieve.
A holistic view of poverty is required in which CSR programmes have a contribution to make, but in which governments and donors are realistic about what can be achieved by companies in isolation from their own efforts to tackle poverty. It is probably too much to expect businesses to operate in the world as if poverty alleviation were their main objective. Perhaps the greatest contribution that corporate social responsibility initiatives can make is through reinforcing state-led development policy. Corporate strategies therefore need to graft onto, enhance and amplify the impact of existing pro-poor initiatives, even if they can also make contributions in their own right.
Peter Newell is a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at University of Warwick, UK.
But making the business case for helping to tackle poverty is often harder. So does CSR have any relevance to addressing problems for which a near term business case cannot be made? Are there other ways to think about the role of business in development that do not always rely on appeals to immediate self-interest but instead emphasize the duties and obligations of firms to help confront problems facing the societies in which they operate? I suggest there are.
Rather than continually seeking win-win solutions that apply across all settings, all of the time, the challenge for companies should be to explore the potential and limitations of corporate social responsibility in specific settings. Many CSR models assume the existence of a strong state providing an enabling environment for CSR, a business community willing and able to participate in CSR initiatives and a civil society ready to engage with business. The problem is that these conditions do not apply in the majority of the world where poor governance, weak civil societies and a private sector disengaged from CSR is often the norm. In such unpromising settings it is unsurprising that responsible business initiatives take different forms and have differing impacts upon poverty and the marginalization of people from development opportunities.
For example, firms in Argentina, faced with a context of financial collapse in the economy in the wake of the crisis of 2001/2002, have increasingly become involved in programmes that directly tackle the poverty created by the crisis rather than focussing exclusively on more traditional corporate responsibility concerns such as working conditions and the environment. This is despite the fact that, in the absence of an active lead from the state on CSR issues, a strong emphasis on development issues has been relatively hard to achieve.
A holistic view of poverty is required in which CSR programmes have a contribution to make, but in which governments and donors are realistic about what can be achieved by companies in isolation from their own efforts to tackle poverty. It is probably too much to expect businesses to operate in the world as if poverty alleviation were their main objective. Perhaps the greatest contribution that corporate social responsibility initiatives can make is through reinforcing state-led development policy. Corporate strategies therefore need to graft onto, enhance and amplify the impact of existing pro-poor initiatives, even if they can also make contributions in their own right.
Peter Newell is a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at University of Warwick, UK.
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