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Some of the most widely accepted tenets of corporate responsibility, such as the need for social reporting and codes of conduct, are being challenged by a leading CSR institution on the grounds that they may now be impeding progress on business responsibility.
The US-based Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College says CSR practitioners need to re-examine ideas they have taken for granted for years. It has outlined ‘ten half-truths of corporate citizenship’ to be treated with scepticism.
The centre challenges the widespread practice of adopting external codes and standards to evaluate performance, saying this ‘can lead to volumes of data to fulfil box-checking compliance’ and ‘may not translate into company-specific vision and actions that advance ... corporate citizenship’.
It questions social reporting, which can be ‘a time-consuming bureaucratic exercise that distracts from progress’ and ‘a substitute for actual corporate citizenship activity’.
Getting ‘buy-in from the top’ is also challenged, because ‘waiting for executive endorsement can delay progress’ and ‘support at the top does not ensure support throughout the organization’ anyway.
The centre even questions the need to make the business case for CSR, which it says ‘masks the real value of corporate citizenship as a core organizational element’. While the business case provides a link with a company’s business objectives, it may rely on ‘thin financial data’.
The Ten Half-Truths, which have been posted on the centre’s website, are the product of a two-year research project known as the Executive Forum on Corporate Citizenship, which drew on the experiences of eight companies – Abbott Laboratories, Agilent Technologies, AMD, JPMorgan Chase, Levi Strauss, PetroCanada, Unocal and Verizon. Full findings will be released this month.
The researchers warn that although the ideas behind the ten half-truths can be a catalyst for action and have many strengths, they can also ‘act as traps or hinder progress’ if too rigidly followed. They say each should be regarded ‘as a means to an end rather than an end in itself’, and that overemphasis on any single one is bad for business.
The US-based Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College says CSR practitioners need to re-examine ideas they have taken for granted for years. It has outlined ‘ten half-truths of corporate citizenship’ to be treated with scepticism.
The centre challenges the widespread practice of adopting external codes and standards to evaluate performance, saying this ‘can lead to volumes of data to fulfil box-checking compliance’ and ‘may not translate into company-specific vision and actions that advance ... corporate citizenship’.
It questions social reporting, which can be ‘a time-consuming bureaucratic exercise that distracts from progress’ and ‘a substitute for actual corporate citizenship activity’.
Getting ‘buy-in from the top’ is also challenged, because ‘waiting for executive endorsement can delay progress’ and ‘support at the top does not ensure support throughout the organization’ anyway.
The centre even questions the need to make the business case for CSR, which it says ‘masks the real value of corporate citizenship as a core organizational element’. While the business case provides a link with a company’s business objectives, it may rely on ‘thin financial data’.
The Ten Half-Truths, which have been posted on the centre’s website, are the product of a two-year research project known as the Executive Forum on Corporate Citizenship, which drew on the experiences of eight companies – Abbott Laboratories, Agilent Technologies, AMD, JPMorgan Chase, Levi Strauss, PetroCanada, Unocal and Verizon. Full findings will be released this month.
The researchers warn that although the ideas behind the ten half-truths can be a catalyst for action and have many strengths, they can also ‘act as traps or hinder progress’ if too rigidly followed. They say each should be regarded ‘as a means to an end rather than an end in itself’, and that overemphasis on any single one is bad for business.
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