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The respective roles of business, government and civil society are becoming less clearly demarcated, says David Boyle
It isn’t easy being a CSR professional these days. I’m not one myself, but I can guess. My campaigning contacts speak moralistically about corporate hypocrisy – and my business media contacts hint that CSR has a certain irrelevance. But of course, in public, each says what important pioneering work this is.
There is a disconnect between CSR-speak, with all those metrics and reporting compacts, and the real problems of the world. There is an uneasiness about CSR delivered by companies whose central activity – oil, nuclear, mega-supermarkets, airports – seems to point in the opposite direction. But this unease feeds into trends that look set to shift the debate in fascinating ways.
First, the critical relationship between campaigners and corporations has changed. There is no longer a great gulf between the two worlds. The front line is now somewhere in the boardrooms of the corporate world, and the real contest is being played out there.
CSR professionals have to look increasingly inward to their own company, while campaigners look to them to battle on their behalf. For the campaigners, this dependence on insiders may feel like compromise, but it’s a sign that their arguments have gone deep.
Second, the struggles are increasingly esoteric. Tesco and Wal-Mart are investing in environmental sustainability as a way of fighting off those critics who are interested in social or local economic sustainability.
Third, all these shades of moral grey are fuelling the rise of a new business sector, for whom CSR is not a matter of compromise or being a ‘good neighbour’, because its central purpose is saving people or planet.
These new ‘authentic’ businesses, including companies like Good Energy, might have been non-governmental organizations a generation ago. Now they become companies. Their arrival as a sector is a moral challenge to more conventional corporations, and may shortly be a business challenge as well.
This suggests that the old language of CSR – the stuff about being good neighbours – has outlived its usefulness and needs to be put quietly to sleep, for it implies that corporations do their stuff while governments run the world, and that this division of responsibilities still works.
The truth is that there are no neighbours left standing. Governments are all but powerless to rescue the world. The world looks to the corporates to tackle those issues that threaten us. That means a different kind of CSR, and a much bigger stage for CSR professionals.
David Boyle is an associate of the New Economics Foundation and the author of Authenticity: brands, fakes, spin and the lust for real life (Harper Perennial)
It isn’t easy being a CSR professional these days. I’m not one myself, but I can guess. My campaigning contacts speak moralistically about corporate hypocrisy – and my business media contacts hint that CSR has a certain irrelevance. But of course, in public, each says what important pioneering work this is.
There is a disconnect between CSR-speak, with all those metrics and reporting compacts, and the real problems of the world. There is an uneasiness about CSR delivered by companies whose central activity – oil, nuclear, mega-supermarkets, airports – seems to point in the opposite direction. But this unease feeds into trends that look set to shift the debate in fascinating ways.
First, the critical relationship between campaigners and corporations has changed. There is no longer a great gulf between the two worlds. The front line is now somewhere in the boardrooms of the corporate world, and the real contest is being played out there.
CSR professionals have to look increasingly inward to their own company, while campaigners look to them to battle on their behalf. For the campaigners, this dependence on insiders may feel like compromise, but it’s a sign that their arguments have gone deep.
Second, the struggles are increasingly esoteric. Tesco and Wal-Mart are investing in environmental sustainability as a way of fighting off those critics who are interested in social or local economic sustainability.
Third, all these shades of moral grey are fuelling the rise of a new business sector, for whom CSR is not a matter of compromise or being a ‘good neighbour’, because its central purpose is saving people or planet.
These new ‘authentic’ businesses, including companies like Good Energy, might have been non-governmental organizations a generation ago. Now they become companies. Their arrival as a sector is a moral challenge to more conventional corporations, and may shortly be a business challenge as well.
This suggests that the old language of CSR – the stuff about being good neighbours – has outlived its usefulness and needs to be put quietly to sleep, for it implies that corporations do their stuff while governments run the world, and that this division of responsibilities still works.
The truth is that there are no neighbours left standing. Governments are all but powerless to rescue the world. The world looks to the corporates to tackle those issues that threaten us. That means a different kind of CSR, and a much bigger stage for CSR professionals.
David Boyle is an associate of the New Economics Foundation and the author of Authenticity: brands, fakes, spin and the lust for real life (Harper Perennial)
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