Advisers not easy to please

Executives working within companies have a more positive view of how successful their corporate responsibility programmes are than the consultants who advise them, reports a new study.

The survey of 220 CSR practitioners and consultants by the US-based research company Sirota Survey Intelligence found 82 per cent of practitioners rated their organizations favourably on their achievements, compared with 53 per cent of the consultants advising them.

Views differed most on the treatment of communities. Nine out of ten practitioners thought they did a good job compared with only six out of ten consultants.

There were exceptions to the trend. Most practitioners felt they had a good relationship with their suppliers and a similar proportion of consultants agreed.

Douglas Klein, president of Sirota, suggested the findings may reflect a gap between what companies think stakeholders would like and what they actually want. He said that consultants, being outside the organization, can be closer to stakeholder views and in this case ‘appear to be a surrogate for other constituent groups that are affected by the companies’.

However, Tom Peyton, director of the EnAct consultancy, which advises businesses on corporate responsibility, told EP: ‘Unfortunately the survey does not test stakeholder reaction to the programmes and there is no evidence given to support the unlikely suggestion that consultants might be stakeholder surrogates.’ Peyton added that one reason consultants and practitioners did not see eye to eye may be that consultants sometimes ‘underestimate the difficulties involved in managing complex programmes across complex organizations’.

Tony Hoskins, director of The Virtuous Circle consultancy, said: ‘I suspect the difference in the view of effectiveness is due more to differing criteria than to differing levels of understanding of the needs of external stakeholders. The practitioners’ view will take into account the internal constraints as well as the needs of external stakeholders. The latter can seldom be fully satisfied by a corporate initiative, regardless of how much the consultants feel they should be’.

Three-quarters of respondents to the survey, carried out for the New York-based Corporate Responsibility Officer body, were practitioners, the rest consultants.