Author Archive
By Veena Cute-ngarmpring
A combination of a global and local conceptual framework
CSR in Thailand is still largely philanthropic. This includes CSR programs that not only give direct financial support to the community, but also provide indirect assistance through community projects that aim to generate long-term local socio-economic development. Practically, the CSR concept has acted as a driving force for many corporations’ development activities, serving as a guideline for initiating and implementing community projects that generate a positive contribution to the society.
What makes CSR in Thailand unique, however, is that it builds strongly on a local development concept called the ‘Sufficiency Economy Philosophy’, which was initiated by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej. In general, the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy is focused on building a strong economic foundation and self-reliance at a local community level, as the basis for long-term local development. The philosophy contains three main components: moderation, reasonableness and self-immunity, which is supported in turn by two characters – knowledge and integrity.
CSR and the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy share many common characteristics, such as community-based development, local networking, stakeholder participation, partnership and collaboration and the importance of community context and local wisdom. Hence, the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy plays a supportive role in strengthening and leveraging the potential of CSR to respond to local conditions, economic activities and a community-based lifestyle.
A case that illustrates that illustrates both the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy and a CSR approach is the Green Net Cooperative. The organisation is a social enterprise for marketing and distributing organic agricultural products to domestic and international markets. However, the Green Net Cooperative also works closely with the small-scale farmers in rural areas to give local producers access to knowledge, markets and productivity management.
Furthermore, the Green Net Cooperative has established the Earth Net Foundation for supporting self-reliance among local producers through knowledge sharing projects like ‘Farmer Field School’ and ‘Participatory Technology Development’. Among other things, farmers who are members of the Green Net Cooperative are encouraged to develop their self-sustenance from their own farming activities by not only planting crops for sale, but also growing vegetables, raising livestock and farming fish for their family’s consumption.
To conclude, in Thailand, the key to successful CSR is not the scale of philanthropic expenditure, but rather that development projects be implemented with a proper sensitivity to the locality.
By Dr Wayne Visser
Part 9 of 13 in Wayne Visser’s Age of Responsibility Blog Series for 3BL Media.
CSR 2.0 responsiveness goes beyond traditional partnerships and CSO effectiveness; it is also about innovative ways to collaborate. I want to flag several Web 2.0 inspired experiments in responsiveness that are opening up sustainability and responsibility solutions to the public. One is a platform called the Eco-Patent Commons, which allows companies to share their intellectual property for the common good. The Commons was launched by WBCSD and covers issues like waste, pollution, global warming and energy. ‘The premise of the Commons,’ says Björn Stigson, president of the WBCSD, ‘is that the free sharing of these patents leads to new collaborations and innovation aimed at helping others become more eco-efficient and/or operate in a more sustainable way.’
The Eco-Patent Commons’ publicly searchable database already contains over one hundred eco-friendly patents from companies like Bosch, Dow, DuPont, Fuji Xerox, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes, Ricoh, Sony and Taisei. Xerox, for example, has eleven pledged patents that cover a process that cuts the time it takes to remove toxic waste from soil and water from years to months, as well as a patent that covers technology that makes magnetic refrigeration less harmful to the environment.
Dr. John E. Kelly III, IBM Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research, believes that ‘innovation to address environmental issues will require both the application of technology as well as new models for sharing intellectual property among companies in different industries … In addition to enabling new players to engage in protecting the environment, the free exchange of valuable intellectual property will accelerate work on the next level of environmental challenges.’
Similarly, Donal O’Connell, Director of Intellectual Property for Nokia, thinks that ‘environmental issues have great potential to help us discover the next wave of innovation because they force us all to think differently about how we make, consume and recycle products.’ Nokia have pledged a patent designed to help companies safely re-use old mobile phones by transforming them into new products like digital cameras, data monitoring devices or other electronic items. ‘Recycling the computing power of mobile phones in this way could significantly increase the reuse of materials in the electronics industry’, concludes O’Connell.
Even more significant than the individual patents that have been added is the shift in thinking that this signals among some of the largest companies in the world. It is true none of them are exactly ‘giving away the family silver’ – they are not opening all their patents – but they are demonstrating responsiveness on a scale never seen before. They are recognising that the global problems we face are larger than whatever individual solutions can accomplish. If we are truly going to be effective in tackling our most intractable challenges, we will need the wisdom of crowds and the collective efforts of millions of entrepreneurs.
A similar, more recent initiative is GreenXchange, a collaborative platform initially launched by Creative Commons, Nike and Best Buy. Partners include 2degrees, nGenera and Salesforce.com. The fact that Creative Commons – a non-profit organisation that previously developed licensing programs to help in sharing creative and scientific content – has branched into the environmental arena is good news, not least because it brings a sophisticated understanding of the legalities of proprietary content, yet combines this with a commitment to open-source sharing.
The main difference between the Eco-Patent Commons and GreenXchange is that companies that contribute patents to the GreenXchange will have the option of charging users a fixed annual licensing fee and can also restrict any licensing by rivals or for competitive use. In addition, even if no annual fee is charged, patent users must register so there is a record of who is using what technology. The structure is more complex than the Eco-Patent Commons, but John Wilbanks, GreenXchange coordinator and vice president for science at Creative Commons, believes it will yield greater numbers of high-quality inventions. ‘We don’t depend on altruism,’ says Wilbanks. ‘This system helps the environment while enabling a firm to make money from patents in applications outside its core business.’
Wilbanks cites a fictional example for illustration purposes: Nike’s air-bag patent for cushioning shoes is crucial to its core shoe business, but may have environmental benefits in other industries — perhaps in prolonging the useful life of tyres. GreenXchange could enable Nike to license the air-bag technology selectively to noncompeting companies.’ Although this example may be speculative, Nike’s commitment to the concept is not. According to Kelly Lauber, a global director in Nike’s Sustainable Business and Innovation Lab, by sharing its water-based adhesive technology and working with footwear makers, average levels of environmentally harmful solvents used by Nike’s suppliers decreased significantly.
Nike has issued a GreenXchange booklet in which it lays out the challenge: Will the pursuit of sustainability create the new Google? The new Nike? The new disruptive view of business models, markets, profits and consumers? The answer is almost certainly yes. The conclusion is that ‘it’s time to dust off the research, the assets, the knowledge, the innovation you’ve developed on sustainability. Imagine the impact it could have if we gifted it to the world.’
Whether it is the Eco-Patent Commons or GreenXchange or some other platform for open-sourcing sustainability and responsibility that eventually prospers and becomes the new collaborative standard, the genie is out of the bottle. The idea is out there that, when it comes to technologies, processes, products and services that have potentially life-saving or earth-saving impacts, there is a moral obligation to share these with humanity. No doubt these collaborative platforms have started in the environmental space because, as was the case with reporting, green issues are easier to quantify and design solutions for. But we can expect them to spread rapidly to the social space as well. And as they do, they will shine a spotlight on those companies that are truly embracing the CSR 2.0 principle of responsiveness.
By Dr Wayne Visser
Part 8 of 13 in Wayne Visser’s Age of Responsibility Blog Series for 3BL Media.
Is bigger always better or can we still say ‘small is beautiful’, as the pioneering economist E.F. Schumacher argued way back in 1973? Certainly, the ‘muesli-eating, sandal-wearing’ New Age approach to small-is-beautiful has been rather more of an advert for ‘small is groovy, but ultimately ineffectual’. But what if we could do both big and small at the same time?
I discussed the issue of scalability with Simon Zadek, a widely respected thought leader on the civil corporation and accountability, who posed the rhetorical question: ‘Is scale large institutional functionality, or is it a flotilla of little boats?’ This is where Chris Anderson’s Web 2.0 concept of ‘the long tail’ is very useful. The Long Tail – named after the extended tail of a statistical distribution curve – is the idea that selling less to more people is big business. It’s the business model that has spawned the most successful companies of the Web 2.0 age. The Long Tail questions the conventional wisdom that says success is about generating ‘blockbusters’ and ‘superstars’ – those rare few products and services that become runaway bestsellers.
Anderson sums up his message by saying that: 1) the tail of available variety is longer than we think; 2) it’s now within reach economically; and 3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market. He also notes that this Long Tail revolution has been made possible by the digital age, which has dramatically reduced the costs of customised production and niche distribution. There are three enablers of successful long tail businesses, according to Anderson: 1) democratising the tools of production (e.g. digi-cams, content editing software, blogging tools); 2) democratising the tools of distribution (e.g. Amazon, eBay, iTunes, Netflix); and 3) connecting supply and demand (e.g. Google, blogs, Rotten Tomatoes).
So I got to wondering: Is there a Long Tail of CSR? And if so, what does it look like? To me, the Long Tail of CSR is all about extending the reach of CSR, and improving its ability to satisfy specific social and environmental needs. Let’s use Anderson’s enablers as a framework for thinking about this.
Democratising the tools of CSR production
This is about breaking CSR silos and extending CSR beyond multinationals. At the early stages of CSR adoption, it is often confined to Public Relations, Corporate Affairs or Marketing departments. As CSR implementation matures, responsibility tends to migrate to specialised CSR departments of various descriptions (environment, health & safety, accountability, corporate citizenship, etc.). However, these versions of CSR are like the Hollywood model of blockbuster films. They suggest that CSR is about a few, high visibility programmes that are designed by CSR experts and delivered by big companies.
By contrast, democratising CSR production would mean firstly embedding CSR across the organisation – making it the responsibility of operations managers, financial managers, shop floor workers, basically everyone. This is only possible if CSR becomes part of the culture and incentive systems of an organisation. CSR would also need to be extended beyond the usual suspects (i.e. the high profile, branded multinationals) to the less visible B2B (business to business) and national (rather than multinational) organisations, as well as to SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) and down the supply chain.
Democratising the tools of CSR distribution
To date, CSR has mainly be ‘distributed’ via a few select projects – typically philanthropic or charitable activities – in which the company offers its help to the ‘less fortunate masses’. Usually, the nature and scope of CSR activities is determined top-down and offered as a fairly undifferentiated ‘service’, e.g. Nike might decide to focus on sponsoring sports teams, events and celebrities and Coca Cola might choose water as its key CSR issue. The most common delivery mechanisms are money (sponsorship and other forms of charity), or for the more advanced companies, adhering to generic CSR codes and standards.
By contrast, democratising the tools of CSR distribution should include allowing staff to participate in CSR delivery through volunteer programmes, and developing more geographically tailored and sector-specific CSR codes and standards, such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, or the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines for HIV/Aids reporting. Beyond this, embracing Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) markets and supporting social entrepreneurs will allow the reach of CSR to be extended so that the needs of formerly unserved or underserved people can be met.
Connecting CSR Supply and Demand
Traditionally, CSR has been offered in the form of grants by multinational head-offices, who control the budget and set the criteria by which prospective philanthropic projects should be selected. For the more advanced companies, this has been extended to adherence by their operations to corporate codes of CSR practice and communicating this through CSR reports. Demand has typically come from community groups applying to corporate foundations for funding, or NGOs taking an activist approach to demanding improved CSR practices.
By contrast, connecting the Long Tail of CSR supply and demand will rely increasingly on cross-sector partnerships, multi-stakeholder groups, social media and crowdsourcing. For example, Rio Tinto works with the World Conservation Union to identify biodiversity needs and satisfy them through appropriate CSR activities. Companies may also use extended stakeholder networks of community groups, social entrepreneurs and microcredit enterprises to better match their capacity to make a positive impact among those who can most benefit, as BP is doing with smokeless stoves in India and SC Johnson is doing with cleaning products in Kenya.
Hence, applying the Long Tail concept to CSR requires a different way of thinking about how CSR is generated, delivered and managed. It means making CSR a more inclusive and embedded process within the company, and a more diverse and far-reaching set of activities outside the company. It also means creating meaningful stakeholder partnerships to ensure that the right kinds of CSR benefit the right groups of people, where and when they need it. The Long Tail in a nutshell, according to Anderson, is: ‘culture unfiltered by scarcity’. By extension, the Long Tail of CSR in a nutshell is: ‘responsibility liberated by collaboration’.
By Ana Svab
When launching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), United Nations Secretary-General BAN Ki-moon said that the “Goals are ambitious but feasible and, together with the comprehensive United Nations development agenda, set the course for the world’s efforts to alleviate extreme poverty by 2015.” So how far have we progressed on this journey? The answer is: quite far, but not far enough. According to the 2011 Millennium Development Goals Report, some of the global targets are likely to be met, while others will probably be missed.
The eight MDGs have been agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions. They range from halving extreme poverty, to providing universal primary education and achieving gender equality. The MDG website states that: “They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.” Obviously, perspectives on progress depend on the part of the globe we are looking at, as well as which goals we are reviewing. So let’s see how we’re getting on:
Goal 1 – Eradicate extreme poverty and huger
Sounds ambitious, doesn’t it? However, “sustained growth in developing countries, particularly in Asia, is keeping the world on track to meet the poverty-reduction target”. Unfortunately, this does not mean that less people are going hungry – the number stands stubbornly at 16%, and the report admits that it will be “difficult to meet the hunger-reduction target in many regions of the developing world”.
Goal 2 – Achieve universal primary education
“To achieve universal primary education, children everywhere must complete a full cycle of primary schooling. Current statistics show that the world is far from meeting that goal”.
Goal 3 – Promote gender equality and empower women
The progress made on achieving this goal is clearly dependant on the geographical region. The progress will also depend on the nature of comparison made. “Representation by women in parliament is at an all-time high, but falls shamefully short of parity”. Quite a few of the women I know would claim that this disparity still causes wars, economic meltdowns, and, well, most major world problems in general!
Goal 4 – Reduce child mortality
There is steady progress being made to reduce child mortality, with the greatest success being found in Northern Africa and Eastern Asia, though children from rural households are still at a greater risk.
Goal 5 – Improve maternal health
Progress has been made, but maternal mortality remains a major problem in many developing countries, due to unskilled childbirth, unmonitored pregnancies, poor reproductive health, low use of contraceptives and adolescent pregnancies.
Goal 6 – Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
“New HIV infections are declining”! Though there is still a lot of work to be done, especially in some parts of the world, this is good news.
Goal 7 – Ensure environmental sustainability
“Global greenhouse gas emissions continue their ascent”. Will we achieve this goal? Maybe. But we will all have to do our bit as individuals to reduce flights and travel, reduce consumption and recycle more. More importantly, we will have to do much more as employees and employers to change the way we do business and influence our supply chain and customers to become more sustainable.
Goal 8 – Develop a global partnership for development
With the existence of multinational and “multi-continental” organisations, such as the European Union and the United Nations, one would think we have already achieved this. Yet challenges remain, not least closing the digital divide by enabling internet access to the other two thirds of the world.
To conclude, across the different MDGs, progress is being made, and some of the targets will be met by 2015. However, we still have a long way to go, and most of these targets will only be achieved if we all make an effort. So roll up your sleeves!
References
1) http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml
2) Millennium Development Goals Report 2011
By Dr Wayne Visser
Part 7 of 13 in Wayne Visser’s Age of Responsibility Blog Series for 3BL Media.
What do Taddy Blecher, Anurag Gupta, Wang Chuan-Fu and all of the other social entrepreneurs have in common? Is this a special breed of human being? Are social entrepreneurs born or can they be made? In the academic literature, there is an interesting thread of research that is around the concept of ‘champions’ in organisations, especially ‘environmental champions’. The idea draws on prior conceptions of the human resources champion in the 1970s and 1980s, before HR became institutionalised.
Academics define environmental champions as people who can attractively express a personal vision about environmental protection that is in tune with both industry’s needs and wider public concern and who convince and enable organisation members to turn environmental issues into successful corporate programs and innovations. Environmental champions have been showed to imbue a combination of characteristics, including being a catalyst, champion, sponsor, facilitator and demonstrator. Their skills include the ability to identify, package and sell environmental issues within their organisations. Their effectiveness in engaging others rests heavily on expertise, top management support and a strong appreciation for the problems that every business unit or operations manager faces.
Research on champions is not confined purely to the environmental dimension of sustainability. Others have written about socially responsible change-agents, as well as managers’ individual discretion as a component of corporate social performance. British academic Christine Hemingway, for example, finds that CSR can be the result of championing by a few managers, based on their personal values and beliefs, despite the personal and professional risks this may entail. Individual managers are also often mediators in corporate philanthropy and stakeholder influence. Hence, the notion of CSR champions has emerged as an important concept, which I will return to this in the final chapter on individual change agents.
Bill Drayton, who has been involved in selecting and tracking the progress of the 2,700 Ashoka Fellows, believes social entrepreneurs ‘focus everyday on the “how to” questions. How are they going to get from here to their ultimate goal? How are they going to deal with this opportunity or that barrier? How are the pieces going to fit together? They are engineers, not poets. … The entrepreneur’s job is not to take an idea and then implement it. That is what franchisees do. The entrepreneur is building something that is entirely new – by constantly creating and testing and recreating and then testing and recreating again.’
There are other characteristics as well, according to Drayton. ‘The true social entrepreneur also has an almost magical ability to move people, a power rooted in exceptional ethical fibre. He or she is always asking people to do things that are unreasonable – and people do them. … The entrepreneur has an inner confidence that most sense but do not understand. While others think entrepreneurs are taking risks, entrepreneurs don’t see it that way because they have thought things through extremely well. They also believe in their ability continuously to adapt the idea as they drive toward a goal that they know is a huge win for everyone, and ultimately to reach that goal. They know, in other words, that they have the gift that brings the greatest happiness in the world, the gift of being able to give at the highest level. Once one grasps who the true social entrepreneur is,’ concludes Drayton, ‘one would have to be crazed to bet against him or her ultimately changing the world at large scale.’
The question remains: Is such social entrepreneurship a random and unpredictable phenomenon, or is there some underlying rationale or theory that we can use to better understand and advance sustainability innovation? I did a research project with my colleagues at Cambridge University to answer this question.[ii] In our attempt to ‘map the territory’, we created a model that looked at the Enablers, Processes and Agents of sustainability innovation. There were a number of interesting findings.
First, of the four Enablers of innovation that we identified – government, finance, technology and culture – most people are focused either on finance or technology. For example, in the SustainAbility survey of over 100 social entrepreneurs, 72% cited ‘access to finance’ as their primary challenge, and much of the report is dedicated to understanding this issue.[iii] Furthermore, many typical cases held up as innovation success stories – whether they be GE’s EcoImagination programme or Vodafone’s M-Pesa service – are almost inevitably technology solutions.
The corollary of this finding is that the role of government and culture is being neglected. Government, by setting clear, long term policy targets on social and environmental issues like biodiversity, climate change or access to health and sanitation, can create an enabling environment that allows business to innovate. Likewise, fostering a corporate and national culture of innovation – of opportunity orientation rather than risk obsession – is a necessary precondition for innovation.
In the area of Processes, of which we identified three – individual actions, management systems and tailored approaches – most of the focus has been on individual actions. This mirrored our findings for Agents, where individuals were favoured over companies and non-business agents. Hence, the notion of a sustainability champion or a social entrepreneur trains our hopes on the creative, business-savvy individual. This overlooks the important role of innovation within large companies – what the second in the SustainAbility series of reports called ‘intrapreneurship’ – as well as the potential for NGOs like Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) to be part of the innovative solution.
Another interesting finding from my Cambridge research was that most cited cases seem to be innovation processes specifically targeting sustainability issues, rather than efforts at embedding sustainability principles in core innovation processes. This is a fundamental distinction, because it means that most R&D going on in companies – and hence most innovation – is not systematically building in social and environmental criteria. As a result, much like CSR more generally, innovation is a peripheral, project/product specific activity, which is exactly what is preventing scalable solutions from emerging in the mainstream economy. Until CSR is built into every organisational process – and especially into strategic functions like R&D or new product development – we will always be playing on the fringes of the Age of Responsibility.
About the author
Dr Wayne Visser is Founder and Director of the think-tank CSR International and consultancy Kaleidoscope Futures Ltd. He is the author of thirteen books, including The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business (2011), The World Guide to CSR (2010) and The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility (2010). He is the author of over 180 publications (chapters, articles, etc.) and has delivered more than 170 professional speeches on in over 50 countries in the last 20 years. In addition, Wayne is Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, Visiting Professor of Sustainability at Magna Carta College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor of CSR at Warwick Business School, UK.
Drayton, B. (2010). Tipping the world: The power of collaborative entrepreneurship. Published on the McKinsey What Matters site, 8 April 2010.
[ii] Blowfield, M., Visser, W. & Livesey, F. (2007). Sustainability Innovation: Mapping the Territory, University Cambridge Programme for Industry Research Paper Series: No. 2.
[iii] Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems (2007)
By Sabrina Basran
The world is no stranger to human rights abuses committed by companies – Union Carbide (taken over by Dow Chemical) in India in the 1980s; Shell in the Niger Delta; Nike and sweatshop labour in Vietnam the 1990s; Trafigura dumping toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire in the 2000s; and Vedanta Resources in India today – these are a few among many examples.
In March 2011 John Ruggie, then Special Representative of the UN Secretary General (SRSG) submitted his final report for consideration by the UN Human Rights Council. The report set out Ruggie’s Guiding Principles for implementing a ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework for human rights. The Council officially endorsed the Principles in June 2011. They were six years in the making.
Ruggie’s Framework rests on three pillars:
- The state duty to protect human rights
- The corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and
- Access to remedy (provided largely by states, but also by corporates).
A year on, what impact has Ruggie’s Framework (particularly the second pillar) had on business behaviour? Not much. Beyond a stated commitment to the Guiding Principles in a few CSR reports and Code of Ethics, there has been a conspicuous lack of activity by companies in implementing the Framework. This is not to say there has been none, but examples are few and far between. One of the difficulties with such voluntary guidance is there is no body to take ‘ownership’ once it is complete. As such, it tends to ‘drift’ and have little success in effecting genuine change.
This is perhaps why the EC announced earlier this year that it is developing guidance to support Ruggie’s second pillar, in conjunction with the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) and Shift. We will have to ‘watch this space’. Meanwhile, there is evidence of some change. Recent cases of corporate human rights abuses highlight that there is another ‘player’ in the human rights game besides states, business and regulatory bodies – the general public.
A case in point is Apple, which, in February 2012, admitted it had a human rights problem and agreed to investigate working conditions in its supply chain. The decision was partly due to growing pressure from consumers and the general public, including calls to boycott Apple products. This was especially the case in China, where one of Apple’s suppliers, Foxconn, had experienced a spate of suicides at its factories since 2009.
Another example is Hershey’s. After more than 100,000 consumers lobbied Hershey’s online as part of the ‘Raise the bar, Hershey!’ Coalition, the company agreed in March to buy Rainforest Alliance certified cocoa. The Coalition began in response to forced and child labour problems in Hershey’s supply chain.
These examples raise important questions around the role of guidance and regulation as drivers of corporate responsibility for human rights. The shift of power from state governments to multinational corporations suggests that we need a shift in thinking on human rights and how to effect positive change and progress. Is guidance sufficient? Does it place enough ‘pressure’ on companies? Does it really drive change in business behaviour? Compared to issues around corporate social responsibility, sustainability and ethics, human rights have long been the focus of regulatory bodies such as the UN. Yet, whilst there has been a definite shift in business attitudes towards these issues, companies have been reluctant to take much action.
This suggests regulation and guidance are not the best way forward. Where there has been company action this has been partly in response to public pressure. Ultimately, companies are pragmatic; they care about their future. If society is pushing for change, business will generally (albeit sometimes rather slowly), respond. This is increasingly the case as business realises the power of societal pressure to influence corporate reputation – and so the bottom line.
References
- Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, John Ruggie, ‘Guiding principles on business and human rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework’, 21st March 2011.
- Institute for human rights and business press release, 13th January 2012. See: http://www.ihrb.org/news/2012/new_project_to_develop_business_and_human_rights_guides_for_three_european_business_sectors.html
- Ethical performance, ‘Foxconn factory first in Apple’s supplier labour practices review’, March 2012.
- The Independent, ‘Apple admits it has a human rights problem’, 14th February 2012. See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/apple-admits-it-has-a-human-rights-problem-6898617.html
- http://www.raisethebarhershey.org/
Part 6 of 13 in Wayne Visser’s Age of Responsibility Blog Series for 3BL Media.
By Wayne Visser
By May 2008, it was clear to me that the evolutionary concept of Web 2.0 held many lessons for CSR, and I began to develop my thinking around CSR 2.0. It quickly became clear, however, that a metaphor can only take you so far. What was needed was a set of principles against which we could test CSR. These went through a few iterations, but I eventually settled on five, which form a kind of mnemonic for CSR 2.0: Creativity (C), Scalability (S), Responsiveness (R), Glocality (2) and Circularity (0). These principles, which will be explored in detail in the next blog posts, can be described briefly as follows:
Creativity – The problem with the current obsession with CSR codes and standards (including the new ISO 26000 standard) is that it encourages a tick-box approach to CSR. But our social and environmental problems are complex and intractable. They need creative solutions, like Free-play’s wind-up technology or Vodafone’s M-Pesa money transfer scheme.
Scalability – The CSR literature is liberally sprinkled with charming case studies of truly responsible and sustainable projects. The problem is that so few of them ever go to scale. We need more examples like Wal-Mart ‘choice editing’ by converting to organic cotton, Tata creating the affordable eco-efficient Nano car or Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen microfinance model.
Responsiveness – More cross-sector partnerships and stakeholder-driven approaches are needed at every level, as well as more uncomfortable, transformative responsiveness, which questions whether particular industries, or the business model itself, are part of the solution or part of the problem. A good example of responsiveness is the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change.
Glocality – This means ‘think global, act local’. In a complex, interconnected, globalising world, companies (and their critics) will have to become far more sophisticated in combining international norms with local contexts, finding local solutions that are culturally appropriate, without forsaking universal principles. We are moving from an ‘either-or’ one-size-fits-all world to a ‘both-and’ strength-in-diversity world.
Circularity – Our global economic and commercial system is based on a fundamentally flawed design, which acts as if there are no limits on resource consumption or waste disposal. Instead, we need a cradle-to-cradle approach, closing the loop on production and designing products and processes to be inherently ‘good’, rather than ‘less bad’, as Shaw Carpets does.
I believe that CSR 2.0 – or Systemic CSR (I also sometimes call it Radical CSR or Holistic CSR, so use whichever you prefer) – represents a new model of CSR. In one sense, it is not so different from other models we have seen before. We can recognise echoes of Archie Carroll’s CSR Pyramid, Ed Freeman’s Stakeholder Theory, Donna Wood’s Corporate Social Performance, John Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line, Stuart Hart and C.K. Prahalad’s Bottom of the Pyramid, Michael Porter’s Strategic CSR and the ESG approach of Socially Responsible Investment, to mention but a few. But that is really the point – it integrates what we have learned to date. It presents a holistic model of CSR.
The essence of the CSR 2.0 DNA model are the four DNA Responsibility Bases, which are like the four nitrogenous bases of biological DNA (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine), sometimes abbreviated to the four-letters GCTA (which was the inspiration for the 1997 science fiction film GATTACA). In the case of CSR 2.0, the DNA Responsibility Bases are Value creation, Good governance, Societal contribution and Environmental integrity, or VEGS if you like. Each DNA Base has a primary goal and each goal has key indicators.
Hence, if we look at Value Creation, it is clear we are talking about more than financial profitability. The goal is economic development, which means not only contributing to the enrichment of shareholders and executives, but improving the economic context in which a company operates, including investing in infrastructure, creating jobs, providing skills development and so on. There can be any number of KPIs, but I want to highlight two that I believe are essential: beneficial products and inclusive business. Does the company’s products and services really improve our quality of life, or do they cause harm or add to the low-quality junk of what Charles Handy calls the ‘chindogu society’. And how are the economic benefits shared? Does wealth trickle up or down; are employees, SMEs in the supply chain and poor communities genuinely empowered?
Good Governance is another area that is not new, but in my view has failed to be properly recognised or integrated in CSR circles. The goal of institutional effectiveness is as important as more lofty social and environmental ideals. After all, if the institution fails, or is not transparent and fair, this undermines everything else that CSR is trying to accomplish. Trends in reporting, but also other forms of transparency like social media and brand- or product-linked public databases of CSR performance, will be increasingly important indicators of success, alongside embedding ethical conduct in the culture of companies. Tools like Goodguide, KPMG’s Integrity Thermometer and Covalence’s EthicalQuote ranking will become more prevalent.
Societal Contribution is an area that CSR is traditionally more used to addressing, with its goal of stakeholder orientation. This gives philanthropy its rightful place in CSR – as one tile in a larger mosaic – while also providing a spotlight for the importance of fair labour practices. It is simply unacceptable that there are more people in slavery today than there were before it was officially abolished in the 1800s, just as regular exposures of high-brand companies for the use of child-labour are despicable. This area of stakeholder engagement, community participation and supply chain integrity remains one of the most vexing and critical elements of CSR.
Finally, Environmental Integrity sets the bar way higher than minimising damage and rather aims at maintaining and improving ecosystem sustainability. The KPIs give some sense of the ambition required here – 100% renewable energy and zero waste. We cannot continue the same practices that have, according to WWF’s Living Planet Index, caused us to lose a third of the biodiversity on the planet since they began monitoring 1970. Nor can we continue to gamble with prospect of dangerous – and perhaps catastrophic and irreversible – climate change.
In this blog series, I will explore what a different approach – CSR 2.0 – may look like.
About the author
Dr Wayne Visser is Founder and Director of the think-tank CSR International and consultancy Kaleidoscope Futures Ltd. He is the author of thirteen books, including The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business (2011), The World Guide to CSR (2010) and The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility (2010). He is the author of over 180 publications (chapters, articles, etc.) and has delivered more than 170 professional speeches on in over 50 countries in the last 20 years. In addition, Wayne is Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, Visiting Professor of Sustainability at Magna Carta College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor of CSR at Warwick Business School, UK.
Part 5 of 13 in Wayne Visser’s Age of Responsibility Blog Series for 3BL Media.
By Wayne Visser
Looking back, we can see that the 1990s were the decade of CSR codes – not only EMAS, ISO 14001 and SA 8000, but also the Forest Steward Council (FSC) and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Certification Schemes, Green Globe Standard (tourism sector), Corruption Perceptions Index, Fairtrade Standard, Ethical Trading Initiative, Dow Jones Sustainability Index and OHSAS 18001 (health & safety), to mention just a few. But all that was just a warm up act when we look at the last 10 years, when we have seen codes proliferate in virtually every area of sustainability and responsibility and all major industry sectors. So much so that in the A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility, we included over 100 such codes, guidelines and standards – and that was just a selection of what it out there. To illustrate the point, here is a sample of what has been thrust onto corporate agendas since the year 2000:
The Carbon Disclosure Project; Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation; GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines; Kimberley Process (to stop trade in conflict diamonds); Mining and Minerals for Sustainable Development (MMSD) Project; UN Global Compact; UN Millennium Development Goals; Voluntary Principles on Human Rights; FTSE4Good Index; Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS; Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Business Principles for Countering Bribery; Publish What Pay Campaign; Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development; London Principles (finance sector); AA 1000 Assurance Standard; Equator Principles (finance sector); Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI); Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil; Global Corruption Barometer; UN Convention Against Corruption; UNEP Finance Initiative; UN Norms on Business and Human Rights; World Bank Extractive Industries Review; AA 1000 Standard for Stakeholder Engagement; EU Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment; ISO 14064 Standard on Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Verification; Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change; Bribe Payers’ Index; UN Principles for Responsible Investment; ClimateWise Principles (insurance sector); UNEP Declaration on Climate Change; UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME); Bali, Poznan and Copenhagen Communiqués (climate change) … and many, many more.
No wonder companies are suffering from code fatigue and audit exhaustion. It is the supreme paradox of the Age of Management – companies are pressured to standardise their efforts on sustainability and responsibility, while stakeholders and critics (myself included) remain unconvinced that this approach identifies or addresses the root causes of the problems we face. Many of the institutional failures over the past 20 years have, I would argue, been systemic failures of culture, rather than bureaucratic failures of management; they have more to do with a prevailing set of values than a particular set of procedures.
The latest in this code-mania is ISO 26000 on Social Responsibility. I have suggested before that ISO 26000 is like a teddy bear – something cute and fluffy, which may help companies sleep better at night, but nothing like the grizzly bear that we really need to shake business out of their CSR complacency. Of course, it is unfair of me to make so light of a five-year international process of negotiation involving over 90 countries, which managed to reach some measure of agreement on such tricky issues as human rights and fair operating practices. But I really do believe that, as a non-certifiable guidance standard that promotes a strategic approach to CSR (rather than a transformative CSR 2.0 agenda), ISO 26000 may prove to be more of a damp squib than a big bang.
Having said that, I must give ISO 26000 its due – as a foundation document that encapsulates the international consensus on social responsibility, it is to be applauded and recommended. Its greatest achievement – and what I expect may prove to be its most enduring legacy – is the way in which it broadens the scope of CSR, first beyond big corporates to any organisation, and second beyond an exclusive focus on philanthropic community development to incorporate six other core subjects, namely organisational governance, human rights, labour rights, the environment, fair operating practices and consumer issues.
Besides this, countries like Denmark are ignoring ISO’s strong declaration against ISO 26000 certification schemes and have begun developing their own certifiable national standard, DS 26000. I expect consultants will also increasingly offer ISO 26000 compliance auditing services, irrespective of whether these are sanctioned by ISO. The fact is that business, governments and civil society alike want standards on social responsibility with ‘teeth’. A decade of weak standards without sanction, like the UN Global Compact and AA 1000, as compared with tougher certification schemes like SA 8000 and the Forest Stewardship Council, have taught us where real value lies.
I believe that the codes-based approach, which I call Strategic CSR in an Age of Management, fails on three counts. First, the incremental approach of CSR, while replete with evidence of micro-scale, gradual improvements, has completely and utterly failed to make any impact on the massive sustainability crises that we face, many of which are getting worse at a pace that far outstrips any futile CSR-led attempts at amelioration.
Second, CSR is, at best, a peripheral function in most companies. There may be a CSR manager, a CSR department even, a CSR report and a public commitment to any number of CSR codes and standards. But these do little to change the underlying growth-and-consumption model that fuels environmental degradation and social disruption.
Third, the ‘inconvenient truth’ is that CSR sometimes pays, in specific circumstances, but more often, it is still uneconomic. Of course there are low-hanging fruit – like eco-efficiencies around waste and energy – but most of the hard-core CSR changes that are needed require strategic change and massive investment, which the markets don’t support.
So where does this leave us? I have argued so far that the Ages of Greed, Philanthropy, Marketing and Management have brought us to a point of crisis in CSR. Specifically, CSR is failing to turn around our most serious global problems – the very issues it purports to be concerned with – and may even be distracting us from the real issue, which is business’s role causal role in the social and environmental crises we face.
About the author
Dr Wayne Visser is Founder and Director of the think-tank CSR International and consultancy Kaleidoscope Futures Ltd. He is the author of thirteen books, including The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business (2011), The World Guide to CSR (2010) and The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility (2010). He is the author of over 180 publications (chapters, articles, etc.) and has delivered more than 170 professional speeches on in over 50 countries in the last 20 years. In addition, Wayne is Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, Visiting Professor of Sustainability at Magna Carta College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor of CSR at Warwick Business School, UK.
By Lorna Taylor
Pressure is increasing on large organisations to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability across the three pillars of economic performance, social equity and environmental protection. There are many good stories of CSR in practice, but many others are undermining the principles of CSR.
Think back 15 years. The organic and fair-trade industries were small niche markets for dedicated sustainability enthusiasts. Nowadays they are found in every major supermarket with a huge following. However, along with this boom in sustainability and CSR came ‘greenwash’ – “disinformation disseminated by an organisation, so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.” The term greenwash may now be outdated but the problem remains; it encompasses not just misleading environmental claims but also ethical and social ones.
Time and again we hear how large organisations that have caused social or environmental damage rapidly take up new CSR initiatives to counteract the bad press and encourage perceptions of ‘good’ corporate citizenship. But CSR should not be a cover up, or a PR tool; it should be embedded in the organisation at every level. Corporate actions need to match CSR claims.
Christian Aid in 2004 named and shamed large organisations involved in greenwash, revealing CSR projects that were misleadingly marketed as ‘the right thing’, when in fact they were not feasible; unsuccessful or detrimental to local communities. Commenting on Shell in the oil producing region of the Niger Delta, their report states, “The region is now a veritable graveyard of projects, including water systems that do not work, health centres that have never opened and schools where no lesson has been taught.”
CSR should be about companies outlining their social and environmental goals and committing to follow through. However, there is very little independent regulation to monitor such commitments. Should governments control companies’ efforts through increased legislation, or in the true spirit of CSR, should organisations be regulating themselves? Unfortunately, whilst self-regulation may be preferable, it does not always occur. Corporate statements of CSR no longer guarantee good practice.
Greenwash is not always deliberate; laziness and ignorance are common causes. CSR, or sustainability, is a difficult term to define and definitions tend to be vague due to its broad nature. Stakeholders have adapted and moulded the CSR concept to work for them; but ulterior motives have also resulted in confusion, greenwashing and the compromise of long-term sustainability goals.
Despite some progress, governmental regulation and political action is required to rebuild faith in the concept and monitor CSR delivery. Sustainability in its current form is not sustainable. CSR needs to evolve, becoming more accountable and embedded in core societal changes in order to provide truly sustainable benefits for society.
Accountability is the key to addressing the issue of greenwashing and ensuring that CSR is sustainable. Corporate Social Responsibility has to grow into Corporate Social Accountability, measuring the impact of actions, not just what actions have been taken.
References
[1] Christian Aid, 2004. Behind The Mask: The real face of Corporate Social Responsibility
Jim MacNeill, 2007. Our Common Future: Advance or Retreat? Sustainable Development: A New Urgency. Geneva: EcoLomics International.
John Drexhage and Deborah Murphy, 2010. Sustainable Development: From Brundtland to Rio 2012, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)
Futerra Sustainability Communications, 2008. The Greenwash Guide
Sustainable development Innovation Briefs, Issue 1, February 2007, “CSR and Developing Countries: what scope for government action?”
By Uju (Lucy) Nwolum
Telecommunication organisations operating in Nigeria find themselves in the middle of widespread debates about social responsibility. There are four licensed mobile phone operators and all are multinational companies that are expected to comply with international standards.
In practice, the thriving telecommunication industry has been poorly regulated and many masts have been erected indiscriminately around the country, close to homes and in public places. There are understandable concerns about possible radiation impacts from the masts. Also, these masts are often run using power generators, producing constant noise and CO2 emissions.
Besides the impact of the masts, the World Health Organization (WHO) has raised fears of possible cancer risks from over-use of cellular phones []. Another study on using coated mobile recharge cards in Nigeria[ii] points to health risks associated with exposure to the silver coating that covers the PIN number on telephone cards.
As the most populous country in Africa, and with over 90 million mobile phone users in Nigeria, there are also environmental impacts from the industry. These range from the materials used in the manufacture of the phones to the trees used in generating paper-based contracts and bills.
There are also positive impacts. A study on the impact of mobile phones in Africa[iii] suggests the benefits of mobile phones include improved flow of information, improved infrastructure, improved market efficiencies by promoting investment, and contributing to empowerment. The mobile operators make profits and pay taxes to the government; also, entrepreneurs make use of mobile communication to overcome difficulties in information and services. The expanding networks provide employment and commercial opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Despite these benefits, there are still problems of access in Nigeria, where the tariffs are among the highest in the world. The telecoms companies are highly profitable and therefore, despite the challenging environment in which they operate, they have an obligation to adopt social responsibility practices.
A review of the sustainability performance of Nigeria’s telecommunications companies reveals that only two out of the four have social responsibility plans disclosed on their corporate websites. While mobile operators in the developed world have a strong reputation for job creation, fair working conditions and promotion of social enterprise, their Nigerian counterparts have yet to follow their example.
Many questions remain. Will Nigerian telecoms companies carry on turning a blind eye to the impact of their operations? Will their silence on sustainability and responsibility have an impact on their corporate image? And how long will it be before social media will be used by activists to judge how socially responsible Nigeria’s telecommunications companies are?
Endnotes
[ii] http://www.academicjournals.org/jece/PDF/pdf2011/April/Okunola%20et%20al.pdf
[iii] http://gamos.org.uk/couksite/Projects/Docs/Mobile%20phones%20in%20Africa/Full%20Report.pdf
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones
http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/assets/africamobile.pdf
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