I got myself involved in an interesting thread on the FT site earlier in the week after a reading a column by management columnist Stefan Stern. Titled ‘The hot air of CSR’ Stern – I presume not related to Nicholas – provocatively dismissed Corporate Social Responsibility as ‘nonsense’, and that we van stop bothering to think about it now that the recession is upon us. Out goes do-gooding and climate change, in come back to basics traditional decent business practices by the likes of Tesco.
I took the bait and had a pop at his simplistic stance, which kicked off a bit of a debate. But in his misguided fashion I think Stern does have something of a point. Corporate Social Responsibility sticks in my throat as a phrase – in some senses it’s like sustainability in its wooliness and vagueness. As Stern quotes in his piece, for many in business CSR is a case of BDF: “babies, dolphins and forests.”
In this way it becomes simply a short-termist marketing activity, a nice to have which then is discarded when economic conditions change. Unfortunately that helps no-one. We come back to fundamentals – Stern asserts that the responsible thing for companies to do is to run a good business. But what is ‘good’? Surely businesses and economies need to be wondering whether the models that have worked under are good, ie in the best interests of the societies they serve?
So Stern underlines the point in a misguided fashion – CSR is hot air as it currently stands in business thinking. It’s worrying to read though a lack of understanding of the crisis we have gone through and that lessons this should offer business.
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on Feb 5th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
We don’t use the term rather the more encompassing sustainability, but isn’t this just good sensible business practice?
Like a lot of these terms and phrases, a lot of companies and organisations seem to talk the talk but not walk the talkm There is a lot of talk, greenwash and spin, but less action green-veining. Conversely I’ve also experienced lots of good practices, but why they are good is not always fully understood because often measuring is hard to do.
on Feb 8th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Stefan Stern is spot on. CSR is already being dropped by its advocates in favour of CR. They argue the name change does not mean real change. But it does. And still CR is inadequate. The recent failings of capitalism were ones of inadequate regulation, poor professionalism (competence), lost ethics and weak corporate governance. I respond to Stern, making the case for ditching both CSR and CR in favour of sustainability, the most important of which is profit, here:
http://paulseaman.eu/2009/02/the-sustainability-which-bothers-business-and-prs/