You, like me, may of heard of the growing trend for
companies and primarily large international corporations to work towards
producing products and services that are provided in a way that is
environmentally sustainable and socially responsible. This is commonly referred to as the ‘green movement’ and other
terms associated with this would be terms such as ‘carbon footprint’, ‘sustainability’,
and ‘eco-friendly.’ But did you know
that there exists and actual laws and regulations that are designed to direct
this movement? Well, I did not know
this until recently although it would make sense that there must be as any
social or business movement or trend in thinking in our world requires a
‘force’ either behind the scenes or overt to lead the charge and pave the way.
One of these entities is CSR, which stands for Corporate
Social Responsibility and also called Business for Social Responsibility,
Sustainability, Responsible Business, Enlightened Capitalism, Ethical Business,
Triple Bottom Line, Green Business, Corporate Citizenship, Responsible
Business, Social Enterprise, etc. As
it stands today, CSR is a form of a built in self regulating mechanism whereby
businesses can monitor and ensure that their activities comply with the spirit
of the law, ethical standards, social and environmental impact, governance
considerations and international norms of behavior for the ‘common good’. The goal of CSR is to have corporations
embrace these responsibilities and thus encourage a positive impact through its
activities on the environment, customers, employees, and communities of which
are commonly referred to as ‘stakeholders’.
CSR is regulated by the UN and other international bodies and is a
global movement.
The evolution of CSR is that it came into our collective
consciousness in response to the connection between apartheid and business in
South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, which resulted in negative screens on
these companies. Activists responding
to slavery, extraction, exploitation, and environmental degradation due to
business practices began exposing the inconsistencies between these businesses
as to what they present to society and what their actual impact is. Today, the term CSR implies a responsibility
but actually acts as a competitive advantage in that many business leaders are
recognizing that these issues can have serious impacts on their companies due
to the growing awareness of how products are made, who suffers, if the
environment suffers as a consequence to how they are produced which results in
consumers avoided there products if their business practices are too
‘bad’. Thus, today, many companies
today implement CSR into their business model to give them a competitive
advantage to gain access to capital, attract talent, gain consumer loyalty, and
increase shareholder value just to name a few advantages.
Even though CSR is recognized as a voluntary
self-regulation, stock exchanges across the globe are beginning to require
reporting on the non-financial impacts of a company’s activities. There are a group of standards from which a
company can measure their CSR initiatives: ISO 26000, Global Reporting
Initiative (FRI), AccountAbility 1000, and Social Accountability International
SA8000 to name a few.
Over the years, corporate philanthropy has been widely
recognized as the leading tactic for CSR.
Other tactics include human rights initiatives, community investment,
natural and organic products, sustainable development, fair trade, green
products, responsible investments, diversity, clean technology, among
others. Companies interested in
communicating their CSR initiatives use CSRWire.com as the dominant vehicle in
distributing information on their initiatives.
The overall goal and intent of CSR is to develop an
economically just and environmentally sustainable society. But, is this really working out as
intended? And even if so, is it fast
enough to curb the current level of environmental degradation and social and
labor abuses that we are now witnessing on this planet from the current
business practices of corporations, before its too late and we have
consequences that will affect us all, or at least the vast majority of us, in a
highly ‘negative’ way? Is CSR and other
initiatives and regulations like this a real solution or just a band aide? And are these initiatives really for the
common good or are they being used to consolidate control at the top by slowly
but surely enforcing more and more control and regulations on companies? And within our current economic system of
capitalism and its current structure, is it really possible to have a
significant affect on the environment by implementing a top-down approach, such
as CSR, to dealing with these issues, or is a bottom-up approach more
affective? And what is and would be a
bottom-up approach? And can a bottom-up
approach be implemented in a capitalist system? And what is capitalism anyway?
These questions will be answered in my next writings. So, stay tuned.
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