arguments against CSR and some answers
Global Reporting Initiative - commentary
Mallen Baker's Blog
It's easy to sign up, harder to deliver
13 Oct 2009
More than a thousand companies have been delisted from the Global Compact for failing to meet its requirements since 2008. What should we make of this?
It's not as though the key requirement in question was so unspeakably onerous. It was to give the Global Compact a regular update report on progress. Of course, there is an implied commitment there that you will make progress.
We can huff and puff and tut and tut again about how cynical and how awful these companies must be, but that will only get us so far.
The point is they were prepared to sign on the dotted line as a signal of intent. And then, between the declaration and the follow-up, it just didn't happen.
Was the nature of the commitment poorly understood? Did the people who made the commitment fail to properly communicate it internally? Did they leave the company and fail to ensure the commitment was rock solid before they left? Would it have worked better if the commitment had been framed differently, with action and dialogue built in at the start?
The world of corporate social responsibility is full of commitments. When I was at Business in the Community a week almost never passed without some launch or another - a bunch of companies signing up to an initiative.
Many of those who signed up went on to do great work as a result. And many did not.
Recognising the phenomenon, BITC former CEO coined the phrase that it's "not just a launch, a lunch and a logo". It was usually delivered at a lunch, in front of a sea of logos to launch something. And despite the comment, for some companies that's exactly what it was.
To some extent that was a side-effect of the UK, which suffers a positive tidal wave of initiatives. Too many to register.
Many of the companies that have been dropped from the Global Compact do not work within countries where that is the case. In many of those countries, the Global Compact is the only, or one of the most active, business networks on this agenda.
I suspect that the key is to do with senior engagement. In countries where there is no active peer group of CEOs committed to raising the standard on corporate responsibility, the responsibility becomes quickly isolated within the business.
The CEO might sign up to the Global Compact. But if there is no regular engagement with that CEO going forward, it is too easy for it to quickly become the sole responsibility of someone that can never win the CEO's ear.
And that is the end of that.
There's no point wringing our hands. If the current nature of the Global Compact commitment is not sticking with such a large number of companies, it is down to the Global Compact to work out how it can refashion its offer to tackle the factors that are leading to the high drop-out rate.
If you are a communicator, and the audience doesn't understand your message, the fault lies with you as the communicator, not with the audience.
Tags: CSR global compact CEOs leadership corporate social responsibility Mallen Baker
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2 comments for this post
Comment by: Petra on 20 Oct 2009
Weblink: http://csr.typepad.com
Well, English is not my native tongue, so there may be an misunderstanding on my side. But are you saying it is the Global Compact´s fault that companies are failing to meet the reporting requirements? These requirements are a joke and not that difficult to understand, I think.
Couldn´t it be, that there are enough companies in the initiative who don´t care a single bit about CSR and just see it as a greenwash strategy?
There are a lot of companies in that databse that are currently involved in human rights abuses, Royal Bank of Scotland /Deutsche Bank and Vedanta/ India ; Yaguarete Pora and indigenous people in Paraguay.... That is not exactly CSR but I cannot see how a business can make any attempts on Sustainability Reporting while still ignoring these issues.
Comment by: Mallen Baker on 22 Oct 2009
Weblink: http://www.businessrespect.net
Hi Petra
I don't there's much to be gained by talking about fault. I can't think that a thousand companies all signed up for greenwash purposes, and then decided to do nothing else. If we want to really engage these companies then it has to be in our interest to work through what we would need to do differently in order to achieve this. Simply blaming the companies for not getting involved seems to me to be as productive as a company blaming the public for not wanting its products. The Global Compact has an interest in working through how it can achieve the results it wants.