Two articles published today, NASDAQ’s website’s cover story on CSR and a blog entry from IE Business School on CSR’s ‘big enemy’, both underline the challenge of integrating CSR into firms’ strategy and top-level decision-making processes.
NASDAQ’s informative piece emphasises that management often have little understanding of the potential for CSR, which they perceive to be a risk and not generative of business ideas. The catalyst that makes management take CSR seriously is often public protest or negative press resulting from a pressure or consumer group; correlatively, those companies that have been most vilified in the past - such as Wal-Mart, Nike and Citi - are now CSR market leaders. These leaders are not ‘wrapping’ CSR around their business but ‘embedding’ it in their strategy, by establishing long-term commitments to community-engagement projects and NGOs, and by aligning their CSR function with their core business values and mission. Similarly, IE’s blog identifies organisations’ hierarchy and ‘vertical’ structure as CSR’s greatest obstacle. In contrast to the NASDAQ article, the blog post focuses on overcoming the obstacle from the viewpoint of the CSR manager and not the business manager. If you can get past the bad grammar, you will find some interesting advice: that CSR managers should work across their business’ functions, should form alliances and partnerships with ‘the beast’ and should keep their strategy hidden.
You can find these two articles on:
The Corporate Responsibility Website
