Framing CSR (I): regulation, normalization, certification…

Has CSR got out of hand? We seem to think it has. Many efforts are being made to delimit, define, organize, reorient or certificate Corporate Social Responsibility, as if we were trying to tie a plant to a stick to keep it growing straight.

It’s easy to understand why it seems necessary to take some action in order to revive or reinvent CSR. The concept has lost credibility due to widespread misuse and abuse. Recently, Professor Wayne Visser has initiated a set of articles for CSRwire about the “CSR death”. He suggests a debate: should we kill CSR off before it distracts us from the changes companies really need or is it possible to reinvent the concept and the practice of CSR?

Reinvention proposals cover a number of controlling options, from regulation to certification, including compulsory reporting. There seem to be few people in favor of the completely voluntary nature of CSR, which is quite surprising because companies’ social responsibility, as people’s individual responsibility, must come from inside out: any imposed behavior can be called a lot of things, but not “responsibility”.

According to its own nature, CRS is the voluntary commitment to applying ethical standards beyond regulations. This perspective makes it possible to distinguish between leading and short-term oriented companies, but it’s hardly compatible with a regulatory approach.

However, I agree with the idea of improving legislation, but only after setting clear boundaries on what can and cannot be considered CSR. Anything that can and must be regulated in order to set a level playing field probably shouldn’t be treated as CSR. Many environmental issues would be included in this category: damaging our habitat can never be a choice. In last decades, vertiginous technological and economical development has allowed businesses to expand into non-regulated areas that have been tackled from a CSR perspective, usually on a voluntary way and with different degrees of commitment and success. However, as these behaviors move from voluntary to mandatory, CSR will have to find new fields of activity which are consistent with its discretional nature.

In coming entries we will keep on talking about advantages and disadvantages of other alternatives for framing CSR: standardization of public information, reporting obligations, accreditation, assessment of social impact… As for regulation, instead of tying a stick to CSR plant, it might be more fruitful to clean out weeds and let the plant grow freely.