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.
