Apr 14 2007
What Drives Corporate Social Responsibility?
When corporations act with social responsibility does the motive really matter?
Jeffrey D. Yergler
More and more companies are trying to be responsible these days. Driven in part by concerns about global warming, poverty, and sustainability, they are trying to do well by doing right, in Ben Franklin’s phrase. As their customers have grown concerned companies have sought to garner goodwill and avoid being targeted by boycotts and protests.
But one question is often left unasked: What is it that fundamentally drives corporations to engage in socially responsible activity? What do they hope to accomplish? Do they act in order to stay in the good graces of the public eye or is something deeper at work that demands action? Do they want to undertake restorative and generative work for the sole benefit of people and communities? Or do their motives stem from baser, more utilitarian instincts?
Many argue that motive should not matter. Corporate social responsibility is valuable regardless of the degree of banality and selfishness from which it springs.
I disagree. As a religious professional who has worked with business leaders and their companies for many years in issues related to stewardship and charitable giving, I have seen first-hand how the power of appearances garners far more attention and counts far more than the power of substance. But yet, when it comes to social responsibility, corporate substance does matter. Knowing the moral and philosophical underpinnings behind social responsibility authenticates the action itself. Leaders must make this explicitly clear.
To state it another way, the presence of an ethic that compels, defines and shapes corporate conversations about social responsibility is imperative to the short- and long-term efficaciousness of the activity itself. Furthermore, if businesses championed both their external actions and their internal ethic, the impact and integrity of corporate social responsibility would change dramatically. Full disclosure on both accounts is critical to the net impact.
When Utilitarianism Drive Corporate Social Responsibility:
When conversation connecting a moral ethic to corporate social responsibility is absent in a corporation, the chances are good that the activity will become merely utilitarian. Stakeholders and shareholders will look for it to bring maximum benefit to the corporation while the intended beneficiaries are an afterthought. They’re merely “collateral beneficiaries.” Even if something of value is added to the target audience, I question whether this is an authentic expression of social responsibility.
Why should we settle only for visible virtuous actions performed for the benefit of others when we also yearn to see evidence that corporate enterprises themselves are becoming more ethical, more humane, and more philosophically reflective about their own responsibilities to heal and restore the human community? Authentic corporate social responsibility, as I see it, is that which changes both the corporation and those who are served. It is not unreasonable to expect far loftier motives - for a sense of “magis” germinating within organizational leadership and cultures that becomes the seedbed for informed and focused actions of social responsibility.
Perhaps most heinous are those corporations that intentionally engage in socially responsible discourse while having no intention of investing money, time or human resources. This “shovel or paint brush rattling,” what organizational theorists call “organizational theatre” (Bolman and Deal, 2003), is done only to capture the attention of shareholders and the media. While giving the appearance of concern and intention to act, ultimately nothing of value is brought to the community; no dollars are invested and no lives or communities changed. Corporate hypocrisy can run high when acts of social responsibility are determined only by cost or are viewed as an opportunity to compensate for, cover or “greenwash” questionable business practices.
When Ethics Drive Corporate Social Responsibility:
When a corporation authentically embraces social responsibility, it recognizes a critical causal fact or relationship. Market visibility, human resource power and financial leverage place the business in a position of privilege, which, in turn, incurs responsibility. Influence and power becomes optimal for uniquely redressing the struggles and challenges of people and communities.
Decisions to act for the sole benefit of those served, far from being based on corporate aggrandizement, is often the result of a deeper humanitarian ethic at work within the leadership and the wider organizational culture. This first cause line-of-thinking for corporations implies that socially responsible activity (any activity that is generative, restorative and/or redeeming to the human condition) is a non-negotiable moral obligation. Socially responsible activity, originating from and buttressed by a moral ethic, is perhaps the greatest good that a business can contribute to people and communities. When organizational leaders ask the deeper, more profound questions about why their organizations should engage in activity that is socially restorative, they are building an infrastructure from which concrete expressions of social responsibility rooted in genuine humanitarianism can continually spring. They are being changed as they seek to bring change to others.
An example of this kind of thinking is articulated by Chris Lowney in his excellent book, Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company That Changed the World. Lowney carefully documents the reasons that the Jesuit movement successfully advanced educational enterprises around the world. Clearly, while Jesuit theology played a key role, it was the way in which Jesuits demanded that theology be translated into practical actions bringing lasting change. The Jesuits, as Lowney describes, relied on the Latin word “magis” to think more broadly about the deeper motive of their public actions. The word literally means “the more, the greater.” In all their work, Jesuits asked the question, “What is the greater good, the more honorable goal, the more virtuous and noble purpose served?” There had to be a much larger purpose embedded within the actual work before the work itself began. For business enterprises engaging in socially responsible activity, magis-type reflection demands internal personal and corporate change at the same time it seeks to bring external personal and community change. The two cannot and should not be separated.
When it comes to authentic expressions of corporate social responsibility, the decision to act should never be predicated upon the financial benefit to the business but rather on an internal movement of corporate magis that reshapes the organizational culture, creates a compassionate vision and ultimately leads to the type of action that changes lives and communities.