Corporate Social Responsibility – more harm than good

The current period of financial turmoil has – as on previous occasions – led to considerable speculation and projection by nervous enterprise leaders, confused politicians and interested advocates as to the correct conduct and purpose of business.

The last time this occurred was in response to the economic downturn of the early 1990s. This led, at the time, to the articulation of a presumed need for greater corporate social responsibility – or CSR – as articulated in the 1995 RSA Inquiry, ‘Tomorrow’s Company: the role of business in a changing world’.

Notably though, many of the original sponsors and supporters of that endeavour – many of whom appeared to endorse what was to become the New Labour agenda of demanding more targets and procedural audits, as well as greater dialogue and inclusion – are no longer around.

Among those whose executives pontificated over the deeper insights and wisdom they had into what made for, and sustained, a better, more responsible company, was Barings Venture Partners Limited. They were not alone in the ranks of those who were good at talking the CSR talk, but less so at walking the CSR walk.

But maybe that is because being a good, responsible company that cares about people and the planet, as well a profits, was not what CSR was really about in the first place. The programme director of the RSA Inquiry wrote a piece about it, published before the final report, that identified one key area to be explored by it as being; ‘the notion of business as the most important agent of social change, in an age when governments are redefining and limiting their own sphere of influence’.

In other words, as state leaders the world over became confused – in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War – as to their purpose and direction, so some – encouraged no doubt by a few disillusioned CEOs – sought to invest business with the role of social leadership instead.

That remains a key focus for CSR today. What is different from its original conceptualisation, however – and in some ways more sinister – is that whereas in 1995 it was the complexities of the globalised, international environment that business operated within that was held to have heralded the need for them to change, today it is people themselves that are presented as both the source and the locus of change.

‘[H]umans are complex social animals’, rails Matthew Taylor, the current incumbent at the helm of the RSA. Influenced by the new, fashionable orthodoxies of behavioural economics, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and the need to nudge, he describes people as ‘instinctive and imitative’, before – in a recent talk on what he describes as ‘Enlightened Enterprise’ – identifying his aim to change the public into ‘more capable and responsible citizens’.

The role of business to cover for the limitations of the state is still there in his exposition, but now CSR is not so much about altering business practice as our own purportedly feckless and foolish consumer habits.

So, Taylor laments, ‘the state has many competing objectives and when it uses its power to nudge it opens itself up to charges of paternalism and social engineering’. That is why, he suggests, there is a new opportunity for business ‘to build on a relationship based on choice and consent, and in some cases a good degree of trust’.

In other words, the purpose of CSR today is to act on behalf of governments that can’t be trusted and for people who don’t know what’s good for them.

This low view of government and people was always implicit to CSR, which usually focused its supposed benefits elsewhere – typically on people without a voice (ideally in Africa) – or better still the dumb (animals), or the inert (the environment). That way, businesses could patronise impoverished communities, eco-activists and their media groupies with token sums and gestures – that were rarely held to account or scrutiny – and at the same time encourage their staff to subsidise these schemes by volunteering their own time and energies.

And by arguing that there had to be a purpose to business beyond simply making a profit, the prophets of CSR slyly assumed that which had yet to be achieved – realising sufficient surplus to ensure employees were adequately rewarded in the first place. Staff who collectively, consciously and loudly fought for better wages were ignored. So British Airways could be commended for its social and environmental reports whilst consistently facing-down its own workers through a series of strikes.

But what gives business the legitimacy and authority to act on behalf of the people – and now, more ominously, literally on them – is never clarified. And, in the process, the notion that choice, consent and trust, are qualities we should expect – if not demand – from government, is also missed. In fact, Taylor complicates matters still further as, presumably unable to even trust businesses to pursue his ideals, he proposes that NGOs – those bastions of democratic representativeness and accountability – should act as ‘quasi-regulators’ of the entire process.

CSR was, from its inception, preoccupied by what it perceived to be the unnecessarily ‘adversarial culture’ of business. Today it is ‘our national culture’ that its advocates seek to correct. These are caricatured as being eating too much, drinking too much and exercising too little, as well as wasting resources and ruining the planet.

CSR was never about doing good. It was always a mechanism that a confused ruling class used to maintain its legitimacy and control in a disillusioned age. Today, combined with the sinister new orthodoxy of nudge, it is more backward still. A directionless state has shifted its focus from matters of public consequence to tinkering with our private lives but, lacking the confidence even to do that it now seeks to outsource this function to private enterprises where, no doubt, there are plenty of willing prefects to do its bidding.

If we want to do good for other people, the planet, or whatever else we choose, it is high time we refocused our attention on asserting what really matters to us and getting the right government, rather than businesses, to do this.

Throughout October and November, The Independent Online is partnering with the Institute of Ideas’ Battle of Ideas festival to present a series of guest blogs from festival speakers on the key questions of our time.

Dr Bill Durodié is Associate Fellow of the International Security Programme, Chatham House, and a former senior lecturer of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is speaking at the Battle of Ideas session Profiting responsibly? Business in the big society, in partnership with SAB Miller and PWC and in association with the Institute of Ideas’ Economy Forum and City A.M., which is taking place on Saturday 29 October.

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• http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Firozali A.Mulla

  Dr.Bill Nimber 1. Michael Jackson seems to be having too many doctors. One came and then there is another in USA who is fat and has long nails specilises in the therapy of beutibying you. He say he know Micko but the Dr, had no part in this. It is the other one who was at his bed side. Like Agatha Chrityie we seem to be having a murder in the train and the engine is derailed. KAPUT. But that was not what I came for. I am here as I saw. THIS Secular and mass unemployment is not the same as orthodox or structural, market-mismatch or cyclical unemployment that comes and goes with busts and booms. Higher productive forces raise the labour productivity to ever-higher development, which gives rise to the production-modal unemployment, independent of the business cycles or labour market conditions. Orthodox economists seem to confuse modal unemployment with the orthodox unemployment. Labour productivity reduces needs of labour power and increases profit at the same time so that the modal unemployment is the product of capitalism and one of the laws of the motion of capitalist production, called the law of the industrial reserve army or the relative surplus population of capitalism. To abolish the laws means to abolish capitalism. To the credulous, capitalism is like the sacred cow of TINA – There Is No Alternative. Therefore, they rather endure modal unemployment than seeking cure or liberation until it gets so much worse that they can no longer continue living on. The unemployment benefits can temporarily dull the modal unemployment stress. However, it can also relieve the pain of the jobless so that monopoly-capital-owners would have to lessen the strength of the ruling class to suppress the wage levels. The lower echelon of the ruling class – monopoly retailing or merchant capital-owners, on the other hand, would gain very much with the unemployment benefits, with which the jobless must spend for subsistence. Thus, the upper and lower streams of the capitalist food chain have internally opposite class interests. The upper monopoly capital, represented by the TP and RP, obviously gets the upper hand. The lower monopoly capital, represented by the Democrats, has to fight hard to gain points. The most powerful of all is the monopoly banking capital that wants to force the jobless to borrow by mortgaging their income for life. It hates the jobless benefits. If at all I were to say anything on this I would simply say, LOOKS like we are in the sub Sahara state. Like most Greeks here, he has, over the past few months, spent more time watching television than conducting commerce, as Greek politicians veered from one political crisis to another. His imagination has been battered with all possibilities of a disaster, not least the prospect that Greece might leave the euro.  The effect on his small business — which he says may have to close — has been devastating. His regular customers, most of whom he rarely sees these days, owe him 14,000 euros, about $19,300. Those that he does see are looking to pawn their family heirlooms to get by. “The politicians are playing games with the people,” he said, his eyes red with exhaustion and stress. “This city is boiling. I am not a protester, but soon the top on the kettle will pop.”  I mean that is what they do, even if the economy is weak or strong. Laziness rules the minds and corruption eat the cash of others so why worry for the next day? Hmmm. I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

• http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Firozali A.Mulla

  Dr. Bill. Tuesday mornings are usually my best so as soon as I wake up I open the notebook to see who is up to cutting my wallet.
  1 Dr. Conrad Murray is convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of the star
  2 Hickstead, Beloved Show-Jumping Horse, Collapses And Dies At A Competition In Italy
  3 20 years since Magic’s HIV announcement
  A writer reflects on that fateful day and recalls how fans believed Magic’s days were numbered.
  4 I thought that the poor states were pirating the shows how do I know that now all want a piece of pie and make more money? American actress to play Princess Diana  Words, like flowers, have their colors too. -Ernest Rhys,
  One of the stars of “The Help” will portray the iconic royal in a story about an alleged romance. In September, the government reported that a record 46.6 million Americans were living in poverty. But a new report released Monday by the Census Bureau using a more sophisticated method to measure poverty rates has found that the true figure is even higher: 49.1 million, or 16 percent of all Americans.. I wonder how many of those don’t want to work, father children then leave or have children just to collect benefits from the government. And now, our government wants to change the inflation calculation so that more poor people pay higher taxes and plunges even more people into poverty. This is to cut spending while they continue to give billions to the greedy corporations and rich. It unimaginable to raise the taxes on the rich but it’s ok to raise the taxes on the poor and elderly That is one thing that beats the Einstein’s law Tax , population , food prices , rents etc. They never come down only apple will 46.6 million “poor”= 20.5 million of then have nice HD big screen TVs, nice new cars, and 3+ kids. 29 million of them are illegal (committing a Federal Offense). 10 million are on drugs (use my tax money to buy their drugs). 30 million of them are just too lazy and uninspired to get a job, commit to their community, and stop having kids. So….maybe 10 million are considered approved for a “poor” pt.
  4 I do not believe this, Why banks may not mind losing customers   There’s a reason bank execs don’t seem worried about losing depositors to credit unions
  5 Why banks may not mind losing customers
  There’s a reason bank execs don’t seem worried about losing depositors to credit unions &  add A federal judge on Monday gave final approval to a $410 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit affecting more than 13 million Bank of America customers who had debit card overdrafts during the past decade. Senior U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King said the agreement was fair and reasonable, even though it drew criticism from some customers because they would only receive a fraction of what they paid in overdraft fees. The fees were usually $35 per occurrence.”It’s really undisputed that this is one of the largest settlements ever in a consumer case,” said Aaron Podhurst, a lead attorney for the customer class.
  6 Strike one more blow against UFO conspiracy theories. The U.S. government is not in contact with any extraterrestrials from other worlds, nor has any confirmed proof of alien life been found, White House officials say. “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race,” Phil Larson of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy wrote in a statement published Friday (Nov. 4). “In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.” I know they are the cleverest of the clever ones. But all can make mistakes do they not? I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA
   
   
   

• http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Firozali A.Mulla

  Dr. Bill I just read this one and we are dragging ourselves in the huge hole of no return Greece is a country at the heart of the current European financial crisis. The country had entered the European Union under the administration by manipulating its financial data so that it appeared to conform to the European Union’s exacting financial requirements. It had then kept the truth about its debt and deficits from the EU until a scandal brought down the administration of Prime Minister Kostas  Karamanlis in 2009 and incoming prime minister George Papandreou and his administration  quickly discovered the catastrophic depths of their country’s financial problems: “The long-term picture was … bleak. In addition to its roughly $400 billion (and growing) of outstanding government debt, the Greek number crunch­ers had just figuredout that their government owed another $800 billion or more in pensions. Add it  all up and you got about $1.2 trillion, or more than a quarter-million dollars forevery working Greek. Against $1.2 trillion in debts, a $145 billion bailout was clearly more of a gesture than a solution. And those were just the official numbers;the truth is surely worse. ‘Our people went in and couldn’t believe what they found,’ a senior IMF official told me, not long after he’d returned from the IMF’s firstGreek mission. ‘The way they were keeping track of their finances – they knew how much they had agreed to spend, but no one was keeping track of what he had actually spent. It wasn’t even what you would call an emerging economy. It was a third world country.’…”In just the past twelve years the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms – and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected bypublic officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national rail­road has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago  a successful business­man turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs:  it’s still true. ‘We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,’ Manos put it to me. ‘And yet there isn’t a single private com­pany in Greece with that kind of average pay.’ The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland’s. Greeks who send their children to pub­lic schools simply assume that they will need to hire private tutors to make sure they actually learn something. “There are three government-owned defence companies: together they have billions of euros in debts, and mounting losses. The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as ‘arduous’ is as early as fifty-five for men and fifty for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than six hundred Greek professions some­how managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hair­dressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on. The Greek public health-care system spends far more on supplies than the European average – and it is not uncommon, several Greeks tell me, to see nurses and doctors leaving the job with their arms filled with paper towels and diapers and whatever else they can plunder from the supply closets.” I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

• http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ Firozali A.Mulla

  Dr. Bill A trying commeny but it is here I regret.Is the Corporate same behaved as politics when it comes to talks? Let us see what we have this evening? A charged exchange accidentally broadcast to reporters could spark tensions with a key ally Yes this is French calling the Israel minister and Obama says, “Yes I have to deal with him daily” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech on Monday night that her aides are billing as a major address regarding the challenge facing U.S. foreign policy toward the Arab Spring, and how the United States balances its security interests with its support for expanding democratic rights in the region. “For the Middle East, this has been a year like no other. In Tunis, Cairo and a newly free Tripoli, I have met people lifted by a sense that their futures actually belong to them. In my travels across the region, I have heard joy, purpose and newfound pride,” Clinton said in remarks at the National Democratic Institute’s gala event. “But I’ve also heard questions. I’ve heard scepticism about American motives and commitments; people wondering if, after decades of working with the governments of the region, America doesn’t — in our heart of hearts — actually long for the old days.” “The speech takes on the hard questions that people in the region — and people back here — have been asking about the U.S. government’s policy response to the Arab Spring,” a State Department official told The Cable. Explaining that the United States isn’t driving the events in the region, Clinton proceeded to repeat and then answer several of the questions she has heard at home and abroad about the administration’s response to the Arab spring. Here are the questions she posed to herself, in bold, followed by her answers. Does the Obama administration really believe democratic change is in America’s interest? “We begin by rejecting the false choice between progress and stability…America pushed for reform, but often not hard enough. Today, we recognize that the real choice is between reform and unrest,” she said. “So the risks posed by transitions will not keep us from pursuing positive change. But they do raise the stakes for getting it right.”  Why does the United States seem to promote democracy in some Arab countries — such as Egypt, Libya, Syria — but not in others, like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen? “Situations vary dramatically from country to country. It would be foolish to take a one-size-fits-all approach and barrel forward regardless of circumstances on the ground,” Clinton said. “Our choices also reflect other interests in the region with a real impact on Americans’ lives — including our fight against al Qaeda; defence of our allies; and a secure supply of energy… Fundamentally, there is a right side of history. We want to be on it.” What will the United States do if democracy brings anti-U.S. governments to power? “The suggestion that faithful Muslims cannot thrive in a democracy is insulting, dangerous, and wrong. They do it in this country every day,” Clinton said. “Parties committed to democracy must reject violence; they must abide by the rule of law and respect the freedoms of speech, association, and assembly; they must respect the rights of women and minorities; they must let go of power if defeated at the polls; and, in a region with deep divisions within and between religions, they cannot be the spark that starts a conflagration. In other words, what parties call them is less important than what they do.”This was then even now the words are used very oddly in presence on in the press. I believe that stones hurt me and word do not but I will sleep not well un till I get that**** I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA