If only I had waited a few months to comment on CSR and The Economist
…as I read through another Economist special report on corporate social responsibility last week, I realized my November post pretty much summarizes my feelings about the new survey too. The “trendiest” layer of CSR – that which seeks to maximize opportunities to create value for good performance in environmental, social and governance issues – is trendy for a reason.
Unfortunately, some still ask the question: Does CSR work? If you take out the “social” – as I prefer – and say “Does corporate responsibility work?” it becomes a different question. Of course it works. More people are thinking about environmental, social and governance responsibilities and risk. While The Economist, rightly, is still pessimistic about those companies “spending other people’s money”, CSR is improving management systems. This certainly can’t be bad.
The concluding piece, Do it Right, was most interesting, but they brushed over some terms that need more attention. The next wave of corporate goodness “will be one of disruptive innovation”, featuring a new breed of ’social entrepreneur’ that will take over from the established big companies as a driving force.” Sounds like buzz-word dropping.
Disruptive innovation has been explored by others, and not exactly in the CSR category, though I can see the connections, especially to climate change. Social entrepreneur is still a term that needs a definition (and the link attempts to do give it one). I take the basic point from this last story that there is more “entrepreneur”-like energy going into how we think about, quantify and report on a bottom line that isn’t about financial indicators. Indeed, the entrepreneurial model of tackling social and environmental problems is likely to stir up the CSR world”. It is also stirring up the financial world. Again, this certainly can’t be bad.
January 28, 2008 at 6:27 pm
I think you’re right about the report; it was varied and felt a bit patchy, with some articles seemingly conflicting with others.
As for social entrepreneur, I don’t see why it needs a definition any more than entrepreneur does. It’s just someone with those same characteristics utilising/applying them for social benefit. That’s certainly the way we (at the School for Social Entrepreneurs) think of it: see What is a Social Entrepreneur?
Incidentally, there’s no reason why a social entrepreneur needs to be big scale (just as there is no necessity for “entrepreneur” to mean big scale), which is what a lot of people have issues with the article you link to above. See this post here, and the many comments below the article.
February 8, 2008 at 5:51 pm
You always find my posts on social entrepreneurs! Well, done. And thank you for adding clarity. But the survey could have used a bit more detail in discussing the topic. I accuse The Economist of buzzword-dropping.
April 27, 2009 at 6:41 pm
[...] voluntary nicety that companies partake in when business is going well. This goes against efforts, including my own humble ones, to draw attention to the obligatory elements of this what I prefer to call “corporate [...]