Jeff Hamaoui is Founder & President of Cazneau. In this interview with Dr Wayne Visser, Director of CSR International, he talks about the need for forging cross-sector partnerships in order to make social innovation possible. The interview took place in San Francisco on 16 September 2010.
Monday, December 20, 2010
CSR in Finland
Guest blog by Arno Kourula
Finland is a highly developed and educated northern European republic and European Union member country with approximately 5.2 million inhabitants. Since the second World War, Finland has transformed from a farm and forest economy to a diversified modern industrial economy. In this Nordic welfare state, public institutions have traditionally played a significant role in providing a societal safety net and levelling inequalities.
Since the recession of the early 1990s, the country has increasingly opened its financial markets, the energy and telecommunications sectors have internationalized and been privatized, and a large information and communication technology sector has developed lead by Nokia. According to international rankings, the country is one of the least corrupt and of the most competitive nations in the world.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has traditionally been largely implicit in nature, meaning that the state is assumed to take care of social issues and there has not been as strong a philanthropic tradition as in many countries. Nonetheless, a more explicit form of CSR has emerged, although gradually and unevenly. CSR has expanded from quality and environmental management trends towards a more comprehensive understanding of sustainability. Finnish companies have been relatively progressive in CSR and they perceive it as a potential competitive advantage.
Current priority issues in the area include employment practices, ethical consumption, the environment and climate change, competitiveness and cultural adaptation (i.e. operations of Finnish companies abroad). Compared with other European countries, Finland scores high on CSR aspects, such as sustainability reporting, explicit value statements, codes of conduct, adoption of management standards, membership in CSR organisations and networks, and participation in socially responsible investment. In the 2007 State of Responsible Competitiveness evaluation by AccountAbility, Finland is in 3rd place globally.
A key driver for Finnish CSR is legislation and government representatives tend to hold the view that the primary role of the state is to provide a legal framework within which business operates. The government emphasises the voluntary aspect of CSR in its public policy and has not been very keen on promoting Finland as a CSR frontrunner. Key pieces of legislation related to employment, accounting, social security and environmental protection form the baseline for corporate social responsibility. The Finnish government also promotes key international initiatives such as the OECD guidelines, UN Global Compact, and ILO principles.
Key CSR organizations in Finland include the the Committee on Social and Corporate Responsibility (a multistakeholder roundtable organized by the Ministry for Employment and the Economy), the Confederation of Finnish Industries, Finnish Business and Society (an enterprise network) and the Central Chamber of Commerce (ICC Finland).
While most universities in Finland offer courses related to CSR, institutions with larger programs on CSR both in teaching and research include Aalto University, Hanken School of Economics, Turku School of Economics, University of Jyväskylä, and the University of Tampere. All in all, Finland is an interesting case of relatively high adoption of CSR with best practices of CSR initiatives implemented by companies such as Nokia and Kesko.
Source
Based on extracts from the chapter on Finland by Arno Kourula, Project Manager at Aalto University School of Economics, in The World Guide to CSR (Greenleaf, 2010).
Finland is a highly developed and educated northern European republic and European Union member country with approximately 5.2 million inhabitants. Since the second World War, Finland has transformed from a farm and forest economy to a diversified modern industrial economy. In this Nordic welfare state, public institutions have traditionally played a significant role in providing a societal safety net and levelling inequalities.
Since the recession of the early 1990s, the country has increasingly opened its financial markets, the energy and telecommunications sectors have internationalized and been privatized, and a large information and communication technology sector has developed lead by Nokia. According to international rankings, the country is one of the least corrupt and of the most competitive nations in the world.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has traditionally been largely implicit in nature, meaning that the state is assumed to take care of social issues and there has not been as strong a philanthropic tradition as in many countries. Nonetheless, a more explicit form of CSR has emerged, although gradually and unevenly. CSR has expanded from quality and environmental management trends towards a more comprehensive understanding of sustainability. Finnish companies have been relatively progressive in CSR and they perceive it as a potential competitive advantage.
Current priority issues in the area include employment practices, ethical consumption, the environment and climate change, competitiveness and cultural adaptation (i.e. operations of Finnish companies abroad). Compared with other European countries, Finland scores high on CSR aspects, such as sustainability reporting, explicit value statements, codes of conduct, adoption of management standards, membership in CSR organisations and networks, and participation in socially responsible investment. In the 2007 State of Responsible Competitiveness evaluation by AccountAbility, Finland is in 3rd place globally.
A key driver for Finnish CSR is legislation and government representatives tend to hold the view that the primary role of the state is to provide a legal framework within which business operates. The government emphasises the voluntary aspect of CSR in its public policy and has not been very keen on promoting Finland as a CSR frontrunner. Key pieces of legislation related to employment, accounting, social security and environmental protection form the baseline for corporate social responsibility. The Finnish government also promotes key international initiatives such as the OECD guidelines, UN Global Compact, and ILO principles.
Key CSR organizations in Finland include the the Committee on Social and Corporate Responsibility (a multistakeholder roundtable organized by the Ministry for Employment and the Economy), the Confederation of Finnish Industries, Finnish Business and Society (an enterprise network) and the Central Chamber of Commerce (ICC Finland).
While most universities in Finland offer courses related to CSR, institutions with larger programs on CSR both in teaching and research include Aalto University, Hanken School of Economics, Turku School of Economics, University of Jyväskylä, and the University of Tampere. All in all, Finland is an interesting case of relatively high adoption of CSR with best practices of CSR initiatives implemented by companies such as Nokia and Kesko.
Source
Based on extracts from the chapter on Finland by Arno Kourula, Project Manager at Aalto University School of Economics, in The World Guide to CSR (Greenleaf, 2010).
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business
By Wayne VisserI wanted to share details of a new article of mine, "The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business", just published in the Journal of Business Systems, Governance and Ethics. It distils the essence of my forthcoming book of the same title (out on 18 February 2011) and is downloadable as a Pdf below.
Abstract
This paper argues that CSR, as a business, governance and ethics system, has failed. This assumes that success or failure is measured in terms of the net impact (positive or negative) of business on society and the environment. The paper contends that a different kind of CSR is needed if we are to reverse the current direction of many of the world’s most pressing social, environmental and ethical trends. The first part of the paper reviews business’s historical progress over the Ages and Stages of CSR: moving through the Ages of Greed, Philanthropy, Marketing and Management, using defensive, charitable, promotional and strategic CSR approaches respectively. The second part of the paper examines the Three Curses of Modern CSR (incremental, peripheral and uneconomic), before exploring what CSR might look like in an emerging Age of Responsibility. This new CSR – called systemic or radical CSR, or CSR 2.0 – is based on five principles (creativity, scalability, responsiveness, glocality and circularity) and forms the basis for a new DNA model ofresponsible business, built around the four elements of value creation, good governance, societal contribution and environmental integrity.
Reference
Visser, W. (2010) The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business, Journal of Business Systems, Governance and Ethics 5(3): 7-22. November, Special Issue on Responsibility for Social and Environmental Issues.
Download
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
CSR in Malaysia
By Roger Haw Boon HongCSR is not a freshly minted idea to Malaysians; the term might be new to some, but not the concept. CSR principles epitomise the fundamental religious and social values that have held together the very fabric of Malaysian society for millennia.
There are some priorities issues have been covered in this context such as community and social welfare aspects, education, environment, workplace practices, culture and heritage. For instance, over 1,000 community and social welfare projects were implemented in 2008, compared to 350 projects in 1998. Studies have shown that the number of students who obtained scholarships for pursuing various levels of education has increased by 300% within the ten year period 1995–2005.
Since 2000, almost 55% of companies in Malaysia have prioritised environmental protection plans in their projects, as compared to only 10–15% in 1980. According to ASRIA’s studies carried out in 2008, 47% of companies in Malaysia are practising good workplace ethics to create a vibrant, healthy environment for their employees. In 1980, only 5% of corporations were willing to support cultural and heritage projects or events, compared to 35% today.
The Ansted Social Responsibility International Award (ASRIA) has helped to raise awareness about the need for business to be legitimate in the eyes of the public. It seems that the number of listed companies reporting environmental information has increased from 30 in 1999 to 138 in 2007. Disclosure of social performance has risen similarly, from 28 companies in 2002 to 43 in 2003. CSR is not only a large company phenomenon. In 2008, 58% of small companies contributed to society ‘in a big way’, as compared to 18% in 1998, a 40% increase within a ten-year period.
A series of prestigious awards such as ASRIA, MESRA, the Prime Minister’s CSR Awards and StarBiz-ICR Malaysia Corporate Responsibility Awards have been recognising companies that have made a difference to the communities in which they operate through their CSR programmes. The percentage of media reporting on CSR has increased from 35% to 45% between 1980 and 2003, and from 45% to 87% between 2004 and 2008.
In the 2007 budget, the government announced that all listed companies are required to disclose CSR activities in their annual financial reports, including their employment composition by race and gender, as well as programmes undertaken to develop domestic vendors. Recognising that the private sector has been successful in implementing CSR projects for the benefit of low-income groups, the government has established a CSR fund, with an initial sum of MYR50 million (USD15 million), to jointly finance selected CSR projects.
Businesses in Malaysia do not operate in a vacuum. They work with multiple suppliers and customers, who in turn have their own sets of suppliers and customers. The listed companies also have to answer to investors. These are parties who can persuade a company to buy into the concept of CSR. Nowadays, the majority of companies in Malaysia have started to put CSR into practice, while many NGOs have been supporting those responsible companies.
Source
This blog is based on the Malaysia chapter in The World Guide to CSR (Greenleaf, 2010) by Roger Haw Boon Hong. Roger is Professor in Corporate Social Responsibility at Ansted University and Founder and Chairman of the Ansted Social Responsibility International Award (ASRIA).
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Video: Ellen Weinreb on Trends in the Sustainability Jobs Market
Ellen Weinreb is Founder of Sustainability Jobs. In this interview with Dr Wayne Visser, Director of CSR International, she discusses the sustainability jobs market. The interview took place in San Francisco on 16 September 2010.
Friday, November 26, 2010
The Era of "Leading Big" on CSR Dawns: Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan
By Wayne Visser“This world has tremendous challenges. The challenges of poverty, of water, of global warming, climate change. And businesses like ours have a role to play in that. And frankly, to me, that's very appealing.” So said Unilever CEO, Paul Polman, in a 2009 interview with McKinsey. He went on to say, “We have every day, in our business, about two billion consumers that use our brands, and so [there is] a tremendous opportunity. And if we do the right thing, we can actually make major progress in society.”
This drive to make a major difference seems, if anything, to have got bigger over the past year. At least, that’s the impression you get from Unilever’s new Sustainable Living Plan, which it launched last week. In it, they committed to double the size of the company, while halving the environmental footprint of their products, sourcing 100% of their agricultural ingredients sustainably by 2015 and helping 1 billion people out of poverty.
Commitments like that are what Sandy Ogg, Chief HR Officer for Unilever, calls “leading big”. Speaking to Polly Courtice, Director of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership earlier this year, he said, “There’s so much going on now in the world that if you don’t have amplification and time compression, then it doesn’t rumble. So I call that leading big. You can’t let it drool or dribble out into an organisation like ours and expect to have any impact.”
Jim Collins, author of Built to Last and Good to Great, calls it having a BHAG – a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. And Unilever is certainly not the first. In 1994, Interface’s CEO Ray Anderson committed to become the first "restorative” company in the world (giving back more than they take) and by 1996, outdoor clothing company Patagonia was only using organic cotton. More recently, Wal-Mart has committed to zero waste and 100% renewable energy; Coca-Cola has pledged to become water neutral; and Tesco plans to become carbon neutral.
The fact of the matter is that without “leading big” on sustainability and responsibility, CSR efforts no longer have any real credibility. That’s because there is overwhelming data to show that past efforts – CSR 1.0 approaches – have failed to reverse problems like biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, income inequality and corruption. Instead, continued unsustainable and irresponsible production and consumption has meant business is still more part of the problem than the solution.
“Leading big” is absolutely essential if we are break this pattern of CSR ineffectiveness. When people ask what CSR 2.0 really means, there are two ways to answer. One is to say that it is about a more systemic approach to CSR, one that tackles the roots of the problem, by applying the principles of creativity, scalability, responsiveness, glocality and circularity to the DNA of the business, namely through value creation, good governance, societal contribution and environmental integrity.
The second answer, which is far simpler and no less true, is to say that the dual ‘acid test’ of CSR 2.0 is admission and ambition. Companies have to be prepared to face up (and ‘fess’ up) to their impacts; to admit that they are still a long way from being truly sustainable and responsible; even to concede that they are part of the problem. And then companies have to show their ambition, their willingness to set bold, audacious targets that will reverse the negative social and environmental trends.
In today’s world of low-trust and information overload, only bold leadership on CSR will inspire action and build credibility. Unilever and others are pointing the way and deserve our congratulations and support. They also require our unrelenting scrutiny, to ensure that “leading big” is not simply “talking big”, but rather “acting big” – making real change happen at scale and at pace.
This drive to make a major difference seems, if anything, to have got bigger over the past year. At least, that’s the impression you get from Unilever’s new Sustainable Living Plan, which it launched last week. In it, they committed to double the size of the company, while halving the environmental footprint of their products, sourcing 100% of their agricultural ingredients sustainably by 2015 and helping 1 billion people out of poverty.
Commitments like that are what Sandy Ogg, Chief HR Officer for Unilever, calls “leading big”. Speaking to Polly Courtice, Director of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership earlier this year, he said, “There’s so much going on now in the world that if you don’t have amplification and time compression, then it doesn’t rumble. So I call that leading big. You can’t let it drool or dribble out into an organisation like ours and expect to have any impact.”
Jim Collins, author of Built to Last and Good to Great, calls it having a BHAG – a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. And Unilever is certainly not the first. In 1994, Interface’s CEO Ray Anderson committed to become the first "restorative” company in the world (giving back more than they take) and by 1996, outdoor clothing company Patagonia was only using organic cotton. More recently, Wal-Mart has committed to zero waste and 100% renewable energy; Coca-Cola has pledged to become water neutral; and Tesco plans to become carbon neutral.
The fact of the matter is that without “leading big” on sustainability and responsibility, CSR efforts no longer have any real credibility. That’s because there is overwhelming data to show that past efforts – CSR 1.0 approaches – have failed to reverse problems like biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, income inequality and corruption. Instead, continued unsustainable and irresponsible production and consumption has meant business is still more part of the problem than the solution.
“Leading big” is absolutely essential if we are break this pattern of CSR ineffectiveness. When people ask what CSR 2.0 really means, there are two ways to answer. One is to say that it is about a more systemic approach to CSR, one that tackles the roots of the problem, by applying the principles of creativity, scalability, responsiveness, glocality and circularity to the DNA of the business, namely through value creation, good governance, societal contribution and environmental integrity.
The second answer, which is far simpler and no less true, is to say that the dual ‘acid test’ of CSR 2.0 is admission and ambition. Companies have to be prepared to face up (and ‘fess’ up) to their impacts; to admit that they are still a long way from being truly sustainable and responsible; even to concede that they are part of the problem. And then companies have to show their ambition, their willingness to set bold, audacious targets that will reverse the negative social and environmental trends.
In today’s world of low-trust and information overload, only bold leadership on CSR will inspire action and build credibility. Unilever and others are pointing the way and deserve our congratulations and support. They also require our unrelenting scrutiny, to ensure that “leading big” is not simply “talking big”, but rather “acting big” – making real change happen at scale and at pace.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Reflection on "What the Green Movement Got Wrong"
By Wayne Visser
Last night, the UK’s Channel 4 showed a documentary called ‘What the Green Movement Got Wrong’. In some ways, it reminded me of The Apprentice – designed to spark conflict and generate publicity, but having very little to do with inconvenient reality. And of course, it succeeded. The live debate that followed drew indignant responses from the likes of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and George Monbiot. And while I shared some of their frustration, I am rather less inclined to trash the show.
The fact of the matter is that it raised some important questions about the ‘greens’ (although only the media still uses such an outdated label). Do they rely more on ideology and emotions than science and economics? Have they been right in their belligerent opposition to nuclear and GMOs? Is their distrust in corporations and new technology really justified? Do they slip into the trap of caring more about ‘green things’ than people, especially poor people in developing countries? For example, did they resist the use of DDT to control malaria?
Well, first we have to ask, who are ‘they’? The documentary lumped these mysterious ‘greens’ into one amorphous mass, creating the impression that it is a cogent and unified movement. Paul Hawken, in Blessed Unrest, estimates that there are over 2 million organisations around the world working on issues of social justice and environmental sustainability. What are the chances that they agree on anything, let alone the contentious issues of nuclear energy and GMOs?
The truth is that every movement, including sustainability and responsibility, has the full spectrum of players, from conservatives and Luddites to liberals and techno-optimists. There are those who believe that business and the market are the yellow brick road to utopia, and those who believe that only government policy can take us ‘over the rainbow’. There are pro-nuke and anti-nuke, pro-GMO and anti-GMO and all sorts of liquorice flavours in between.
Leaving the quality of the documentary aside (it was one-sided and contained various factual errors), the freedom to debate the issues is critical. If there’s one thing that drives me mad, it’s the demonization of anyone who happens to disagree with the crowd – and let’s be honest, the sustainability and responsibility ‘crowd’ does suffer from group-think mentality on many issues. Ideology, preconceived ideas and entrenched positions are stronger than most will admit.
My point is that debate is good. Dialogue is even better, but that requires listening, rather than defending dug-in bunker-mentality views. Dialogue is never going to happen in the bright lights of entertainment TV. But we do have a chance now, in the aftermath, to dialogue. The question is, are we mature enough to do so. When last did you change your mind on a key sustainability or justice issue? Are we prepared to practice what we preach about stakeholder engagement?
It was clear that Channel 4 had no intention of being either fair or transparent. As Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth pointed out during the live debate, they requested that they be interviewed so as to include their views in the documentary, but Channel 4 refused. No surprise there. Channel 4 is not about balanced programming, it is about poking the hornet’s nest to boost viewers and ratings; a sort of documentary version of Jerry Springer if you like.
In the final analysis, the documentary and the debate that followed belong to the last century. The world – and the sustainability and responsibility movement – has long since moved on from simplistic black or white, green or red, market or state, pro or anti thinking. We are in the era of complexity, of hybrid technologies and cross-sector partnerships, of multi-level governance and multi-stage CSR. We must resist the tabloid-style return to cardboard caricatures and melodramatic mudslinging.
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