Going Back in Time To understand the Future

The idea of Corporate Social Responsibility is anathema to me—wrong concept at least. Being responsible is a way of life. If one is responsible, it is in every thought and deed. CSR makes it seem as if it’s possible for business to do it differently, piecemeal, one initiative at a time. This has led to a plethora of programs and practices, each of which disperses effort and splinters responsibility. So much so that I think CSR may have become a big part of the problem it set out to solve.

I believe this is starting to change, but we must move the needle a bit faster if we are to achieve the deep intention for which CSR emerged. We must make the paradigms we are using more conscious and we must be ready to let go of some of the founding ideas of the current responsibility movement.

According to Henk Campher, who offered a guest blog for Aman Singh at Vault.com, there have been four phases thus far in CSR. His two-part article examines CSR’s history and practices. It is an excellent piece of research and thinking for consideration by anyone in the CSR field or aspiring to be. I see his work as making clear that various phases of social responsibility grew out of the awareness of increasing irresponsibility, which has been true for many movements. As a new problem or gap presented itself, a group of early detectors set out to raise awareness of the critical implications.

Campher’s research suggests that the term CSR was not really in extensive use until the 1970s. The boom in industry after WWII led to escalating profits on a massive scale and a lot of awareness within the community. Even leaders of business asked whether there should be some way to give back. Philanthropy, which had been more personal, became corporate as the first answer to that question.

Then exploding globalization led to disparities that added another note to the chorus of responsibility, the identification of irresponsible practices in offshoring work and avoiding taxes. Philanthropic and globalization ventures (fair labor and exchange) moved eventually into Corporate Citizenship (integrating profit and philanthropy—doing good and attracting respect) and finally into sustainability (merging green practices with increased profits and doing “good” socially).

To Campher’s four phases in the development of CSR, I will add two more, one before and one after. There was a time when responsibility was natural because a business—a craftsperson—knew the customer/consumer personally and therefore felt responsibility for how the business’s work affected the consumer’s life. The craftsperson could readily envision how they made the consumer’s life better and how they might provide even more benefit.

Gary Vanerchuk, author of The Thank You Economy, feels that natural responsibility based on knowing consumers intimately is still possible. I agree. I have worked to ensure it is designed into many huge companies as well as small businesses. They then also take on responsibility for the beneficial effects of their decisions on their communities and on Earth. Responsibility is then “built-in,” not “bolted-on” to work.

I think the next phase will be to bring us back to that level. Responsibility will become natural and internalized again. But several things must change before that can happen. Let me suggest three of the many here.

First: We have to stop working on saving, protecting, conserving, and restoring the environment. These ideas are not based on living systems or on creating healthy ecosystems.  Instead, we have to understand the working of Life-sheds and how we can engage with Life as an integral player in the ecosystem to support self-regenerating capacity. We have to stop thinking of Life-sheds as environments outside of us that we are responsible to steward, and know instead that humans and businesses are included in the working of Life, inside their ecosystems, not outside of them.

Second: We have to stop using market and customer research, classifying buyers by demographics and generally effacing the lives of the individuals we seek to benefit. We have to build champions inside our businesses who know and care for the lives of stakeholders outside our walls. Then we can be deeply responsible for the health, vitality, and fulfillment of people who trust and count on businesses to do what they cannot or do not want to do for themselves.

Third: We have to stop using the concept of suppliers and employees, especially as we conceive of their roles now. We have to re-imagine them as co-creators in the pursuit of beneficial effects in the lives of customers and other stakeholders.  A responsible business’s offerings flow continuously from Earth to Earth—from concept and resources all the way to reinvestment of “waste” into something of higher value than downwardly recycled compost. When we know that businesses are living systems within other living systems, then we understand that there are no supply chains. There are no chains, period. There are only value-adding processes.

These changes entail monumental paradigm shifts, not only for the non-believers among us but even more so for CSR professionals and social and responsibility entrepreneurs, as well.  As the character Pogo said in Walt Kelly’s cartoon strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The good news is that business has actually been responsible in the past and we still have it in our understanding. We need to educate ourselves first and then other, in how to see responsibility and use living systems thinking rather than what we call systems thinking and corporate social responsibility now.

Carol Sanford is the author of this guest blog and of The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success, Jossey Bass. It was Named to CNBCs Bullish on Books Shortlist to read for 2011 and called “the indispensible textbook for the responsibility movement” by Jack Covert’s 800CEOREAD. Visit her website for more information, carolsanford.com.

Come engage with Carol at BGI Seattle on March 24th as part of the Seattle CAIR series. More information HERE.