Hack:
Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) compatible with business as usual?

CSR is a reflection of the bigger philosophy that is sustainability. Sustainability – and its operational form sustainable development – is by turns a philosophy, an ethical perspective, a means to protect the planet, a form of corporate responsibility, an envisioning of a future and a means measure the gap between where we are and where we would like to be. As a concept, it has existed for centuries, but has really come into its own in the last 40 years, as greater attention is placed upon environmental degradation and social inequity. However, we do not seem any closer to truly understanding the concept or to enable its delivery.  It is a concept that people agree is important (much like ‘motherhood and apple pie’) but cannot agree what it actually is or how it may be implemented to improve the Earth’s survival chances. I have spent much of my academic career trying to get to grips with the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability, which generates a confused (at best) notion of what a sustainable world would actually look like. It is contestable and subjective and open to interpretation, abuse and misrepresentation.  It has also been ‘captured’ – i.e. subsumed into a more generalised framework where the term may sound the same but where the meaning may be subtly changed so that it appears to follow a consensus but actually fulfils another agenda.  This may be examined in a business context in the use of the word in the World Council on Business and Sustainability’s name (hence suggesting that business is the ‘guardian’ of sustainability), or implicit, as in an organisation’s use of the environmental management system ISO 14000 to act as a management tool (in other words integrating the concept into traditional management practices rather than addressing it as a holistic challenge).  It may even be unacknowledged that there is capture – businesses who, for instance, pursue a reporting regime which itself determines what is or is not acceptable to report are capturing the concept of sustainability to legitimise their activities or to promote partial accountability without realising that there is more to the concept than environmental management or equal opportunities for employees.

Hence the confusion.  What this hack attempts to do is suggest that a more radical viewpoint that may reveal what sustainability is or isn’t and how it may or may not be successful in guiding individuals, organisations, institutions and nations to form behaviours that lead to a better future. In terms of organisations and management  the hack asks: how can we as management thinkers transform our ways of thinking (and hence our actions) so that business may play a greater role in delivering sustainable development? How can our organisations be managed so that they are more transparent, co-operative, meritocratic, open and self determined (the features of Management 2.0)?

So what actually is ‘sustainability’? Any definition must consider the ‘three-legged stool’ of the environment, the social and the economic; that is each of these should be considered both separately and in an integrated way. It must also incorporate the eco-justice aspects of intra and intergenerational human equity – fairness across the globe which extends to those humans yet unborn.  This is a  very difficult idea in terms of balance – how easily can we reconcile the concept of, say, preserving environmental assets for future generations if this means that some humans alive today (say those in developing countries) are denied access to the same assets in order to preserve them? A further consideration is interspecies equity – fairness towards other species in the way we frame our relationship with them.  To take a ‘deeper green view’ (a more radical environmental position) in this respect would be to extend interspecies equity to being fairness in the relationship between one species and another – whatever the life form.  This would require the conferment of rights and responsibilities to all species. 

Haughton set out these features in 1995 as five principles:

• Futurity – considering future generations (human and non-human)
• Social justice – intra-generational equity
• Transfrontier responsibility – geographical fairness, global equity
• Procedural equity – fair treatment of all people
• Interspecies equity – biodiversity considerations.

These all have social and environmental aspects.

The approach that I’ve taken to all this confusion is to follow the work of Hopwood and Mellor in 2005, who designed a means of examining each of the viewpoints held at the time and allocating them to a sphere of ‘status quo’, ‘reformation’ and ‘transformation’. This could be described as a spectrum from ‘no action’ to ‘a complete change’.  This spectrum not only helps to describe sustainability, but also what it isn’t. If we think of an imaginary line drawn between these two positions, then sustainability would cover the large distance between the two ends, but the ends themselves are not sustainable positions. Not taking any action (at the one end), say to reduce human-induced climate change, cannot be described as being sustainable development; and recreating society to become  a post-industrial utopia is also not a practical approach to sustainable development either.

What has this got to do with business and its operations? Isn’t this a governance issue best dealt with by national governments and international treaties? This may be what some businesses would like to argue, but as we have become an interdependent, globalised world, the part that business plays in all our lives and futures becomes significant.  Stakeholders demand better behaviour of the businesses they trade with, and require business values to align with their own.  The social contract demands that the two-way respect between business and its stakeholders be respected. I am suggesting we have positioned ourselves, and our businesses, on  the spectrum I describe above such that we are far too close to the ‘business as usual’ end.  We need to move along the spectrum to consider more radical ways of organising our business activities.

The alternative is a ‘radical’ or ‘countercurrent’ approach which is ecocentric (putting earth/nature at the heart of our activities) and seeks deep change to political, social and economic structures.  The less radical – let’s call them reformists – will argue that their position is likely to deliver more tangible results in the move to a more sustainable world, especially in developing CSR strategies. However, the reformists have taken a value position that allows them to justify their approach as the one which will achieve sustainability.  This is a pragmatist’s discourse. There will be unintended ideological consequences of such a position.  In doing so, the position will prioritise (some of) the natural world over (certain) people and maintain the power inherent in First World systems.

So , what transformations may take place and how may these be underpinned by appropriate frameworks?  It is clear that maintaining the current position on, say, climate change, will not lead to a more sustainable future; a reformist stance may only take us so far and may solve the immediate problems whilst creating longer term ones in their place.  Hence, from this it seems apparent that a transformative thinking may be the most suitable way to move towards sustainable development and close the sustainability gap.  The dominant discourses in management theorising have always prioritised the status quo, and now we need not only to reveal this process of prioritisation but also to reveal how these oppress other discourses – this needs to be overcome to reveal other meanings, stories, and truths. This provides a place for ecofeminist thought. I will consider this as part of my solution!