Corporate social responsibility takes centre stage in this month’s 35 Debate, our series of email dialogues in association with 35 Communications. Keen to provoke debate and promote best practice, 35 Communications asks: ‘Is CSR largely just an exercise in greenwashing?’:

YES says sustainability consultant Claire Milne, formerly campaigns coordinator at Labour Behind the Label and campaigns and parliamentary officer at the World Development Movement.

“People often assume that campaigners simply enjoy giving corporates a hard time. What gets overlooked is that real people’s lives are at stake – destroyed on a daily basis due to corporations’ pursuit of profits.Don’t get me wrong, it is not black and white; individuals within corporations are concerned about the welfare of people and the planet. From my perspective, corporate-led globalisation consists of a dangerous cocktail that results in unfathomable and inexcusable injustices being committed by corporations across the globe – and means CSR can be nothing but greenwash.

Firstly, corporations have a legal obligation to return the highest dividends to their shareholders. In light of this, CSR attempts are restricted to those actions that will maximise profits. Secondly, globalisation conveniently disconnects ‘consumers’ from the impacts of their purchases. I’m sure people would think twice about what they were buying, if they actually knew the people being exploited to produce it. When those people are on the other side of the world, it is easy to slip into ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mode. What’s more, the complexity that globalisation has introduced into supply chains means that, as corporations are quick to tell us, it’s now terribly complicated and expensive to address social and environmental injustices.

For me, the bottom line is that corporations operate in developing countries because it generates them vast profits. Whether a corporation ensures that these profits are not at the expense of people’s lives and the planet should not be optional – but it is.

And lastly, the very reason for corporations setting up shop around the world is that they can make vast profits by exploiting desperate workers and weak governments unable to insist on the protection of their environment. This means any company prioritising CSR is at a comparative disadvantage as – let’s face it – real CSR is not cheap. Combine this disadvantage then with: a public too disconnected from the impacts of their behaviour to demand ethical production; a legal obligation to maximise profits; and supply chains sufficiently complex to ensure no-one feels personally responsible or empowered to transform them – and it comes as little surprise that this voluntary approach to CSR has resulted in little more than spin.

What we effectively have is a system that has disempowered us from behaving in a way that fits with our personal values. I don’t believe that the millions of people working for corporations don’t give a damn about the impacts of their work. I believe people are inherently good, but that corporate-led globalisation has led us down a dark alley of addictions and distractions from real life and that prevent us from always having the strength to do what we know in our heart of hearts is the ‘right thing’ – to lead a life of integrity. Moreover, this system of corporate-led globalisation has disconnected us from even knowing what true happiness feels like. But the exciting thing is there’s life beyond CSR’s greenwash and spin. Firstly, The CORE coalition and campaigners across the country are working hard to persuade the UK government to regulate businesses so that it is no longer optional to ensure a corporation’s operations do not exploit people or the planet.

But more importantly, people are amazing and I have faith that those working for corporations and buying from them will start to take responsibility for the immense implications of our behaviour. Real people are having their lives destroyed and we are committing collective suicide through our destruction of the environment – so let’s all be honest and believe in our own strength to do something about these inexcusable injustices.”

NO says Dr Márcia Balisciano, director of corporate responsibility at Reed Elsevier.

“As one of our authors, management expert Peter Drucker, has noted, “leadership is [about] doing the right things.” Companies like my own know that corporate responsibility is not an add-on to the ‘normal’ business, not a public relations exercise, and not a nice-to-do. It is a fundamental part of daily operations (the way we go about our business), a differentiator in crowded and challenging markets, a must do. In difficult times – like these – being responsible is even more important. Focusing on the underlying values of the company can provide a way through the morass. Corporate responsibility increases employee retention, ameliorates risk, creates opportunity, and improves trust.

Research conducted by Stanford Graduate School of Business shows that MBAs at 11 top business schools would be willing to forgo 14% of their expected future salaries to work for a socially responsible firm. Corporate responsibility helps attract, keep and develop employees. In our business, its importance to staff is reflected in employee opinion surveys, with the highest scoring question typically: ‘Is Reed Elsevier an ethical company?’ We have established employee networks to engage 35,000 people on our, and their, prerogatives: for example, Green Teams, in over 75% of our locations, pursue environmental improvement through new processes, information campaigns, competitions, and social networking. We have a growing number of affinity groups like women’s forums, which allow diversity to be expressed in meaningful ways, while community engagement through our Reed Elsevier Cares programme builds employee skills in areas ranging from project management to communication. It requires a consistent focus on buy-in but it does pay off. Last year we increased volunteerism by 51% over the previous year.

Non-financial risk can lead to big financial problems if mishandled or overlooked. High corporate responsibility performers wary of losing market share, share price value, and more, work to ameliorate nonfinancial risk, for example, in their supply chains. Ours is large and geographically dispersed. So to hold suppliers to the same standards we set for ourselves, we have a Supplier Code modelled on our own Code of Ethics and Business Conduct stipulating adherence to all laws and best practice in areas like human rights, labour, and environment. We back this up with external and internal audits, supplier education, surveys, and remediation plans.

According to a recent study byWalker Information and the Council of Philanthropy, 88% of customers are more likely to recommend companies with high levels of investment in responsibility than others. In our company, innovative corporate responsibility related products and services are growing our business and benefitting society. For example, Procedures Consult gives doctors a way of maintaining their skills and knowledge through web-based simulation of essential medical techniques; TotalPatent is a single source for global patents, a primary driver in research and development; XpertHR helps practitioners advance good practice in people management; Energy Locate aggregates our energy offerings into a onestop community, using tools like blogs and video to advance knowledge.

A study of FTSE 250 companies by the Institute of Business Ethics showed that those with an ethical code in place for over five years outperformed the average. Indeed good practice – setting, monitoring and reporting externally on objectives and transparent interaction with stakeholders – avoids charges of greenwash and enhances trust. Our corporate responsibility information in the public domain serves as a catalyst for engagement, and we have found that participating in benchmarking exercises like the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, and comprehensive initiatives like the United Nations Global Compact, spotlights areas for improvement.

NGOs such as Friends of the Earth can and do lift standards across industries by working cooperatively with firms to improve their corporate responsibility performance, encouraging us to do more, better.”

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