Business performance & corporate social responsibility

Management Services, Jul 2002 by Stainer, Alan

Conference Report

The International Centre for Business Performance and Corporate Responsibility at Middlesex University Business School, has been established by Professors Michael Hopkins and Alan Stainer. One of the major challenges and the raison d'etre of the Centre is to create awareness as well as provide relevant and meaningful measures and paradigms to aid in corporate social responsibility (CSR) decision-making within the workplace. In order to carry this vital issue forward the Business School held a One-Day Conference entitled `Business Performance and Corporate Social Responsibility'. This was held at the historic venue of the National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place, London, on Thursday 4 April 2002.

The rationale for this Conference was to highlight that there exists a definite link between social and financial performance. This is especially true when looking at the relevance of intangible assets, such as reputation and knowledge networks which can turn into a source of market value and a competitive advantage. Moreover, a point of focus was to portray that CSR should not be perceived simply as an add-on or as purely philanthropic but must be formulated as a corporate strategy in the pursuit of business success.

The Conference was attended by about 80 people from various parts of the world and consisted of a blend of practitioners from both the public and private sectors as well as academics. It was opened by the Rt Hon John Redwood MP, former Cabinet Minister. He stressed the paramount importance of customer relations, and hence satisfaction, in the field of competitive advantage. However, he strongly warned CSR leaders not to ignore the core business financial objectives.

The day included two internationally renown keynote speakers: Sandra Waddock from Boston College, USA, and Robert Rubinstein from Brooklyn Bridge-- Connections to the Future, Holland. The former spoke of the performance implications of the new business imperative, that is corporate responsibility, whilst the latter expanded further on the theme and highlighted triple bottom line investing. Their thoughts converged by emphasising that businesses must inevitably concentrate on sustainable development by continually adding environmental and social values to economic value.

There were three lively panel sessions, stimulating much discussion and debate both for and against, under the broad headings of `Business and CSR, `Organisational Performance and CSR' and `The Development Case: CSR and Performance'. The panel members represented organisations such as BT, Good Corporation, mhc international Ltd, Global Risk Management Services, the European Commission and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. In addition to these sessions, thirteen papers were presented on a wide range of topics revealing their inter-relationship with CSR.

These consisted of

* Labour as a Driver of Enterprise and Economic Success

(ILO,Geneva),

* CSR Green Paper on Competitiveness

(European Commission)

* European Sustainable Business

Framework

(Erasmus University, Rotterdam),

* CSR and Organisational Performance: An Empirical Study of Employee Participation in Two UK SME Sectors

(Middlesex University)

* Value Reporting

(PricewaterhouseCoopers)

* Assessing the Effectiveness of Shareholder Engagement on SRI Issues

(Pensions & Investment Research Consultants)

* The Business Case for CSR Where are We?

(mhc international Ltd)

* A Framework for CSR Management

(KPMG)

* Total Productivity -A Stakeholder Perspective

(Middlesex University and the University of Hertfordshire)

* Employee Volunteering - The Great Dumbing Down

(Response Consulting Ltd)

* Ethical Dimensions of Total Quality Management

(Universiti Degli Studi di Brescia, Middlesex University and University of Hertfordshire)

* Profit from Profit Distribution An Approach to Corporate Charitable Giving

(More Good)

* Is a Safer Enterprise a More Profitable Enterprise?

(Middlesex University).

For the attendees, what transpired was that the learning emanated as much from the questions as from the answers as well as through the networking interaction.

The overall impression, provided by speakers and delegates alike, is that corporate social responsibility is on the 'hot list' of emerging social phenomena. Hence, there is the need firstly to convince organisations, large, medium or small, public or private, to behave in a socially responsible manner, through the proof that this is good for business, especially in the long term and secondly to provide the impetus for ensuring that their activities seek to increase positive and reduce negative impacts on their stakeholders.

It has become even more apparent that financial measures of performance alone are being increasingly perceived by business as inadequate for the control of the complex organisations of today.

A note of caution would be that the speed of performance measurement review and application can be tempered by the organisation's objectives, culture and experiences. Moreover, performance measurement and its systems must be a continuous procedure as the benefits are considerable. Focusing on this issue would institutionalise target changes in the management process and galvanise management action.