A Critique of Pure Reason – Business forgot how to listen

May 11, 2012
Immanuel Kant Deutsch: Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Deutsch: Immanuel Kant (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Kant said; “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment…” (Critique of Pure Reason)

But it would seem that Business did not learn that listening meant one had to listen to somebody else than the ones that represent the status quo.

What happened when it became common sense and a taken for granted thinking, that any business venture claiming to be socially responsible had to have a direct link to the bottom-line? As a keen follower of CSR and developments within business ethics it seems that the discourse of Corporate Social Responsibility have steered of course and to some extend have fall down a cliff.

CSR was about (I thought) making a difference to society not because it made good business sense, but because it was the right thing to do. Now it seems to be the other way around. Even though I to a large extend blame Porter and Kramer for their so-called “shared value” they only tap into a discourse, which already existed in the mainstream business culture. That “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud “(Thanks, Friedman for making it clear). That in order to be a legitimate in business one had first of all to think of the bottom-line, that even though business might disclaim Freidman’s claim they continue to follow his credo. CSR have become a business opportunity rather than change in they way that business relate to the society and communities that they are a integrated part of.

It seems to me that companies that pursue profit in the name of CSR are trying to stand on both sides of the river. Claiming that they have not left their liberal roots, while at the same time trying desperately to convince their more critical stakeholders that they are continuing down the path of rightness.

However, at the core of CSR is the ability to see beyond narrow self-interest looking beyond profit seeking and towards doing the right thing rather than doing things right. I do not claim that any business will be any more successful, or that they will even have a better brand or see an increase in dedicated employees. What my argument is that in order to really and I do mean really, know ones business environment one have to be open, open in a way that puts aside narrow interests of division leaders and executive managers and beyond one owns business raison d’etre. Individual business leaders have to realise that their actions cannot only be guided by the search of “the business case” they will have to use their intelligence to incorporate the guidance of the people who is affected by their decisions.

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Volunteerism vs. Entrepreneurship

May 7, 2012

There aren’t enough good things to be said about young people doing voluntary work in areas of the world where educational and competency resources are scares. Volunteers help build schools in Costa Rica, they teach children and young people how to read and write in India and they help build NGO’s in South Africa. Further more they are motivated, able and make it possible for good projects to be realised because they do not require a big overhead.

For many volunteers it is a experience of a lifetime and expands not only their personal understanding of how the world works but also gives a opportunity to contribute in a very real way. In short volunteers makes a real difference for people for very real people.

However, when it comes to the development of a flourishing private sector, economic growth and sustainable development there is no substitute for the entrepreneur. To some extend the entrepreneur is competing against the volunteer at least this can be the case in some sectors. For instance when it comes to education there can be competition in the areas of higher education and specialised courses that could prevent higher quality firms involved in education creating a sustainable business platform. Or when takes up cleaning and reconstruction it could mean the “creative destruction” that Schumpeter talks about never happens simply because of the hit-and-run nature of volunteering.

I write this not to put down volunteering it is just stating a fact that if you compete against zero wages and zero profit you will almost certainly loose as a up and coming small business. So while we hail the volunteer we might consider that by doing good now one might be doing harm in the long-term separating people and society from creating and shaping their own future.

It is the nature of the entrepreneur to take a chance and to some extend take in a significant risk in order to gain first-mover advantage and maybe conquer a whole market. This risk is that the entrepreneur will loose everything that is invested in the project, but that is at the very hearth. In that way she or he is at the very front of what society needs in order to grow. Believing in something, taking a risk in order to accomplish the goal and harvesting the fruits of the hard work. And by doing that he or she is creating jobs, paying tax, creating new markets and innovating society.

As part of the analysis that any would be business creator will do is to evaluate if there is a market the product that might be introduced. The analysis will state if the market is either open for more competition or if it is saturated, if it possible to create a business model that can be scaled up or if it is a small business will continue to be small. A true game changer in that analysis would be if volunteering is part of business model used. For most, if not all entrepreneurs it would mean that he or she would find other places or other products to launch simply because you cant compete against zero wage and zero profit.

http://www.goabroad.com/

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Social media CSR myths – Crap in Crap out

April 22, 2012
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

It would seem that there should be a natural match between social media like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. and the voluntary engagement with stakeholders that is subscribed by most CSR professionals and academics. However, there might be a natural match but between the two in theory it seems that there is a long way to go when it comes to practice.

In my mind there are several things that goes wrong for social media practitioners when it comes to CSR communication.

First, practitioners fall in two categories. One is what I call old school communication people who looks at Social media as a channel that brings new possibilities to get the message through. They properly have a good understanding of the ins and outs of the CSR practiced in the organisation but they are limited by a marketing mind-set. The second category relative young people who understands the media and have been brought up with social media as a natural way to stay in touch with friends and family. However, they might not understand the organisations CSR in depth, its nuances and the challenges that come with having a much broader stakeholder outlook.

Second, social media driven by the users are a myth. Until this date I have not heard of a social media effort from a private or public organisations have a significant proportion of its contents provided by the organisation itself. Think about it, even though you are a member of a really great and interesting organisation would you spend all your time there? Properly not. But amazingly a lot of companies think that if they set up a social media platform and feed it with commercial, lobbyism briefs and sneak previews of their products people will happily engage and provide contents for their sites.

In reality most “successful” social media campaigns have been planned, driven and controlled by the organisations that benefited from the exposure, and users have been invited to participate only to support the already constructed message. There is no negotiation or co-construction of contents. There is no possibility to let the better argument win or possibility to provide alternative messages. The organisation or a professional communication bureau controls everything in the effort from A to Z and users are only puppets that can be played from a string.

When it comes to CSR communication this provides a real dilemma as transparency and engagement is central to our understanding of a truly socially responsible company. So what “normally” happens is that in order not to be perceived as manipulative organisations leave it the users to provide information and debate, which in the end make the whole social media effort a failure because people just don’t provide contents by themselves. Basically organisations are planning to fail in their social media CSR communication.

Third myth is that Social media is cheap. Who is your social media resource? If you are lucky you have half a person who is in charge of all the platforms available a daunting task of he or she is to provide a large proportion of the contents for the sites. However, organisations think that the majority of work is going to be done by the users and therefor do not provide any resources. Just like having a newspaper and only employing the editor, so to speak. If you want to do something serious about your online stakeholder engagement you need to allocate the resources needed in order to make it work. I have heard many business people who complain that that their social media activities are a failure, but when I ask what kind of resources has put into it, it is no surprise that they are not able to harvest the benefits. “Crap in Crap out” seem to be the prevailing model as with everything else in life.

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Apple story – Understanding your consumption

March 27, 2012

The apple story seem to continue to fascinate people and professionals. Even though that Foxconn is not only producing products for Apple that have become the all-time favorite when it comes to poor ethics management and lack of efficient control systems.

It is quite interesting that people can disregard corporate behavior if the brand of a company is strong enough. Most of my own students use Apple products and they are never surprised when I talk about the ethics record of the company. However, this knowledge does not seem to change their willingness to buy their products. Maybe because there is a wide consensus that most of the production facilities making hardware products in China are more or less branded as being in violation of Labour and Human Rights it does not hit Apple as hard. So while we know that Apple is in violation of these Rights at least we know what they are doing and at least it gives us some idea about their actions.

I received this quite informative infographic from Tony Shin, which I think highlight the case quite good. I know that some of my friends that specialize in Chines working conditions would regards some of theses issues as being quite “normal” and not really seen as a big issue inside China. However, the infrographic from Tony does give a opportunity for customers to gain knowledge about how their consumer goods are produced.

iKill
Created by: Tony Shin

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Getting to the context of CSR – Letting mentally handicapped people contribute

March 24, 2012

I think that we are becoming to preoccupied with communicating about CSR, on the business case and on showing the value of CSR on the balance sheet, when it is really about business doing a difference in society. We think that when one lives in a welfare state like Denmark, where the government will tender to all your needs there wouldn’t be any need for locally context based CSR activities other than sponsoring the local football club. But the thing is that there are plenty of opportunities for companies to make a real difference to people who really appreciate the effort.

As one of the many activities I engage in is my work with the Danish association LEV. LEV is a private national association for retarded people, relatives and others that were formed in 1952. Basically covering handicapped people ranging from Asperger and ADHD to people with Downs and other relative heavy diagnosis. People, who can function in society, but need varying degrees of support and structure in order to do so.

One of the biggest issues that these handicapped people have is that they are being shoved away in state sponsored initiatives and offers, where they are isolated from the rest of society. One could call it that the “blanket of the welfare state” has covered them protecting people from harm, but making them unable to move. This is of cause done with the best of intentions shielding the weak in society from all the bad things that could happen (and maybe also shielding society from them). But an unfortunate side effect is that these people become isolated, their personal development stagnates and they feel that they are not offered the opportunity to contribute to society like everybody else.

However, I’m sure that there is room for one or two people in every workplace that is not exactly fitting into our perception of normality. I am also sure that many institutions have tasks that are waiting for employees, who will take pride in doing the tasks that we normally never get done, because they are routine and mundane. It may well be that an employee who is disabled does not have the same skills and resources as the rest of us, but they have something to contribute that we all can benefit from.

Some companies have already discovered that working in close corporation with local NGO like LEV on specific areas can actually make CSR very real to employees and customers alike. Even though they have not framed the initiatives as CSR in their own communication their activities are testimonials to some of the values that guide them.

To many companies CSR have become something that is detached from the day-to-day operations. Initiatives that are within communicated as CSR are more or less reduced to CO2 emissions, Codes of Conducts, Signing charters and different forms of philanthropy. But it does not have to be like that. CSR can actually be much more concrete, down to earth and close to the employees. By inviting a handicapped person into the organisation one gets a real idea about the values and ethical outlook of the company one is part of. The handicapped that are willing and able are more than happy to be invited into companies, where they can earn their own money and contribute on an equal basis with other employees.

I’m not saying that it is easy and it does require that the people who are involved also knows what they are going into, but the organisational benefits are huge. Not only to the individual handicapped person, but also to the employees that work with them and to the company as a whole.

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