To Navigate Through the New Frontier of Corporate Social Responsibility, Use Your Moral Compass

Nancy L. Hohns, Executive Director, Public Relations, Marketing Communications Strategy,
The Anderson Group

 

Sustainability.  Corporate Social Responsibility. Business ethics.  These words are part of the new business language now being spoken in boardrooms of the largest organizations, and conference rooms of the smallest companies. Practically overnight thousands of experts have emerged who claim to know how to operate a business that is ethical, sustainable and profitable.  Many business enterprises, large and small, are scrambling to adopt practices, policies and programs that will allow them to develop a platform that is socially, morally and environmentally responsible. Are you one of them?

What propelled the rise of Corporate Responsibility is most likely a dismally shameful decade of Corporate Irresponsibility.  Since 2000, we’ve witnessed the downfall of some of the world’s most respected companies—Enron, Parmalat and WorldCom and to name a few.  More recently, we’ve learned that executives from American International Group, Inc. (AIG), who really ought to know something about risky behavior, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars pampering themselves at a posh California resort just days after the life insurance company they work for received a bailout from the federal government. Talk about a moral compass pointed in the wrong direction!

A seemingly never-ending series of corporate impropriety and scandal that has run the gamut from the exploitation of human labor in U.S. manufacturers’ overseas sweatshops to the unregulated and potentially dangerous practices in the food industry, has contributed to a growing public mistrust of major companies.  With a raised eyebrow and a fervent voice the public is insisting that these companies be held accountable for their unethical actions.

Consumers and company stakeholders have become more judgmental of the corporate world, and rightfully so. They are recognizing that a company’s actions can have a profound and lasting impact on people, on business, and on the environment, and they are demanding that companies take responsibility for their effect on society.

In today’s world where the consumer has near-instant access to information on a company and the products or services it offers, taking your brand to the next level relies on doing what is right and good, not just what is profitable.

Over the last several decades, assessments of a company’s worth have become more driven by intangible assets—the causes a company supports, the values it exudes on a regular basis, its inventiveness and propensity for innovation, its morale compass—and less driven by hard-asset valuations. Let’s be very clear.  Your across-the-board business behavior has a direct impact on both your reputation and your bottom line.  Consider that:

• Customers purchasing decisions are becoming increasingly more skewed to those companies whose vision, morals and principles square with their own.
• Employees are choosing to work for companies whose workplace ethics and practices they can respect and uphold—salary is no longer the only deciding factor.
• Focus on the triple bottom line of “People, Planet and Profit,” along with responsible leadership, governance and a strategic CSR platform are quickly becoming critical elements for organizational excellence and prosperity.

There is a compelling correlation between strong moral principles and business success. To achieve outstanding consumer mindshare, customer loyalty and trust, and the positive word-of-mouth that help a company build and sustain its brand, a company’s inner workings—as well as its heart and its mind—need to be authentic, transparent and above all, morally just.