The flourishing of corporate responsibility

There is a phenomenon abroad in the business world called ‘corporate social responsibility’,” wrote Alfred W Van Sinderen, a senior telecoms executive, in an opinion piece for The New York Times in July 1980. “For some corporations it is quite old; for others, nonexistent, [and] there are some, unfortunately, for whom it is simply lip service to quiet the militants.”

He wasn’t the first to broadcast the notion. Henry Ford, for example, may not have used the “CSR” slogan in the 1910s, but he was a strong proponent of the role of business for social betterment. But Van Sinderen’s words highlight two things. First, they show that the conflict between capitalism and ethics, at a peak in the late 1970s, gave rise to a banner under which the two could unite. Second, they demonstrate that the three camps he outlined have been with us for many years. That is, they have until now. Did business embrace the argument propounded by The Economist, among others, which stated in 2005 that “managers acting in their professional capacity ought not to concern themselves with the public good”, and stick to the job of making money for shareholders? Not a bit of it. In fact, the opposite happened. CSR became a victim of its own success. Business chose to take CSR seriously - so seriously, in fact, that it changed the concept’s name. Corporate responsibility (CR for the purposes of this article, although even abbreviating it seems to have gone out of favour) is now king. And it’s more than simply a rebranding.