Just as CSR was gaining momentum and becoming increasingly mainstream (e.g. 82% of FT100 companies producing non-financial reports in 2008) the domino effect of the credit crunch started knocking down the foundations. The GlobeScan Salon last week put forward a great deal of insights from prominent speakers on ‘CSR in the economic downturn’.

A gloomy summary: short-term profit maximisation, silo-mentality and withdrawing back to the core business dominate current decision-making. The gap between companies’ CSR performance and people’s expectations is widening.

A positive summary: some companies are sticking to their CSR commitments, a few are even deepening them. The current crisis can generate new market ideas and opportunities (if companies are willing to seek them). And, this faster-than-light slide into recession might be the beginning for a systemic change and a new era. Business thinking becomes holistic thinking: it matters how you make your money and how you spend it. In other words, corporate responsibility truly becomes core responsibility.

Leadership was a key theme of the evening. Clearly leadership has been lurking in the shadows: all of us are beneficiaries of pension funds that have taken part in creating the mess, but no on stood up to point it out or stop it. Either way, climate change won’t wait ‘till times get better. If corporate irresponsibility got us in this situation in the first place, then surely we should not be discarding CSR now?

Is this a dawn of a new era in which CSR becomes not only an indicator of good management, but a driver in investors’ decision making?

To get some inspiring ideas on the subject, I warmly recommend an article by Timothy Kuhn and Stanley Deetz (The Oxford Handbook on CSR, 2008). Grounded in critical theory, it shows how a particular vision becomes a legitimised representative of reality and it is thus reproduced time and time again. The historical context and social conditions of the vision creation process are forgotten; the vision becomes ahistorical and...natural! Echoing Boatright (1996) Kuhn and Deetz write that profit maximisation was originally just an assumption of economic theories to explain company behaviour. As an unintended consequence it has become a normative objective of corporate governance. It has become normal and natural.

Is it time to start reversing Friedman’s thoughts?

Anne Raudaskoski

Anne works as a CSR Research & Development Officer at the University of Westminster.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/anneraudaskoski 

anne.raudaskoski@gmail.com