Signaling Corporate Social Responsibility

Craig Carroll is a visiting scholar in business, media and society at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. He wrote two books : The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation and Corporate Reputation and the News Media.

He came at the university on October, 15th to give a lecture: Signaling Corporate Social Responsibility

He explained his vision of corporate social responsibility and how it evolves with social norms over time.

WHAT IS CSR ?

Corporate actions that appear to further some social good : Beyond the interest of the firm and beyond that which is required by law.
(McWilliams & Siegel, 2001)

WHY CSR ?

It guarantees A company’s long-term success Tied to stewardship of its own well-being, but also tied to the natural and social environment in which they operate.

To improve performance strenghts

To moderate, minimize and eliminate weaknesses

There is four types of CSR

Loose-loose situation : Business and society both at risk
Win-Loose situation : Opportunities for society to protect itself, but not at the expense of business
Risk-Opportunity : How business opprotunities creates risks for society
Win-Win Situation: An oppot=rtunity for business is an opportunity for society

The objective is to get more companies to do CSR, but nowadays we now have to flip the idea that it is weird to do the right thing.

To get more transparency and so to ask for companies to describe what they are doing on a yearly basis, they settled the CSR Reporting. But rise in CSR reporting goes along with even more skepticism and scrubing among stakeholders. Companies are often focusing on what they are doing good and are reluctant on bad news.

6 topics when we think about CSR :

Economic topics, environment performance, labor topics, product responsibility (how services are used, how sustainable the products are…)

According to Craig E. Carroll, improper conducts to confess. Companies seek to reveal themselves as : transparent (with little or nothing to hide) and rule follower (meeting the demands of stakeholders)

In response to society’s demand.

Transparency as a claim

To revent CSR of being a burden for companies, he suggests they engaging in allowing those who do not have a direct experience with a firm, to see or insect for themselves what is going on inside the firm

Media are not enough : people don’t trust them anymore

What the people want is transparency, but does transparency exists ?
When companies say they are transparent, often, they are not ! CSR is agreed but not applied.
The solution ? Come up with a universal criteria for every company, a set of rules agreed by everyone.

New technologies are the only reason this demand of transparency exists, people want to know what they want to know now.

Some countries are better than other in CSR, those where wulture is much more abstract, this is a characteristic of the way they live.

Auteur : @CoralieCouderc