Home » Opinion » Foreign Views
Why care about corporate social responsibility?
Print Edition
WHY the cynicism? Consider this real setting: About 25 owners and top executives of medium-sized companies have come together to discuss sustainability. An executive for a major oil company presents his division’s efforts in renewables such as solar and wind farms, which is clearly good from a sustainability perspective.
But the group is not convinced. “You are only a small fraction of the sales of the company”, says one. “You are trying to make the whole company look good when you are just a side activity,” says another. “If you as a company believe so much in sustainable energy, why don’t you exit the old fashioned oil business?” asks a third.
Today, it is not only the public who are cynical about sustainability, but also business people themselves. Even if companies clearly do more good in sustainability than before, and some do a lot more good, the overall sentiment seems to be that this is not enough. This is part of the overall challenge to the legitimacy of capitalism these days.
No longer expect hurrah’s for the positive externalities of what you do if the perceived negative externalities overshadow them (whether it is CEO pay, pollution, tax havens or regulatory influence).
If business wants to be seen as the “good guy” in the age of increased transparency, it actually has to be the good guy. Firms cannot claim social credit for the positive impacts of shared value unless they do something about the negative impacts of rent-seeking and free-riding.
Today in many large companies, social responsibility is compromised by the significant part of net income from legal, but rent-seeking behavior, such as monopoly behavior and lobbying, as well as from free-riding on the environment and society. In the US telecommunications industry, for example, social responsibility is undermined by lobbying that constrains competition so much that the profits of the largest players would essentially be wiped out if they had to compete at the rates charged by European mobile carriers.
Admit to the negative externalities.
To create long term value and be socially responsible in a credible way, firms first need to understand the extent to which profits in the various markets they serve are not earned by true competitiveness but are questionable. How can companies assess this? By identifying their most truly competitive and best regulated markets and comparing profits earned there with earnings in more distorted markets, and by testing to what extent superior returns beyond the cost of capital can be explained by innovation and superior efficiency, or are better explained by rent-seeking and free-riding. Then they need to decide how to manage these questionable profits. We believe that this starts by walking the talk.
Show how positive externalities will exceed the negatives.
Second, firms need to decide how they intend to shift the business mix away from rent-seeking and free-riding towards real sustainability. This requires (1) a business case for sustainability in which the positive externalities in shared value exceed the negatives and (2) the development of a credible action plan to manage the costs of foregoing questionable profits and growing revenue in a sustainable way that promotes long term profitability.
Paul Strebel is an emeritus professor of governance and strategy at IMD. Knut Haanaes is a professor of strategy at IMD.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
