|
Corporate Citizenship is Coming—Are You Ready?
by Steve Rochlin, Director, Research & Policy Development, The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College
The new Corporate Citizenship is coming, and as momentum builds, Community Involvement and Contributions have some decisions to make: will they lead, follow or "stick to their knitting."
Something big must be happening when we hear members tell us that their customers—as in major business customers—are asking them for evidence of "triple bottom line" performance in competitive sales bids. We've heard examples of this from the high-tech, energy, food, and automotive industries.
Your peers are taking this very seriously. The Contributions Council of the Conference Board has devoted three meetings to the topic of corporate citizenship. The Center is working with nine member companies in our "Executive Forum on Corporate Citizenship" to drive new "citizenship strategies." (See article in this newsletter.) Other members are turning to us to partner on building comprehensive corporate citizenship measurement initiatives.
So what is the role for the Community Involvement and Contributions functions in the new corporate citizenship? At our annual International Corporate Citizenship Conference held in San Antonio, we had the chance to share our thoughts with members.
Contributions are not enough…
In the new era of global corporate citizenship, contributions are not enough. Among some stakeholders, contributions, volunteering and help for communities won’t get you out of the starting block.
It's not that contributions and support for communities aren’t important. These functions are absolutely necessary—just not sufficient for the new corporate citizenship.
The new corporate citizenship is about how you do business. Does your company do business with care and attention to stakeholders? With goals greater than shareholder value in mind? For example, the largest giving budgets are dwarfed by the amounts your companies spend on purchasing, R&D, payroll, marketing or many other functions. Stakeholders driving the new citizenship want to know: Are you using these resources to help add to the social and environmental "bottom lines" as well as the financial?
To that end, The Center has long talked about setting a "social vision." What value will the business provide to society as a whole? What "big, hairy, audacious" social goals will your business set? Stakeholders want to know.
The new citizenship is about building relationships of trust. And in a world that says "trust, but verify," accountability and transparency are key.
What’s Your Role
For those of you in Community Involvement or Contributions, you have four choices:
- You can take leadership of the new citizenship.
- You can own pieces of it.
- You can support it.
- You can stick to your knitting.
Taking Leadership
Leading means transforming your role—starting with your department’s name. At Capital One and GE, they’ve named it "corporate citizenship." At HP, it’s come together under "CSR." At Unocal, it’s "corporate responsibility." It means setting a strategic vision of what corporate citizenship is for your company, starting with its value proposition. It doesn’t require developing radical new skills and competencies, but it does mean you’ll have to coordinate and herd together the competencies (for example, environment, health and safety) fundamental to citizenship. Whether this is connected in a centralized or decentralized way will have more to do with what works in your company.
Owning Pieces
Owning pieces means changing your role into something more strategic. The most natural place is to look to stakeholder engagement and relationships. Your team is the expert in this area. Our research suggests that the best predictor of whether or not a company is judged a good citizen is the strength of its relationship management plans. The community and external affairs groups at companies like Dow, Unocal and Verizon prioritize stakeholder relationship building.
Supporting Corporate Citizenship
You can also support corporate citizenship by building top flight community programs. At Reebok and Nike, Contributions has worked with HR and Supply Chain Management to partner with the International Youth Foundation around child labor. At Abbott Labs, the CR/Contributions professionals collaborate with finance, R&D, product development, and marketing to build programs that address AIDS. At JPMorganChase, Community Relations drives the "Street Bankers" program, designed in part to build business models that help bring low- to moderate-income individuals out of poverty.
Sticking to Your Knitting
Finally, you can stick to your knitting and build the best community involvement programs you can. There are plenty of examples here. But our advice is to make sure that you find a seat at the table with your corporate citizenship colleagues. At least be a part of the dialogue.
What gets dumped on your desk?
Some of you are going to come into work and find "corporate citizenship" dumped on your desk. Some are going to find that others are moving forward without you. And some of you will look around and decide to take the leap in moving this agenda forward without any support or prodding.
But it’s coming, and it will behoove you to prepare. Take a look around. What’s going on in your company? Find out which of your colleagues are having these conversations. What are your colleagues in Environmental/Health/Safety, Diversity, Public Affairs and elsewhere doing around corporate citizenship? Ask yourself what role CR/Contributions could and should play. When you sort this out, get involved. Start conversations among a network of colleagues who would seem to be natural allies on these issues. It will start to make the picture clear, and will help you prepare for what’s to come. |
