The consensus is clear: it’s time to take community involvement to the next level. This sentiment surfaced among professionals involved in the recently launched CI Leadership Roundtable, an ongoing collaboration of experienced CI practitioners who wish to provide leadership to the field around the changing nature of corporate community involvement and social engagement.

Established by The Center, the roundtable met for its first meeting in November. The Center asked participants to assess the current state of community involvement and to identify critical issues that will affect the field moving forward. The challenge by Roundtable members to the status quo comes as they acknowledged societal expectations are rapidly changing and the demands on companies often exceed current corporate capabilities.

Among the critical questions asked and discussed in plenary sessions were:

• What key changes are happening inside and outside the company?
• What will be their likely impact on the community involvement field?
• Is community involvement delivering sufficient value?  If not, why not?  
• If internal and external expectations of community involvement are growing faster than the resources being allocated to community involvement, what kind of a problem does that create for us? 

First, the good news. A lot of progress has been made by community involvement practitioners over the past two decades. What we have seen – and what we believe The Center has helped foster through our executive education programs and convenings – is the professionalization of a fledgling business function. Data abound suggesting that community involvement is being managed better and is commanding more resources and more attention and respect. (As examples, see The Center’s 2004 Community Involvement Index and the 2005 State of Corporate Citizenship Report.)

But, say Roundtable participants, significant gaps exist between society’s expectations and business's capacity to deliver against those expectations. According to their feedback:

• The range of social challenges facing both the developed and developing world is increasing.
• The capacity of government to address these challenges alone is limited.
• Globalization will continue to expand the power and influence of business and as it does we can expect growing expectations for business to help address social challenges.
• Most firms are not well equipped to meet or manage these expectations.

When asked how society’s expectations of business are likely to change in the future, Roundtable participants overwhelmingly agreed that expectations will increase significantly.  And they said that corporations:  1) do not understand society’s expectations today; 2) are poorly equipped to track changing expectations, and 3) do not have a clear sense of what they want their role in society to be. 

Participants were also asked to identify the key external and internal issues facing the CI field. Although many issues made the list, the group was able to narrow it to the following five:

• The rich-poor gap
  Companies currently address this challenge from a number of perspectives - from education to community economic development. Are these approaches working today, and are they sufficient for tomorrow? Is there a win-win that goes beyond philanthropy? If this gap is not narrowed, what will be the impact on companies’ ability to operate?  On the expectations and perceptions that society has for business? What does CI need to do differently if it is to meaningfully narrow the rich-poor gap?  Put another way, how do we move from a focus on inputs to a focus on outcomes, from a focus on symptoms to root causes?
  
  
• The changing social contract and rising expectations of business
  The response to Hurricane Katrina put into stark relief the changing social contract between business, governments and NGOs. In many cases it was businesses and NGOs who were first on the frontlines, not governments. This reflects the larger reality facing the CI profession today. The public seems to want much more than philanthropy from corporations, they want business to be an engaged social partner in helping address social challenges. Going forward we can expect these demands to increase. How can companies manage these escalating expectations, and what is the role of the CI professional in managing resources and relationships amidst this change?
  
  
• Resource Depletion
  Community involvement and environmental management often exist as separate silos within companies. With the growing public focus and concern on global environmental issues, there is a movement to bring these silos together. What is the future role of the CI professional in these issues? 
  
  
• Globalization
  For North American firms in particular, globalization has brought new challenges to the CI profession. On the one hand there is the challenge of managing CI in many disparate marketplaces with different expectations and standards for community support and involvement. On the other hand is the rapid outsourcing of production and services from North American and European companies to developing countries that is causing new challenges for communities that have relied on these companies for employment and support. What will be the role of the CI function in helping address these issues?
  
  
• Demographics
  One of the major factors that will affect business in the next 10 to 25 years is a large demographic transformation. In the next 10 years, a billion people will be added to the planet. Soon more humans will live in cities than in rural areas, with the overwhelming growth occurring in the world’s poorest cities, such as Lagos, Nigeria, and Dhaka, Bangladesh. There is now a new model for the traditional population pyramid, which will look different for each country. By mid-century, for example, there will be 2 billion teenagers worldwide. By 2025 in the United States, the largest number of people will be in the oldest and youngest generations, with far fewer in the earning level. How will your company manage these changes? How will your CI program help your company mitigate and manage the social challenges these changes will produce?

Given some of the major issues society is grappling with and the seeming incapacity of government to move the needle on those issues, participants agreed, society will have a lot to say over the next 5-10 years about the role it wants business to play.  Business must engage proactively in that conversation – and it must engage proactively in helping to meaningfully impact the issues that most plague society - or it may find itself with very little voice in the negotiation.   

These conclusions speak volumes about the role corporate community involvement will play going forward. It will be up to the practitioners in these roles to understand emerging social issues, to help their companies understand changing expectations, and help them align business and social engagement objectives with those issues and expectations.

If the November conversation with our CI Leadership Roundtable raises questions for the community involvement field – if it serves as a call to action – it serves the same purpose for The Center itself, which is working to fashion new research, new executive education programs, and new conversations out of the following critical questions: 

• How can community involvement add more value to society and to the business?
• How can community involvement help the company more effectively understand, manage and negotiate changing expectations?
• What critical issues will most shape society’s expectations and business’ ability to function and how can companies more effectively engage around those issues?

These questions – and others like them – are very much at the heart of the conversation taking place among Roundtable members, who will next convene in March in advance of The Center's International Corporate Citizenship Conference in Orlando.  They are also driving a new research agenda at The Center, as well as the formation of new executive education offerings focused, for example, on Stakeholder Engagement and Building a Breakthrough Signature Program.  And they will be front and center at this year’s annual Conference, where a number of breakout sessions have been organized around the issues raised here.

For more information about the CI Leadership Roundtable, click here, or contact Billy Brittingham at 617.552.2555, email william.brittingham.1@bc.edu.