by Bradley K. Googins, Ph.D., Executive Director, Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship
November 2007
I recently had a series of conversations with several executive search firms. They report they are increasingly being asked by their corporate clients to help them understand the competencies needed for the new vice president and director positions being developed in corporate responsibility, citizenship and sustainable development.
Not surprisingly, as companies begin to understand the strategic importance of corporate citizenship to the business, they recognize the need to upgrade the function and bring in more senior management to work on a strategic level. While this is a very positive sign for the field, it also is raising some critical questions on exactly what are the core competencies required for managing and leading corporate citizenship within our firms.
This trend was on my mind as I recently gave a keynote address at the Asian Forum 2007 in Vietnam, where 600 CSR practitioners from across Asia convened. I would hazard to guess that the vast majority of those attending had come into their position in the company in the last year or two. Corporate social responsibility is exploding in Asia, and it reminded me of a similar phenomenon in Latin America that I witnessed two or three years ago.
As this worldwide movement comes into its own, it is natural to ask and critical to answer, what are the essential ingredients of this function? What competencies will be needed to ensure success?
To be effective in corporate citizenship and to have the respect of those throughout the business, executives charged with this function have to demonstrate that this area has value to the core operations and profitability of the company. The days of improvisation must come to an end if this activity is to be taken seriously.
If we look at corporate citizenship from a developmental perspective, it is quite predictable that the time has come to focus on core competencies. In the early stages of any field, one might characterize activities as pre-professional. Early leaders and practitioners learn by the seat of their pants and most of what is known is held in the heads of the early innovators. Job descriptions, if they exist at all, are pulled together by insights, early experiences, and a little practice wisdom.
When the practice of citizenship is being invented and described on the run, each company goes through a discovery process of self learning, with hopefully some learnings that come from observing and talking to others. These early innovators have generally come from other parts of the business, and begin de novo and get up to speed as quickly as they can. Through some process of self learning, on-the-job training and a few conferences, individuals begin to reflect what a practitioner is and operate out of this aggregation of experiential learning.
We are now entering the next stage of CSR management, resulting in more formal positions being created, often prominently placed high on the corporate organization chart.
Over 20 years ago this Center began to identify a core set of competencies that were evolving in the practice of community relations and involvement. Through some of the early executive education courses, and later the Certificate Programs in Corporate Community Involvement, hundreds of practitioners came through Center courses and some universal competencies were discovered by those who were on the front lines. By drawing on their experiences, we identified competencies and developed and continuously revised our curriculum to build a set of competencies in this area.
Competencies are a natural outgrowth as a function becomes more developed and practice becomes more professionalized. Managing, leading, and practicing corporate citizenship is hard work. At the highest level this is about organizational change. Virtually every Center member company that I have an opportunity to visit or get to know is in the midst of a major transition, from a very traditional and peripheral function to a much more strategic and complex function.
Leading corporate citizenship requires a fairly sophisticated and deep core of competencies in managing, enrolling, communicating, and ensuring strategic success.
Unfortunately there is currently no Masters Program where one can become well grounded in this area. Before we will see this develop we need to step back and deconstruct the skills, knowledge and competencies that are and will be necessary for driving corporate citizenship within companies.
As The Center recently introduced its new Certificate in Corporate Citizenship, Billy Brittingham, our assistant director of Executive Education, polled a host of seasoned practitioners and began the process by identifying seven essential competencies: strategy, issues management, relationship management, communications management, program management, performance management, and change management. (Learn more about The Center's seven-part competency model for community involvement and corporate citizenship practitioners.)
As the body of folks driving citizenship grows, it is time to continue developing and articulating these competencies with as much rigor as we can.
Not only will we need this to ensure success, but to communicate to those throughout the business who are looking to us for guidance and leadership on these issues.
Some corporate citizenship veterans, like our advisory board members David Gonzales at PepsiCo and Ann Cramer at IBM, have taken leadership on this issue and are heading up a task force to examine this area. If you have any input or ideas on this or want to get involved, we urge you to share your input, thoughts, and much needed wisdom.
Brad Googins can be contacted at bradley.googins.1@bc.edu.
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