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Let’s Keep Our Heads in the Corporate Citizenship End Game
by Bradley K. Googins, Ph.D., Executive Director, Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship
June 2008
 There certainly is a lot of truth in the classic challenge of not being able to see the forest for the trees. Perspective is so difficult to achieve through the din of the daily grind and overly scheduled weeks.
For those of us immersed in corporate citizenship there is the all too common trap of becoming overly focused on a particular event, the crisis du jour or funded project while forgetting what is at the heart of the matter. I, too, find myself often distracted by the immediate issues here at the Center and forget the essence of what keeps my juices flowing and supplying plenty of mojo to every day - working with business to achieve a just and sustainable world.
So it is important to step back from time to time to reflect on what the end game is for us and the pursuit of citizenship. Even with that, there are many competing ideas about what the end game of corporate citizenship is, or should be. For example, we have gone through a long period of making the business case (and many would contend we are still in the midst of this journey). Few would argue that this is a critical issue for anyone whose organization is less than committed or not on board with the corporate citizenship agenda. But it is still only a means to an end. Making the business case requires a great deal of thought, strategy and continuous communication and execution, but it remains only a way station; a means to an end. Congratulating ourselves on having achieved the buy-in from the top and the support of the organization will do little to bring citizenship alive. Nor will the business case by itself ultimately tap organizational energy, fuel passion and leadership, and create sustainable value to the brand and to the business.
At other times we can get caught up in creating an integrated and aligned citizenship. In the work we have done on the Stages of Corporate Citizenship this is definitely a move up the developmental ladder, a sign that citizenship is indeed being woven into the fiber of the company. While more and more companies are both aspiring to and realizing some degree of success in achieving a more strategic citizenship, it is only a critical milestone, not the end point.
I have become more aware of the importance of being clear about the end point from two different perspectives: that of the employee and from a public policy viewpoint. For employees, there remains an ambivalent state fluctuating between long-standing skepticism, and a strong desire to contribute and be part of an enterprise they can be proud of. With the demise of the employee contract and the growing gap between employee and executive compensation, employees share in the broader mistrust of companies. These workers, who are also citizens in their communities, investors, and consumers, question the long-term interest of business and its manifest contributions to communities, societies and the issues that they care about such as education, environment and equality.
At the same time employees, particularly the new entrants of the millennial generation, are looking for something beyond the traditional attributes of a job. They are looking to feel part of something larger than themselves and larger than the short-term profits, as important as they are. They want to feel they and their company are authentically interested and involved in the larger environment around them and are contributing to the issues that matter to them, their families and their communities. This is an end game worth being associated with a business and proudly so.
The other direction I am coming from on the end game of citizenship relates to public policy. Despite all of the more traditional markers of corporate citizenship ranging from philanthropy (even strategic philanthropy) to upholding ethical and environmental standards, etc., a number of mega-issues are coming to the fore that compel us to look at the function of corporate citizenship in new lights. Take the issues most in the news these days: the food, water and oil issues, shortages, crises or however you want to define these. Nothing could be more basic than this group of three, and yet look at how quickly these basic issues arrive at the front door of the corporation filled with huge challenges and potential risk and crisis to the business. Not only does the business have to look at these issues from its own interests, the role of business in the development of the issues and the potential solutions open up new grounds for citizenship. While traditionally these issues have been primarily in the public domain and the focus of public policy, it is clear business is, and will be, increasingly drawn into the discussion, the debate, and most importantly the solutions and policy-making processes that will address them.
So at the end of the day, the end game for corporate citizenship comes around to the quality of life for our businesses, communities, families and societies. While business in an earlier generation became involved in such basic issues through work life and diversity, it now is becoming enmeshed in an even more complex, but critical web of issues that will ultimately determine the environments we live in and the quality of lives we lead.
There is a part of me that longs for the earlier days of a neater, clean cut and more manageable world where business could simply obey the law, pay its taxes and make some financial contributions. But the end game today is becoming more complex, ultimately unleashing business to make substantial contributions to these issues in unique ways that only it can.
And ironically it is this new engagement that really makes employees and other stakeholders proud and ensures that an authentic citizenship rises within the business. Not a bad end game.
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