CSR session at WeGrow
Yesterday we ran a session on CSR. It was moderately succesfull. I really wanted people to be involved in the session but not many people really added their opinions and knowledge. Only now I realized how much CSR is still developing. Many delegates from countries like Suisse, Spain and Greece described how CSR is only now gaining attention but there are not that many examples yet. I felt bad that I could not get the people to at least share the examples they did know and it was only me talking. The content was interesting though, so I hope that at least was useful for them.
Some interesting points from the session:
- The delegates were having trouble really discussing the dillemma we gave them:
The delegate gave feedback that they found the question difficult and they felt they lacked the background knowledge. For me the boundary question is the actual issue. From managerial point of view it is impossible to state you will not give this company any money anymore. What do you do then with companies who deforestate the rain forest? Or who work on nuclear energy? Or the companies who are main pollutors? And then what about the companies who are still not living diversity?
A VP from Suisse gave me an interesting perspective, he said that they somehow should instate a department that is only concerned with checking these things. Let's take this idea and regard it as an out-of the box idea. Could this be a future direction of CSR? Let's say I am a manager in a company and I hire 10 people who define an ethical vision for the company. From that vision concrete guidelines can be derived. Let's say these 10 people then run checks on all companies to see whether the companies fit the ethical guidelines. For me this is an interesting idea.
- One thing the delegates from the different countries had in common were the environmental problems. A Suisse delegate was interested in clean water, since he expect a shortage in it. A Spanish delegate was concerned with a polluted river, Norway is looking for new means of energy, The Netherlands is ofcourse very concerned with water as well since half the country could flood. For me this was interesting and I hope all the delegates will share their country realities on blogs or other means of communcation.
Some interesting points from the session:
- The delegates were having trouble really discussing the dillemma we gave them:
Should a bank provide money to companies who invest in Burma, a notorious regime? What are the boundaries?
The delegate gave feedback that they found the question difficult and they felt they lacked the background knowledge. For me the boundary question is the actual issue. From managerial point of view it is impossible to state you will not give this company any money anymore. What do you do then with companies who deforestate the rain forest? Or who work on nuclear energy? Or the companies who are main pollutors? And then what about the companies who are still not living diversity?
A VP from Suisse gave me an interesting perspective, he said that they somehow should instate a department that is only concerned with checking these things. Let's take this idea and regard it as an out-of the box idea. Could this be a future direction of CSR? Let's say I am a manager in a company and I hire 10 people who define an ethical vision for the company. From that vision concrete guidelines can be derived. Let's say these 10 people then run checks on all companies to see whether the companies fit the ethical guidelines. For me this is an interesting idea.
- One thing the delegates from the different countries had in common were the environmental problems. A Suisse delegate was interested in clean water, since he expect a shortage in it. A Spanish delegate was concerned with a polluted river, Norway is looking for new means of energy, The Netherlands is ofcourse very concerned with water as well since half the country could flood. For me this was interesting and I hope all the delegates will share their country realities on blogs or other means of communcation.
posted by Floor @ 4:53 AM
1 Comments:
At 1:48 PM ,
Westy said...
hey mate,
your example of having a specific manager to check the quality of a company's CSR policies is an interesting one... it was at a CSR conference last year, december, that I had some developments in my own understanding of the issue... the speaker drew the analogy to Totally Quality Management theories of the 80s/90s... (that every stage of the process should be reviewed in order to increase efficiency)... at the time they thought the best idea was to run every process through a specific TQM department, not realising the bottleneck this created... the current philosophy is a lot easier: educate everyone on what TQM is and have each department ensure that it is happenning in their field... put a measurement process against it and reward appropriately... hopefully CSR can follow a similiar growth pattern... that now we are at a stage where we recognise its importance but are having trouble managing it consistantly... hopefully in 10 years we will chuckle to ourselves and think back to these days... someone will say: 'but the answer is so obvious... why couldn't they see it?'... the more we discuss/talk the closer we will come...
good to hear from you,
cheers
W
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