Businesses don’t exist inside vacuums. Regardless of mission, every organization impacts its employees, customers, society, and the environment, and not always in an intentional or positive way.
Imagine that a business has lines coming out from it linking it to these larger social and environmental elements, things like community well-being or air quality. Companies can manage these lines, or connections, with purpose, and that’s what Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is all about. CSR may sound complicated (it has its own acronym, after all), but it’s as simple as this: CSR means doing business in a way that contributes to, rather than detracts from, the common good.
In essence, CSR is what we do here at BGI. We work with our students to harness the power of business and direct its energy toward improving societal and environmental impacts.
The challenge is that conventional wisdom has positioned profit and social responsibility as incongruous pursuits, and at first glance, it may seem like CSR leaves profit behind in its pursuit for equitable, sustainable business.
Yet as Sustainable Business Advocate, BGI faculty, and BGI alumnus Kevin Hagen asserts, “Instead of trying to find a balance between trade-offs of ‘doing the right thing’ and making profits, business would instead find solutions built on reinforcing loops where doing more good delivered more profits.”
In other words, CSR can become part of an organization’s core and contribute to income rather than distract from it. Not only do consumers increasingly value corporate responsibility, but CSR techniques, like reducing waste or cutting energy use, can lower operating costs.
Since its inception, CSR has been grounded in both transparency and verifiability. It is effective because it involves more than just vague declarations in the realm of, “Our company aims to reduce its environmental footprint.” CSR encompasses an entire method of measurement, goal-setting, and reporting. The public-facing quality and specificity of CSR not only allow companies to make meaningful steps but also allow the public to observe the process, and by doing so, increase accountability.
CSR reporting is now found in more and more companies, across all industries. Check out Sprint’s 2012 CSR Report as an example. Divided into categories like “Natural Resources” and “Healthy Workplace,” the report provides general statements about Sprint’s commitments as well as detailed achievements like “Collected 20 milllion pounds of E-waste for reuse or recycling.” In its “Sustainability Scorecard” at the end of the report, Sprint outlines long-term goals along with annual performance. For example, Sprint has pledged to reduce electricity use by 20 percent by 2017 and reports that 2012 accounted for a 7.9 percent reduction.
A number of BGI students and alumni are engaged with CSR right now. People like alumnus Aaron Donne are transforming corporations from the inside by managing social and environmental connections. Aaron is the newly appointed Sustainability Community Manager for Microsoft, focused on employee education and engagement around sustainability. Read Aaron’s story to learn more about his work.
At BGI, we equip future leaders with the tools, knowledge, and experience to integrate CSR into any organization. By pairing these with their passion and insight, BGI students are moving CSR from a way to do business to the way to do business.