The corporate social responsibility industry is starting to draw criticism for not being … responsible. Questions are being asked about how companies elevated to “best citizen” status get there in the first place, as a blog entry in today’s Christian Science Monitor points out.
Writer Christine Arena notes that “to an increasing number of observers, the transparency (of how corporate responsibility leaders are crowned) seems elusive – as does a clear indication of what the CSR industry stands for.” She notes that numerous companies with significant blemishes and faults nevertheless win recognition as corporate citizenship leaders, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Monsanto. She also notes that many organizations offering CSR rankings rely on financial support from the companies being ranked.
This is no reason, of course, to jettison efforts to hold companies accountable for their performance and to reward and punish companies accordingly. It signals, however, that the CSR industry needs to come of age and needs to be honest with itself about its shortcomings and opportunities for improvement.
In the realm of CSR, there is no counterpart to the accounting profession’s generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). There’s no equivalent to the International Standards Organization, whose ISO 9000 (quality) and ISO 14000 (environment) requirements are universally recognized as gold standards.
Efforts are being made in the area of CSR, and the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative might yet attain such status. Now, however, companies often feel free to pick and choose which guidelines they’ll select and which they’ll ignore in reporting on their CSR performance.
It’s a growing issue, and until it is better addressed, it will hamper efforts to ensure that companies are held accountable for corporate social responsibility performance.
What do you think?
