Main Corporate Sustainability Drivers
There are several reasons why an organization decides to engage into corporate sustainability. The reasons are endless and normally related geographic, demographic and social factors.
Some of the high level reasons are: (not in order of importance)
1) Resource conservation (environment)
2) Work & Life balance (human resource management)
3) Improve stakeholder trust (corporate structuring)
4) Engage with your community (social strategy)
5) Improve standard of living (social commitment)
etc …..
What are the main reasons your organization decided to embrace CS principals (or if you didn’t ….. why should you or shouldn’t you)
Thanks for sharing
Edison Reis
QAM - Quality Assurance Management
Tags: corporate responsibility, Corporate Social Reponsibility, cs, sustainability drivers
February 12th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
The reasons that I would rate as the top five drivers for corporate sustainability are:
1. Retaining Top Talent and Increasing Employee Satisfaction
2. Better Management of Business Risks
3. Product/Service Differentiation
4. Reducing Operating and Manufacturing Costs
5. Enhancing Image, Reputation and Brand Recognition
I go into this in a little more detail in “Top 5 Reasons Why Every Organization Should Have a Corporate Sustainability Strategy”.
Of course, the priority of the drivers would vary, depending on the specific context for each organization.
Jabeen Quadir
February 15th, 2009 at 6:14 am
Edison
This is well written. But what is meant by corp. sustainability. If so, then is it the same thing as survival? If so, then won’t one of the things to list be “to return a reasonable profit to shareholders”.
Or, am I missing something?
My 2 cents.
R
February 18th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Interestingly whilst I agree with the points above the main reason why I have found companies take up the baton is brand protection and brand value from both a proactive marketing perspective and a defensive position of avoiding negative publicity. What do you think?
Guy Williams
February 18th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Many of the reasons you listed sum implicitly up to:
1) sustaining profits.
a) Clearly the Image power attracts customers and all interested parties,
b) the Source Reduction lowers material costs
c) and the Human Resource factors are powerful drivers of motivation and sense of belonging.
Therefore management should promote sustainability for long term economic reasons.
Pekka Rautala
February 18th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Hello Guy
Thanks for you feedback.
You got a point there. The reasons are almost endless and it is very hard to really find out why some companies are doing it. (you may get the “official” answer instead the real one)
We do have our own interesting initiative and the reason is clear for me. (well …. I am the company owner so I should know why)
http://www.qualityassurancemanagement.com/charity-challenge.php
The objective is not for marketing or damage control but, just an understanding that corporations have an ethical obligation towards our society and that was all.
Since we started it, 2 other companies decided to introduce something like our “why not charity challenge” and that’s really rewarding.
Keep up the good work
All the best
Edison Reis
February 20th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
To me, it usually boils down to risk management, which might seem to be a cynical viewpoint, but I think it’s an honest one. Corporations are coming around to realizing that business risk can be in many forms. Lack of awareness of their ’stakeholders’ could mean losing market share, noncompliance with changing standards and laws, loss of reputation and reduced employee loyalty/retention. Environmental impacts cost money, could affect raw material supply and cause legal issues. Being more socially responsible means being able to maintain a viable customer / supplier base.
To temper this, I will admit that a small percentage of organizations are driven by strong principles and altruistic tendencies. But this is a small percentage and very few companies have even bothered to report on their activities. But really, what’s wrong with taking a business approach to sustainability if it achieves the required results?
Glenn Keays
February 24th, 2009 at 9:54 am
I usually cite 3 possible reasons for adopting a csr approach:
(1) reputation and risk management - the company has been attacked or risks being attacked for anti-social or environmental behaviour cf Nike, Gap, BP
(2) business opportunity - the company sees new sectors, efficiency opportunities or reputation enhancement opportunities cf GE, HP
(3) values - the business owner or leader is one who values ethics and social /environmental justice.cf Body Shop, Ben and Jerrys
Sooner or later , these three reasons converge, whatever the start point in any business.
Elaine, csr consultant and reporter
http://www.b-yond.biz