I recently read that the employees of a successful Australian engineering firm expected, and in fact demanded, that their employers give back to the communities they were profiting from. As a consequence, the organisation pushed CSR firmly up the business agenda. Very laudable, of course, but my first reaction was: ‘why were the employees driving the CSR imperative? Why did it not come from the top? And how could the board not see the bottom-line benefits of giving back to the community?’

But let’s take this discussion beyond the undertakings of any individual company. What has happened to business’s understanding of civic involvement? Why do we find it so hard to give back, to get involved? What are we afraid of? Scope creep? Loss of brand control? Unpaid work? Reputational risk?

Many years ago, I was brought up in the Borders of Scotland. Several of the small towns dotted along the banks of the river Tweed had been built by the local woollen mill companies (a primitive form of social support although I’m not sure the mill owners made the link between supporting their employees and improving workplace performance as explicitly as we would today). As a child I attended (albeit very reluctantly) many company events, such as the annual Christmas party – all of the employees’ kids did, in fact. These were not initiatives that were mandated or formally enshrined in corporate policy, nor did they represent a reaction to employees’ demands. The company offered them because that was how business interacted with society. A different time with different values, sure, but perhaps a time when a company’s responsibilities to the communities within which it operated were naturally integrated with its business practices?

My point is that the triple bottom line is not a new idea. I am no expert on social capital theory and am certainly not suggesting that ‘way back then things were better’, but it does make sense that a stronger tradition of civic involvement would reduce the need to encourage businesses to behave responsibly. Many corporations are formalising their approach to CSR, but is this simply reflective of the fact that it no longer seems to be common sense?

One of the aims of the current web forum is to help businesses, our own included, make sense of CSR as it is defined today. A more fundamental aim is to generate genuine interest in the topic among the business community. As Audra Jones, a Foundation Representative at the Inter-American Foundation, writes: ‘For the private sector to develop participatory, sustainable investments in the community, it must have an enlightened self-interest in the process’. That is, in order to become more involved, the business community must first understand what can be gained from CSR – that adopting a CSR strategy in fact makes good business sense. Only then will businesses willingly and wholeheartedly commit to innovative and sustainable CSR programs. So, is CSR common sense to your organisation or an unwieldy, misunderstood and underutilised beast you can’t seem to get the knack of? If it’s the latter, tell us your concerns and we’ll explore them here together, month by month.

Chris Haddon is Creative Director at WellmarkPerspexa, one of the first full-service creative agencies to design and produce sustainability reports for some of Australia’s leading corporate entities.

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