The state of CSR in Canada

In our last post we commented on the No.1 position claimed by the Schulich School of Business in Toronto in the Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking of business schools – a global survey which assesses the performance of schools in integrating responsible business into MBA curricula and research. Overall, Canadian business schools did well in the ranking with several schools making the top 50 – McGill (31st), Concordia (34th), and the University of British Columbia (49th).

But though Canadian business schools are starting to punch above their weight in the world of responsible business education, the performance of the country’s corporate sector in responsible business practice remains in question. For example, you’d be hard pressed to find any Canadian companies in the top 50 of Corporate Responsibility Officer’s Best Corporate Citizens of 2009. Still, rankings like this don’t tell you everything. So we thought we’d take the pulse of responsible business in Canada by checking out a couple of practitioner conferences taking place in downtown Toronto this last week. Clearly it is full-on conference season in Canada’s responsible business community with 3 major gatherings happening in 2 weeks – the first two of which we dipped into to test the waters.

First up was the ‘In Good Company’ CSR Conference organized by the Orenda consulting firm that took place on Tuesday 27th October 2009. This was a first-time outing for Orenda on the CSR conference circuit, and it was interesting to see the differences with some of the more mainstream conferences. We didn’t stay for the whole event but it was notable just how much the CSR agenda here was dominated by corporate community investment (CI) issues. This no doubt reflected to some extent the particular orientation of the consultancy running the show, but still, it was something of a surprise for a gig billed as a ‘CSR conference’. As Peggie Pelosi, the CEO of Orenda told us, the event was mainly aimed at engaging SMEs – and issues like CI are where most of them are with respects to CSR.

That said, the level of expertise demonstrated by the speakers on CI was pretty impressive. Clearly the leaders in Canada have been quick on the uptake in terms of developing well-managed CI programs with plenty of measurable impacts and meaningful metrics, good attention to employee involvement, and a genuine desire to both make a positive social contribution and generate greater meaning for employees. All good stuff, even with what looks like relatively limited resources compared to some of their overseas counterparts.

Strikingly missing from much of the debate however was a genuinely strategic approach to CI where firms focus their attention not just on doing good, but on leveraging their own competencies, and focusing on social problems within their own value chain or ‘sphere of influence’. Given we are in the middle of a financial crisis, and an energy situation that is rapidly heating the planet, it was somewhat disconcerting to hear a finance company talking about investments in homework clubs, tree planting and affordable home-building, whilst an energy firm regaled us with stories of their success in supporting food banks. All very laudable, and all very successful, but haven’t they got more pressing business-critical social issues they should be concentrating on? Aren’t food banks just a bit of a distraction when we’ve got climate change to solve? To be honest it was quite a relief when the Director of Corporate Citizenship at Microsoft got up and starting talking about investments in technology projects. Here was clearly a company that demonstrated that it got CSR in a deeper way.

And so it was onto the Conference Board of Canada event ‘Creating Business Value with Integrated Sustainability’ two days later. Unsurprisingly a somewhat more suited-up corporate event, but again one where, with one or two notable exceptions, the real leaders seemed to be, like Microsoft Canada over at the Orenda event, the Canadian subsidiaries of US corporations who had picked up their best tricks from over the border …. or even back in Europe. Companies like the American carpet manufacturer Interface, or even IBM, appear to be leading the pack here. And it's regulation from Europe that appears to be driving attention to environmental issues - though whether catching up with Europe's regulatory requirements is really a 'proactive' strategy, as one presenter claimed, is a moot point.

Funny how Canada manages to maintain a reputation for being all socially responsible and environmentally friendly, when corporate Canada actually seems to be dragging its feet somewhat in developing a progressive approach to responsible business. Obviously we didn’t hear everything said at either event. But from what we could gather from our admittedly brief forays into both of them, the debate here seems little more than a warmed up version of what we were hearing in the UK and other places years ago.

This is not to say there are not some impressive movers and shakers in the corporate CSR world here – but whole sectors of the economy don’t appear to have quite got it yet. The Conference Board organizers had put together a good program, but in oil and minerals rich Canada where were the energy and mining companies with something to say about ‘creating business value with integrated sustainability’? Holed up in the tar sands no doubt. Still, it was good to see consumer products companies at least starting to think seriously about green innovation issues.

So what can we conclude from our conference crawl this week? Well, let’s just say that Canada still has plenty of untapped potential when it comes to responsible business. As Peggie Pelosi acknowledged, Canadian companies are doing a pretty good job on community investment initiatives but are still well behind their overseas counterparts in sustainability and other key areas of CSR practice. As glass-half-full kind of guys, we’d like to think this means that Canada has a real opportunity to leapfrog the US, the UK and others. But we won’t be holding our breath….

Green Canada flag copyright Realc. Reproduced under Creative Commons license

After the Oscars...

We hope you enjoyed watching the Oscars yesterday. And depending on what country and station you saw them in, we hope you were not driven quite as crazy as we were by the subjection to endless commercial breaks every two minutes (What do all these ads about skin care products tell us about the viewers of the show, btw.?). Anyway, good to see that two of the films we talked about last week actually made it: Tilda Swinton for best supporting actress in ‘Michael Clayton’ and Daniel Day-Lewis for best actor in ‘There Will Be Blood’ (which got another one for something we forgot…).

Meanwhile, in a similar vein, the Corporate Responsibility Officer (CRO) organization in New York recently came up with their very own list of ‘Oscars’. It’s awarding the most responsible companies in the US, the ‘100 Best Corporate Citizens’. In its ninth year by now, the list ranks the biggest US companies according to a wide set of criteria, such as climate change, environment, human rights etc.

It’s is an interesting read in many ways. First of all, for who is on it. Intel Corp. is No 1 – fair enough, they do all these neat and clean electronic gadgets - fine. Or John Deere (No 4), they produce all these nice green tractors, so why not. Nike is third – not bad for a company which is meanwhile staple food in business ethics classes with their struggle on working conditions in their plants in Asia. But, gosh, look further down the list and there is Dow Chemical (13)! No mention of Dow’s haphazard approach to assume responsiblity for Bhopal victims after taking over Union Carbide (which was responsible for the disaster). And go to 39th position: lo and behold, Lockheed Martin (39)! Obviously producing weapons of mass destruction is a very socially responsible business proposition. Gas guzzler manufacturers are on there (Ford, General Motors), as are Monsanto and Coca Cola, again, usual suspects in most business ethics courses.

But don’t lest rush to conclusions. This is not just a ‘greenwash’ list. CRO also has a ‘Penalty Box’, where companies end up which for some ethical infractions were not included in the ranking: ExxonMobil for Oil Spills in their Brooklyn factories, Mattel for the scandals with Chinese suppliers or Hewlett-Packard for the handling of their board room leaks. That is interesting: as we understand CRO’s rationale – its not a problem if you are a sinner, as long as you repent and mend your ways! CRO, for instance, explains why they kept GAP on the list: despite the scandal around their suppliers’ working conditions in India last fall, the company reacted swiftly, transparent and consequently implemented their standards and values to fix the problem.

Whatever we may think of individual companies on the list, we like it for making obvious one important thing: the world of business ethics is no black and white film, where angels and devils are easily separated. Business reflects broader societal imperatives: at times, a majority of Americans approved of Bush’s Iraq adventure – hence there has to be someone to produce the weapons for this. SUVs are a huge market – so companies supplying them are just one villain – among others - in the game. And so on. To make it on the list then basically means that a companies attempts at going about their business with some basic concern for key ethical issues. That’s fair enough, certainly it’s a start.

In this sense the list is in fact selective: only three companies have been on the list for all nine years of its existence, namely Starbucks, Intel and Cisco. We have commented on the latter company with regard to their role in China, selling censorship technology to the Chinese government. And Starbuck’s is on the agenda of many activist and NGOs as well.

So what do we make of the ‘100 Best Corporate Citizens’ list? Our stance would be that CRO, as an organization of managers responsible for ethical issues in the corporate sector, has a specific angle on the subject. From this perspective, their list could probably be better dubbed as the ‘100 Lesser Evils’ – which lists companies with still a lot of work to do but who at least are conscious of their responsibility and are demonstrating some effort to live up to ethical and societal standards. And that’s a good thing – compared to some of the alternatives at least …