The future of CSR

Our collaborator on the forthcoming second edition of our CSR textbook, Laura Spence from Royal Holloway, University of London, has been musing recently on the future of CSR. So we asked her to pen another guest post for us about where she thinks things are going. Here's what her crystal ball says...

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I’ll let you into a secret. Sometimes, as I travel from conference to conference, I wonder if we are getting anywhere at all in the study of CSR.  As the field has developed, there are some topics and theories which have somewhat of a stranglehold on our thinking. With every new conference presentation that yet again tackles the well-trodden ground of large, Western multinational corporations, corporate social performance, stakeholder theory, or institutional theory, my heart sinks a little, though I also work on some of these. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of good work on these topics coming out, but we are in danger of throwing all our energies at an ever-decreasing circle of subjects when there is so much more out there to do. Couple that with the assessment by some that CSR has come to its natural end and it is sometimes hard to stay positive for the future of CSR.

And yet, in the last few weeks, I have had to rethink my doubts. It all started with an event on Gender and Responsible Business at Nottingham University’s International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility. Somehow CSR – of all subjects - has more or less overlooked the gender perspective despite some pretty long standing powerful contributions.  Every presentation I saw contributed something refreshing, different and relevant, demonstrating a huge potential to shine a new light on CSR in the future. It is well worth joining the continuing conversation through the LinkedIn group: ‘Gender & Responsible Business Network’.

The inclusion of marginalized voices was to my delight also explored at the ‘Corporate Responsibility: Towards Inclusive Development’ stream at the European Group of Organization Studies (EGOS) conference in Montreal.  In a field dominated by US and European corporate perspectives and authors, this stream surfaced a young, vibrant and diverse group of scholars working on regions that constitute most of the world but a small proportion of CSR publications. We heard about CSR in Asian, South American, Middle Eastern and African countries, drawing on important cultural, political, economic, social and religious perspectives that are usually sidelined. Is the future of CSR in Europe or North America? I doubt it. The level of social need, different governmental roles, critical challenges and changing economic structures in developing and emerging economies should encourage us to look well beyond the usual contexts.

And I was not the only one pondering the future of CSR. At a special workshop at the EGOS conference, Christopher Wickert (VU University Amsterdam) and Arno Kourula (University of Amsterdam) led a focused workshop ‘Debating the Future of CSR’. Bringing together PhD students and early career researchers (and let’s face it, they should be the ones that determine what’s around the corner) with a few more established academics, we had the opportunity to really dig in to three key aspects: contextuality in CSR; theoretical criticism of CSR; and stakeholder perspectives and marginalized voices in CSR. The topics discussed were wide ranging and included the role of non-governmental organizations, CSR as a political project, activism, the role of the state, frustration with the ‘business case’, the performativity of language around CSR, listening to the polyphony of  voices and the dangers of stereotyping.  I really hope that the participants at the workshop go on to publish on some of these perspectives in more detail – it will make fascinating reading.  

Some of these waves of CSR research are captured in an earlier Crane and Matten blog and a brand new chapter in our second edition of CSR: Readings and Cases in A Global Context (Crane, Matten & Spence, Routledge, July 2013). There we add to the debate on the future of CSR in terms of new business models such as social entrepreneurship and social innovation, the influence of new social movements, forms of regulatory rather than voluntary CSR, the outcomes of CSR, and the positive prospects of CSR as a profession and an academic subject.   

So, as summer starts in earnest in the UK, I am optimistic for the future of CSR. If space is made for the rising waves of research I have been privileged to see in the last few months, you never know, we might actually make a difference. 

Laura J. Spence

Photo by eelcowest. Reproduced under Creative Commons licence

Top 10 tips for publishing CSR research in top journals

Contrary to popular belief, most university faculty don't spend the whole summer lounging on the beach or sitting in the garden. For most of us, summer is the time when we can really focus on our research without the usual distractions of teaching and university administration.

Although many academics do this research because they enjoy it, it is also a critical part of our role. Success in publishing our research is often the number one reason why we get hired or not, or whether we get that promotion or pay rise that we're after. Publish or perish is a mantra that is very real for many of us.

Publication, however, is no easy matter. There is great competition for space in the best scholarly outlets, like high ranked journals and prestigious book publishers. Those of us doing research on corporate responsibility issues, whether CSR, business ethics, business and sustainability, or whatever else sometimes struggle to meet the kinds of standards expected by these outlets. This is not because we're any less smart than other researchers, but we do have a complicated subject that doesn't always lend itself very well to the demands of the top tier journals. There is also just simply lot to learn about the publishing process, especially for PhD students, junior researchers or those relatively new to the demands of publishing their work in premier English-language journals.

As a result of this, we often find ourselves giving advice to other CSR researchers, especially at the many workshops and conferences that crop up over the summer. We tend to tailor this advice to the different audiences we speak to, but we also thought that it might be helpful to give a more general list of top tips that anyone doing work in the area could hopefully learn something from. Our thoughts are particularly relevant to publishing in high ranked management journals, but most of the lessons translate beyond this. Let us know if you find them helpful or if you have your own suggestions, just add them in the comment section below.

1. Make time for research. This is the critical starting place. Good work requires a substantial investment of time and energy and lots of researchers spend a lot of their time on teaching and service. In the CSR space, in particular, many of us are so passionate about our subject that our available research time is easily eaten up by working with our students or lobbying our colleagues to include more CSR content in their courses. Carving out the necessary space and time for research is critical. There are no shortcuts.

2. Find great co-authors … but select them carefully. OK, so maybe there is one shortcut: finding other people to do some of the research with you. But co-authorships go wrong as often as they go well. So choosing carefully is critical. Find people with complementary skills, who understand the subject in different but related ways to you. Remember, CSR issues are complicated, so just as we always advocate partnership by organizations, so too do we need to partner to understand a phenomenon. But if we go too broad, we risk losing the all-essential focus that the top journals aim for. Our no.1 piece of advice for selecting co-authors - find someone you can go for a drink or a coffee with and feel energized afterwards.
 
3. Write for a clearly defined audience, with a carefully targeted paper, that joins a specific conversation. Research doesn't happen in a vacuum. Who do you want to read your work? No, really, who exactly do you have in mind? What have they written about your subject? Answer these questions and join an ongoing conversation rather than trying to start a whole new one. It may seem like CSR issues are new and exciting, but many of the issues, problems or concepts that we find interesting have been addressed by others in other ways. Some scholars live by the maxim that if you think an idea is really new then you probably just haven't read enough. So make sure you do read enough and make sure that your work is crafted for a particular audience. If it helps, think of it like a product that has to fill a clearly defined need.

4. Be clear what the research gap is that you are aiming to fill, and what your contribution is. Probably the number one reason that editors reject corporate responsibility papers is that they don't make a clear enough contribution. Typically, this means, a contribution to academic theory. So nailing down the research gap and deciding for yourself what your unique contribution is will reap rewards. Especially if the contribution is one valued by those other researchers that you're aiming to write for.

5. Try as far as possible to be theory rather than phenomenon driven. This is one that many CSR researchers struggle with. We're doing research in this area because we find the issues themselves fascinating. This means we tend to phenomenon-driven. But the higher ranked journals all typically look for a theoretical contribution and so they expect the research they publish to be theoretically-driven. So if you don't want to take too many risks with that limited amount of research time you have, work out how to make the translation from phenomenon to theory and start as you mean to go on.

6. Different contexts have to be theoretically distinctive (revising/extending theory) not just new applications of existing theory. This is particularly relevant for those doing research on or in particular countries or industries, which is so common in the CSR field just because it has become so ubiquitous. The key thing to remember here is that just because no one has done research on your country or industry before, that doesn't mean it needs to be done now. If you're following the advice we've already laid out, you'll be thinking - what is it about this country or industry that is sufficiently different that it renders existing theories inadequate to explain it. If you can answer this, you have a shot at extending or revising that theory rather than just applying it to a new area. And that's what the reviewers will be looking for.

7. Test out your ideas with working papers, conference presentations, workshops, etc – do not submit too early. Research is a process, and the great thing about that is there are lots of opportunities to get feedback on what you're doing before its too late. Take your time to see if your ideas have the potential for top tier publication before you commit to doing the research. And then as you're doing the research get feedback from the best people you can about your emerging results. Finally, circulate your work and get feedback before you submit to that tier 1 journal that rejects 90% of the papers it receives. You want to be as sure as possible that you're going to be in the rarefied 10%.

8. Beware of avoidable ‘incompetence cues’ . This is one that the former editor of Business Ethics Quarterly, Gary Weaver, always explained very convincingly. If editors and reviewers find sub-standard English, spelling mistakes, poor referencing, formatting that doesn't meet the journal's specification and other minor errors in a paper (especially in the first few pages) you are going to activate the editor's 'incompetence schema'. That is, he or she will already be thinking that you're in some way incompetent before they even get to evaluating your ideas. Don't risk it. Get the basics 100% right, every time, without fail. This will give your work the best chance it can of being judged in the way you want it to be.

9. Remember that reviewers are there to help you improve your work. The community of researchers around CSR and business ethics are a pretty collegiate and supportive group. But it can feel like completely the opposite when you're holding three reviews which all appear to rip your work to shreds ... but are still offering you the chance to resubmit something different (well, actually, better) in the future. But believe us, they do actually want to see your work published, so you just need to work with them, not against them. The most successful researchers spend almost as much time on revising their work as they on the initial preparation. Take criticism on the chin and use it constructively as just another stage in the research process. In the end, you'll appreciate the advice because it almost always improves your research if you're working with a good journal and good reviewers.

10. Get used to criticism and rejection – and don’t forget the bigger picture of why you want to publish in the first place. We all get bucketloads of criticism and we all get our work rejected. Its a part of the job as a researcher. Some people say that if you're not getting rejected from time to time, you're not aiming high enough. So don't take it personally. And remember, the reason you're putting yourself through all this is that you think the issues are important and that you have ways of thinking about it that need to be read. The best journals are regarded a good because they have a higher impact than the others. If you really want your work to be read by other researchers - if you want to leave a mark on the field - you'll need to face the trials and tribulations of aiming for the best journals. So grow a hard skin along with that smart mind and warm heart.

Why all these whistleblowers recently?

Whistleblowing, this obscure practice discussed in most business ethics textbooks (we do so in Chapter 7), has become a big topic of discussion these days. The latest incident is Edward Snowdon and his revelation about the ongoing surveillance of phone and internet usage of American citizens by the US government. But he is not alone: currently on trial is Bradley Manning, who provided Wikileaks with the material for exposing the diplomatic correspondence of the US government.

The general contention with whistleblowing is becoming clear in both cases: are these individual traitors who defaulted on their duties by breaching the rules and codes they had agreed to abide by when entering their job? Or are they ‘heroes’ whose behavior is governed by higher, more general, and persistent ethical standards than their day-to-day job environment would allow them to follow?

It is useful to look at some historic cases of whistleblowing – and indeed cases, where certainly by hindsight the general agreement seems to be that the whistleblowers are in the second category of ‘ethical hero’. Think of Jeffrey Wigand, the executive of tobacco company Brown&Williamson who exposed the practice of enhancing the addictive potential of cigarettes of his employer (famously turned into the movie The Insider). Or think of Sherron Watkins, who initially blew the whistle on the practices at ENRON and contributed to the uncovering of the scandal in 2001. Turning to the political sphere, currently many references are made to Daniel Ellsberg who in 1971 leaked the ‘Pentagon Papers’ disclosing that the US government for years had systematically mislead the public about the impact, casualties and costs of the Vietnam war.

Whistleblowing commonly seems to occur in a situation where the moral status of organizational practice – be it a private company or a public institution such as the NSA or the Pentagon – deviate from the wider moral values which society deems appropriate. And crucially, it has to be added, these actions also deviate from the professed moral standards of the organization against which those individuals blow the whistle.

This is rather evident in the case of Ellsberg: by the early 1970s, the public in the US all long thought that the war in Vietnam had lost its moral cause; his revelations proved that the US government, too, was all along aware that what it did in Vietnam no longer could live up to the public mission and norms according to which the American government professed to act. Similar are the cases of Wigand and Watkins: in the same way the Tobacco industry outwardly professed that they were not aware of the addictive impact of cigarettes, ENRON had always claimed to be an ethical company. The same applies to the current Manning and Snowdon cases: Obama ran on the promise to stop the abuses by the previous Bush administration and to restore basic civil liberties – and is now found out to do the same or worse.

The dilemma of whistleblowers all points to the fundamental differentiation established by Max Weber a century ago: Members of a social group (incl. an organization) can act according to an ethics of responsibility or according to an ethics of conviction. The first looks at the consequences of an action and basically suggests that a virtuous individual is one that lives up to the expectations of all who are affected directly by the consequences of an action. In practice, this boils down to abiding by the rules and procedures of the organization. The main arguments against whistleblowing then all come in the shape of what the effects of the revelations are on other people (that was the big argument against Wikileaks) or how it affects the general functioning of a secret service where everybody potentially can leak anything (the current debate on Snowdon).

What justifies whistleblowing then is Weber’s ethics of conviction according to which an individual makes an ethical choice based on personal moral convictions. The act is based on principles, rather than anticipated consequences. In most cases whistleblowers refer to general principles of either good business practice regarding customers (the tobacco case) or shareholders (ENRON) or good government based on some basic democratic principles (such as the Ellsberg, Manning or Snowdon case).

Historically, such reasoning based on an ethics of conviction always becomes more relevant at a time when fundamental values of society are in question and challenged. The Vietnam war raised basic questions about the moral limits of the cold war; the tobacco scandals exposed the lack of basic moral rules of consumer protection; ENRON initiated the ongoing moral scrutiny of a shareholder value dominated form of capitalism; the Manning and Snowdon cases now raise fundamental moral questions about civic liberties, civic rights to privacy and protection of personal data and the appropriate powers of the state in protecting these liberties.

It is somewhat tragic – as probably the cases of Ellsberg and Wigand best illustrate – that whistleblowers are mostly recognized as moral, conviction-driven human beings quite some time after the events. At the time of the whistleblowing defenders of the status quo always wield two crucial tools: they can either invoke arguments following an ethics of responsibility and point to the potential harm and the anarchic nature of the act; Bradley Manning’s trial can be followed as a textbook example of this reasoning.

Or, they can try to discredit the ‘convictions’ of the whistleblower. Since these often reflect a wider moral consensus in society it is hard to attack those principles or norms directly. More effective seems to be an approach that discredits the whistleblower on a personal level. In Ellsberg’s case the CIA broke into his psychiatrist’s office to obtain information on his mental health and love life; in Wigand’s case a similar smear campaign was initiated. Currently with regard to Edward Snowdon, it is conspicuous how the entire political spectrum in the US is more or less embarking on this trajectory. From Bill Maher’s jokes last Friday night on Real Time to David Brook’s notorious profile in the New York Times - most seem eager to present him as some sort of self-aggrandizing nerd.

Whistleblowers turn up at a time when societies or organizations are deviating from commonly accepted and widely shared moral values. Whatever our concrete judgment about individuals and their motives - the fact that whistleblowing occurs at this point in history clearly points to a wider epiphany. Ironically, Snowdon relocated to the very country which for so long has been accused by the West of not respecting the human rights of their citizens in exactly this issue arena – much to the distress of Google, Yahoo or other companies. It looks like Obama currently has a bit of a hard time to explain to China, Russia or even his European allies, how his approach to privacy and data protection still reflects basic values of liberal democracies.

Picture by DonkeyHotey, reproduced under the Creative Commons License.

Canada's corruption problem

Barely a day goes by at the moment here in Canada without a new twist or turn in a corruption story hitting the headlines. Last week we got news of SNC Lavalin offering an amnesty for any employees providing information about their huge ongoing bribery scandal. The police also announced last week their intent to extradite Dr Arthur Porter for his part in allegedly receiving $22m in return for granting a contract to SNC to build the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal.

Meanwhile, Stephen Harper's government is embroiled in a major, and very persistent, scandal involving an attempted cover-up of some dodgy expenses claims by a conservative senator. This involved Harper's (now resigned) Chief of Staff giving a "gift" of $90,000 to Senator Mike Duffy to reimburse his questionable claim and stave off any further the investigation. Oh, and who can ignore the now internationally ridiculed mayor of Toronto, who in the wake of allegations about him being caught on video smoking crack, has now had 5 members of his administration resign or get fired for, so far, unspecified reasons. Add to that the other revelations trickling out of the ongoing Charbonneau Inquiry into corruption in Quebec, and a second Laval city mayor in a matter of months accused of taking bribes and clearly all is not well in the country formerly known for peace, order and good governance.

On the face of it, Canada has a serious corruption problem. So it was refreshing to hear last week at the aptly timed Spotlight on Anti-Corruption organized by Transparency International Canada that actually, with respect to upholding its obligations for combating international bribery, Canada is actually in the midst of a major upswing. Following years of apathy and a failure to prosecute any violations of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, in the last few years we have seen the setting up of a dedicated and fully resourced police department responsible for anti-corruption, and since 2011 the first handful of persecutions. Remarkably, the Canadian police are now investigating no less than 35 cases of alleged bribery by Canadian companies overseas.

The general consensus among the anti-corruption community here is that, if not a leader, Canada is no longer a laggard. So one way of explaining away what might seem like a major corruption problem is to put it largely down to increased enforcement and in general a greater attention to corruption in the country. As delegates at TI's Spotlight event last week put it, the 'moral compass' on corruption has shifted for the better.

This view has some truth to it. But in our view, there is more to it than that. After all, the corruption that is hitting the headlines is of a very specific variety. It's not just petty corruption but is in fact involving some of our most senior business and political leaders - CEOs, hospital directors, city mayors, even the PM's office. And many of these leaders are not seemingly ready to take a public stand condemning the practice and doing all they can to root it out. SNC Lavalin is still aiming for a 'rogue employee' defense, whilst the approach of Harper's government seems to be one of secrecy and a refusal to admit any kind of wrongdoing.

This is the kind of corruption that in terms of 'tone at the top' is sending a very dangerous message to the rest of us that no amount of increased enforcement is going to compensate. Corruption, these leaders are implicitly saying, is something we are immune to.

So what is to be done? Well, rather than necessarily seeing this as an intractable problem, all the attention around corruption at the moment also offers a couple of important opportunities.

First, now is the time for our leaders to take a genuine leadership position on corruption. The public is ready to support it, there is a renewed vigor in the anti-corruption community, and Canada has a genuine opportunity to start staking a place closer to the head of the table rather than just aiming for not being quite so bad.

Second, now is also the time for a rethink about the regulatory environment around corruption. The Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act was a good start and the amendments proposed in the 2013 Bill S-14: Fighting Foreign Corruption Act will make some incremental improvements. But as several delegates at the TI Spotlight pointed out, one reason why the US and other countries are so much more effective at prosecuting corruption is that they can also prosecute through civil law through the SEC. This makes the burden of proof lower and the likelihood of a successful prosecution higher. Institutions like the Ontario Securities Commission should be playing a much greater role in enforcement. Consider that 70% of all of the equity raised for the world's public mining companies happened on the Toronto Stock Exchange last year. This is a real concentration of financing for a major corruption risk industry which means that greater devolution of powers to prosecute corruption here could help enhance the reputation of an industry integral to Canada's economic prosperity.

As the old saying goes, never let a good crisis go to waste.

Photo by IntangibleArts. Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence

Danger due to: ethics

John Dalla Costa, the renowned business ethics writer and consultant teaches with us at the Schulich School of Business. He's also an occasional blogger at his site www.ceo-ethics.com. We love the piece he's just posted on the dangers of thinking that because you're doing ethics, you're going to be more ethical. With his permission, we're reposting it here since its a conversation we agree that needs to happen.

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Are ethicists more ethical than their peers in other disciplines? It’s an interesting question. A recent study published in the journal Metaphilosophy provides a limited data point, but the news, at least if you’re an ethicist like me, is not good. Comparing how university professors engage students, the researchers found no difference between ethics professors and other faculty. Even though the ethics experts set an ideal, and acknowledged that not following through on that standard was morally wrong, in action, the experts in ethics were indistinguishable from fellow academics.

Are you surprised? I’m not. But I am distressed.

I’m not surprised, because if ethics were truly relevant, or if we really understood them to be effective, we’d be invoking them with much more frequency and rigor. Canada is knee-deep is scandals, with Senators whitewashing expense reports, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff paying for the white paint, and the Mayor of Toronto careening from one violation of the public trust to another. Ethics are AWOL, and no one seems to be missing them.

The same is true in business. Ethics have become IKEA-like contraptions for compliance. All the imagination and enquiry have been purposefully engineered away, so that all ethics and compliance officers need to do is follow the illustrated instructions, and assemble the pre-cut pieces.

Before Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns imploded in 2008, I managed to download the codes for ethics and conduct from their respective websites. It turns out that they were derived from a boilerplate, following numerically identical categories, and using mostly similar jargon, with only one or two cosmetic flourishes reflecting idiosyncrasies of corporate history. It would inconceivable for these global finance behemoths (or their peers) to use Quicken to do their taxes. But that’s basically what they did for their ethics – adopting a four-page template, in the name of the Board of Directors, to set the terms and scope for their ethicality. Not surprisingly, both companies got full return on their investment.

There is a good reason why we’ve talked so little about corporate ethics since the financial crisis: most corporations had already subscribed to compliance projects pre-2007, and nothing has changed since.

I’m distressed because ethics-without-ethicality repeats the diminishment of restraint and responsibility, which led to previous market failures and economic crises.

As bad as were the deceptions perpetrated by Enron, it was much worse that these accounting lies were intentionally papered-over by its auditor, Arthur Anderson. Similarly, as irresponsible as were mortgage tactics and securitizations floated by the banks in the run up to the financial crisis, it was much worse that the ratings agencies, like Standard and Poor’s, assigned Triple AAA credit value to derivates that their own in-house experts considered junk-grade. When sentinels sell-out, when they simultaneously over-estimate their virtue and under-deliver on the promise they are entrusted to uphold, bad things happen to everyone.

In his book, Confronting Vulnerability, Jonathan Schofer reminds us that moral laws and ethical rules need continuous replenishment. His point is that, while established as bulwarks against human vulnerability and exploitation, ethics are themselves vulnerable and exploitable. We fall-back on ethics as if on auto-pilot, with such doctrinaire rigidity that we cease using any critical thinking as we apply them in life’s complex ambiguities. Or, perhaps worse, we take them for granted until they become easy take-over targets for other ambitions or motivations. Principles share with practitioners the fragility of our human finitude. The most unethical thing is often denying our personal limitations for seeing what is right, and deciding what is true.

We don’t know if this research confirms that ethicists too have ceased being reliable sentinels. But it is the question that should distress and challenge us – ethicists and non-ethicists alike.

John Dalla Costa

www.ceo-ethics.com

Photo by blind dayze. Reproduced under Creative Commons licence