Posted February 2011
Making money
with a conscience
Big
companies, big responsibilities | Corporate social
responsibility (CSR) is nothing if not a mouthful. Multinational
companies over engage in a vast range of activities that come
under the doing-good umbrella. It spans everything: from
volunteering in the local community to looking after employees’
health, from giving out micro-credit to women in Bangladesh to
saving the rainforests. With such a fuzzy, wide-ranging subject,
many companies find it hard to know what to focus on. Still, CSR
is booming. Whether through their websites or glossy reports,
big multinationals want to tell the world they are good and
ethical and their bosses right and reasonable. None of this
means that CSR has suddenly become a great idea. But in practice
few big companies can now afford to ignore it.
CSR
is an easy target for bleeding-heart liberals and
fundamentalists of all sorts tickling with a touch of easy
prejudice. They have never tired of calling CSR a contemptuous
attempt by unapologetically evil companies to don a touchy-feely
image. No wonder they felt smug, vindicated, triumphant even,
when disaster hit BP – literally and bloggospherically.
Following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico
in April 2010, which killed 11 men and injured another 17, while
causing extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats, BP’s
reputation on the World Wide Web went from “Beyond Petroleum” to
“Biggest Polluter” as the company was hounded by an electronic
lynch mob.
In
various blogs BP was portrayed as a bunch of latter-day limey
pirates raiding America for all it was worth. Outraged green
types accused BP of having co-opted the language of the
environmentalists without the real commitment to deliver. Ever
the snappy watchdogs they reminded us that between 2000 and 2007
alone, BP had allegedly spent up to USD125 million annually on
its corporate social responsibility CSR campaign to enhance its,
ooh so sound image – almost the same amount of dosh that PB
invested in non-hydrocarbon energy projects. Moreover, several
bloggers jogged our memory that since branding itself an
environmentally sound corporation with the "Beyond Petroleum"
tagline in 2001, BP had been hit with a number of fines for
major pollution incidents.
And
that was before the report of the National Oil Spill Commission,
set up by U.S. President Obama, was released on 6 January 2011
which revealed that BP and its contractors Halliburton and
Transocean had all cut corners when it came to safety aboard
their rig: options that would have reduced the risk were
systematically forgone in favour of cheaper alternatives without
due consideration.
BP’s ouch! moment
Although BP’s share price took a massive hit immediately after
the explosion and BP had to set aside USD 40 billion to cover
the costs of the disaster, cutting dividends to zilch, the
financial markets eventually decided: to heck with BP’s dodgy
CSR record. With the oil price threatening USD 100 a barrel,
shares in BP which is sitting on oceans of the stuff have
enjoying a strong run: up over 60 percent between June 2010 and
January 2011.
Perhaps investors are an altogether more cynical bunch than
twittering consumers. But the message from the BP saga on the
internet is that consumers are starting to expect more when it
comes to companies’ attempts at “doing good.” In actual fact,
the rise of social media has gone hand-in-hand with the ascent
of a new breed of mainstream consciousness that cares about the
local, the sustainable, the future-minded – and companies living
up to their corporate social responsibility.
Spin
doctors have been telling us for years that CSR initiatives can
be a significant public relations win for businesses, including
big corporations that want to push a progressive image, provided
they do the right thing.
And here come my
reservations.
Tough
luck, you have to be a subscriber to Brauwelt International to
read the rest of this report.
Read on
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