Corporate Social Responsibility

Today I ventured out to Boston College to have a meeting with Phil Mirvis, a fellow at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship.  You may query, what is the Center for Corporate Citizenship? It is a center for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), or in other words, businesses being aware of how their actions affect society and taking responsibility for their impact on the world.  When I worked with microfinance firms, CSR was always a big issue.  Increasingly, it is becoming mandatory for companies, especially large ones, to demonstrate that they are complying by what a society deems good.  For example, Nike employing child laborers (bad).  Nike supporting education and labor friendly programs (good). 

After talking with Phil and reading some of the center's info, I was especially interested in the Center's stages for Corporate Citizenship.  The stages are a useful resource to pinpoint where a corporation lies on the spectrum of CSR.  It ranges from a company being elementary (firms abiding by the more basic requirements of social responsibility dictated by law) to transforming (firms creating social change through new and visionary policies).  In this age, where an enormous amount of information is available to individuals, a large business can not afford to ignore CSR.  I think back to this summer, when every week we learned that products made in China contained hazardous materials.  Milk and chocolate containing melamine, toy engines covered in lead.  The news of these events spiraled the world an ultimately hurt the bottom line of all the companies involved.  I give the Center kudos for helping to influence corporations to acknowledge CSR and creating change with the help of business leaders.