Office Culture III: Actions Can Sabotage Corporate Social Responsibility Programs

> Office Culture Series, No. 3

Toni Muzi Falconi starts an interesting conversation about the disconnect between an organization’s official corporate social responsibility policy and the way the company’s people communicate with customers, suppliers, the public and others.

A few people have weighed in with comments to debate the issue. (English isn’t his first language, so the phrasing is a bit awkward. But it’s an interesting post.)

Toni argues that official communications staff can only realistically manage 10-20% of an organization’s communications.  So unless corporate social responsibility is hard-wired into the way the company behaves in public and in private, inconsistencies will undermine the attempt to maintain the corporate reputation for being truly socially responsible.

It’s not enough to have a well-managed program for auditing the impact your organization has on society, and taking steps to improve its corporate citizenship.  Falconi warns that the disparate branches and teams in your organization are quite likely to act in unethical or embarrassing ways.

The likelihood of failure is great if CSR is left for the PR team to manage, says Falconi.  Not because communications people are bad managers, but because this signals to the rest of the company that the company wants to manage its image, not how it actually behaves.

Organizations that have formal corporate social responsibility programs measure and report on the economic, social and environmental impact of their operations and policies.

Falconi suggests companies also need to measure and report on what he calls their "communicative behaviors," or what I would call how people in the company behave when they think the CEO isn’t looking.

Office Culture Series

• I – Gap Between Formal and Informal Communications can Be Dangerous
• II – Official Communications that Doesn’t Communicate

Tags: corporate social responsibility, csr, communications, behaviour, reputation, management, business