Two recent media items underscore how corporate social responsibility has earned a nice acronym but not universal validation from the business world or its critics.
Representing the skeptical corporate class, Professor David Vogel – who teaches business ethics at Berkeley and edits the California Management Review – says that the “market for virtue” isn’t important enough to motivate companies to act any more responsibly than they normally would to maximize profits within the rules of laws and regulations.
Asked by the Wall Street Journal about a company’s perceived “CSR” image and its stock performance, Vogel said the correlation is weak at best.
“There are reputation effects and an impact in terms of employees, energy conservation or resource efficiency, for example,” he said. “And there are certainly business risks of not doing it. But I don't think the link has been proven one way or another. It's not critical to company performance. And if you talk to fund managers, you will find few investors ask about it.”
And representing the cynical left, American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner echoes a common refrain that pretty much any corporate do-goodery should be viewed as just more self-serving manipulations of the company’s PR machine. Wal-Mart’s recently announced “Sustainability 360” program, for example, “is a wet kiss for environmentalists.”
“Whenever hugely profitable corporations mount a charm offensive,” Kuttner wrote in a syndicated column, “keep your hand on your wallet.”
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Wall Street Journal | Managing corporate social responsibility
Robert Kuttner | Beware of corporate do-gooding
Scatterbox | Columns mentioning "corporate social responsibility"
