As part of the development of a new product (a web based management and reporting system), I’ve been on a tour visiting numerous of sustainability/CSR managers at large Swedish based companies. The purpose of this exercise is to have the planned final users of the product give their input on what to develop further, in order to maximize the value of the finished release. The response so far has been great which provides a lot of positive energy to everybody involved in the project.
One of the managers I met raised one challenging question though. She asked me if a separate CSR management system wouldn’t be detrimental to the integration of CSR into the daily operations (i.e. a separate management system indirectly indicates that CSR is an appendix to the core business). The answer to this question is somewhat complex. I believe that if an organization considers CSR to be truly vital to business success, then it will already have integrated the different perspectives of CSR (business ethics, economic-, social- and environmental responsibility) into their current business management system.
However, my experience is that most organizations are not yet ready to integrate the different perspectives of CSR into their current business management system. CSR is not yet considered important enough when push comes to shove. This as a result of the difficulty in proving the connection between CSR initiatives and increased profitability (a challenge already discussed in an earlier blog post).
If there is a low CSR ‘maturity level’ in an organization, then I believe that a separate CSR management system, that help secure that every sustainability initiative launched supports the company in achieving its overall mission statement, does further the integration of sustainability into the core business. Such a system will namely support the CSR manager in identifying and proving the business value of the CSR effort to the chief executive team. This will in turn, within time, give CSR a place in the ‘traditional’ business management system.
