CSR is about strategy

Although you could look at CSR as common sense (and justifiably so), I prefer to look at it from a strategic perspective. From most of the people I have spoken to they can grasp what CSR is, but they still cannot quite grasp how it can be implemented strategically to the company's advantage.

Actually I find that most people have different definitions of strategies anyway, and unless you are at the head of an organisation, you never really get to really think about 'what a strategy is'. I believe a strategy is an idea of how to take the organisation forward. Normally I find that a strategy is just the detailed description of achieving a goal. This is important for sure, and maybe can be called a strategy -in which case my definition of a strategy can be looked at as a strategic strategy.

A Strategic strategy is thus a strategy that is often new, most definitely long-term thinking, definitely involves some kind of changes and should be related to the nature of comparative advantage. Comparative advantage is the notion of how your organisation can be better than the competition. This requires identifying what the company has that others don't (it could be a certain patent, it could be a certain person, specific resource, or just an idea) and then exploiting that advantage to push the organisation ahead (it thus also requires an alaysis of who the competition are and what they are doing, as well as a similar internal analysis). A Strategic strategy is a strategy that specifically aims to ensure the company's growth and sustainability long-term, it looks to exploit an opportunity.

I think you'll understand what I mean if i continue with how I see CSR as a strategic strategy. A bad understanding of CSR is the notion of CSR as charity. A better understanding of CSR is the notion of CSR as new market opportunities or as comparative advantage. An excellent example of the former is GE's ecomagination initiative and of the latter is the Co-operative Bank. Briefly explained, GE wants to make more money whilst making the World a better place and the Co-operative Bank attracts more customers because it refuses to invest in certain companies, sell its products to certain customers and does a lot of other ethical/enviro-friendly initiatives in order to build its brand as distinct from its competition.

However, this is still not how I see CSR as about strategy (although both companies may actually see it my way, I don't know). I see CSR starting from the question how a company can be more responsible; and realising that a company must operate responsibly. But ideally if the company has positive impacts on society then it must ensure that the company continues to have that positive impact and thus continues to exist and increase that impact. Thus CSR is about the future, about building a sustainable business. From this premise the company needs to look at how it can survive and how it can grow and how it can continue to do this responsibly. This is the ultimate aim of CSR.

Below this the focus can be on the company's triple bottom line impacts, on its processes and operations, on its stakeholder engagement and so on. First companies must see CSR as a top line strategic strategy, then they can see how their processes can support this. Then they can look at what else is needed -such as how can we distinguish ourselves, how can we be more flexible, opportunist and creative. These ideas need to be thought through because they support the ultimate strategy of creating a lasting, responsible enterprise. Certainly these aspects are the core of CSR, but until the employees view these aspects as part of the broader, ultimate strategy, they will never quite understand CSR. They will continue to see just one of these aspects (Health and Safety for example) and most unfortunately they will fail to recognise that their HR activities, their reporting/accountability processes and more are a crucial part of CSR.

Since CSR is about doing good business, responsible leaders should understand this concept -of strategy and how CSR is related to that. Most importantly leaders should ensure those they are leading understand this. CSR should be used as a fad, as an excuse to drive an organisation forward, as a focus for generating ideas and improvements to the company: Ultimately as a way of bringing diverse ideas and components of an organisation together with the goal of making the organisation more sustainable.