CSR -who is responsible?

Not a particularly new or insightful topic but still one without an answer: In a company do you have someone specifically responsible for CSR or not? And if you do, how much of 'CSR' are they responsible for?

In theory CSR would be so well integrated into the company that you would not need someone responsible for it. If you do then it means that everyone else ignores CSR and lets that person deal with it -an impossible task. From my experience of contacting companies here in China and finding out who is responsible for CSR; it generally falls to the corporate affairs team and for them their main priorities tend to be around philanthropy, branding and environment. I am not sure how much they play a role in the many HR aspects of CSR or governance, amongst others.

This question opens up a wider one of how to integrate anything really. I suppose my solution is that you always need a champion, even after the initial introduction of an idea or activity; but the key is to try to integrate the idea into a reward system, into every day life and into the values of an organisation. The general consensus tends to be that initiatives need to have top level support -which they do AND most initiatives tend to come from the top. This is something I disagree with. For sure if the initiative is driven by external needs or is based on solid stakeholder engagement and feedback then this is ok, but (and I have limited experience); most initatives are driven from the top with only minimal support from the bottom. By this I mean that one department or other has suggested something, the Execs have done their research and decided to implement it. This will work for most initatives; but for big things -things that affect the culture of the organisation, such as CSR, this is wrong.

I am not saying all organisations do this wrong, but I bet some do. What is the right way? I am a big supporter of faclitated discussion -of coaching. Coaching is, in my definition, where the coach never gives the 'coachee' the answer or tells them anything, they just ask the right questions, listen and guide the coachee to come up with their own answers. This is how organisations should run -I have read many CEOs say the hardest thing they have had to do is change the culture of an organisation -it takes years. I am not saying its simple -the organisation might have the wrong people in it; it may have systemic problems. But what I am saying is that those at the bottom need to realise that the organisation's current culture is not right and they need to work out what the culture should be. They need to be the ones who suggest how to get there too, and then they can give this remit to the team tasked with driving this change: thus the team knows the whole organisation supports it, and the organisation will change much quicker.

With CSR, this is about the values of an organisation and then how these values are translated into process and then what actions result from these processes. Ideally everyone should be recruited based on these values AS WELL as their abilities. And I highly recommend this for any values (CSR) driven organisation. However what do you do with those already in the organisation? Well you may have to lose some of them -you may have to change some, but most I expect you just need to make them realise what their values are... and they should align with the organisation (them already working in the organisation). I am amazed at how much effort companies place on internal values education programmes and handbooks. I am amazed in a good way -it is very impressive, but I must also wonder if they ever question their employee's values? Do they do personal value alignment exercises....if you don't there's little point in changing the organisation's culture!

So who is responsible -everyone should be responsible for CSR; adhering to an organisation's principles (values) should be in every employee's annual assessment -and this can partly be a self-assessed exercise. For some of the more concrete outputs of 'CSR' (and the term is being used loosely here) then that needs to be delegated out. If you have to choose a department 'responsible' then for me it is the 'branding department'. Most business gurus will express how important a brand is - it is the essence of an organisation. In fact a branding department rarely exists (if i create an organisation i think I will call it an 'identity' department -my organisations will wear their identity and their values on their sleeves). Nowadays it ends up in communications department -fair enough I suppose. I am hoping to get a deeper insight into how different communications departments work, what they prioritise and what they achieve in different companies, sectors etc. It would be very interesting research. So responsible leaders? Do what's right -for everyone. Find out what everyone thinks is right; do it; tell others about it; judge people on it; walk the talk. Lead.