Corporate Social Responsibility, notes of all lectures and videos
WEEK 1: Introduction to CSR and Sustainability
Trends in Sustainability?
Moving from...
➢ Company towards supply chain: managing it is important and challenging, e.g. damage in a
factory in Bangladesh can hurt your reputation.
➢ Environment towards human: do we take care of our employees, our community?
➢ Check the box towards making-an-impact
➢ Top-down toward bottom-up: CEOs now tend to use the bottom-up approach when it comes
to sustainability.
➢ Nice-to-have towards need-to-have
➢ CSR director towards CFO
Purpose…
“If you want to become a billionaire, help a billion people” ~ Dr. Peter Diamandis
The quest for purpose (Benoit Leleux ea)
➢ In search of the Why
➢ Sustainability as a Source of Purpose
○ Talent Attraction and Retention (p 40 DJSI)
➢ Purpose statement formulation
○ Interface: Zero
○ Tony’s Chocolonely’s Slave-Free Chocolate: Nestlé and Tony’s are working together,
Nestlé makes Tony’s bigger and Tony’s gives sustainability reputation to Nestlé.
○ Q: any other examples?
And new sustainable enterprise:
,Why do firms care?
➢ Increasing revenues
➢ Reputation / Public trust: companies are afraid they might stop buying.
➢ Attracting talent: young people prefer to work for companies with a purpose, with a why.
➢ Saving costs / bonus
Identifying key drivers and Archetypes of Sustainability
The Corporate Social Responsibility Hierarchy (Archie Carrol, Chandler)
Economic responsibility
- To produce an acceptable return for investors (Unilever)
Legal responsibility
- To act within the framework of laws and regulations drawn up by the government and
judiciary (what about Shell and Nigeria?)
Ethical responsibility
- To do no harm to its stakeholders and within its operating environment (an Oath?!)
Discretionary responsibility
- Companies have more proactive, strategic behaviors that benefit themselves or society, or
both (Unilever soap in rural India, Tony Chocolonely, Tiny House Heijmans, van Oord, etc)
Archetypes (B. Leleux and J. van der Kaaij)
- Traditional: inherent risks (tobacco, weapons), compliance driven and focus on reporting to
regulatory affairs
- Communicative: opportunity seizing is complicated because sustainability measures are
costly (automotive, insurance). Focus on risk reduction and compliance.
- Opportunistic: opportunities offered by Sustainability (energy / renewables).
- Transformational: companies that have embraced Sustainability in a holistic fashion.
Sustainability programs are more closely tied to business operations.
Some examples:
Focusing on materialities that matter: generating a materiality matrix (page 68)
Q: what does sustainability mean to you in a few words?
- less waste, long-term impact thinking instead of short-term profit,
Materiality Assessment:
- Sustainability is a broad concept involving many different issues.
1
, - A materiality assessment helps to identify and prioritise the sustainability issues that matter
most to a business, and her stakeholders - such as consumers, customers (retailers), and
employees - and they expect the business to act upon.
- Identifying these issues helps to keep businesses alert to stakeholder concerns and
expectations, as well as to issues it believes presents the greatest risks and opportunities for
the business.
Prioritizing among stakeholders:
Materiality assessment matrix:
The materiality matrix depicts the issues that the company and its stakeholders consider as most
important. Identifying these issues helps to keep the business alert to stakeholder concerns and
expectations, as well as to issues it believes presents the greatest risks and opportunities for the
business.
2
, In the matrix below, material aspects are defined as those that are in the upper right-hand quadrant
when mapped against the importance attached to any given issues according to its significance to the
business (x-axis) and stakeholders (y-axis).
In the appendix a detailed overview of the different elements of the materiality assessment.
Materiality Matrix, relevant topics for Unilever
Heinkeyen example:
No water, no beer…
Human rights, related to
company-to-value-chain: it has young
girls in Vietnam serving the beers in
bars. Should it get involved? It has.
3
WEEK 1: Introduction to CSR and Sustainability
Trends in Sustainability?
Moving from...
➢ Company towards supply chain: managing it is important and challenging, e.g. damage in a
factory in Bangladesh can hurt your reputation.
➢ Environment towards human: do we take care of our employees, our community?
➢ Check the box towards making-an-impact
➢ Top-down toward bottom-up: CEOs now tend to use the bottom-up approach when it comes
to sustainability.
➢ Nice-to-have towards need-to-have
➢ CSR director towards CFO
Purpose…
“If you want to become a billionaire, help a billion people” ~ Dr. Peter Diamandis
The quest for purpose (Benoit Leleux ea)
➢ In search of the Why
➢ Sustainability as a Source of Purpose
○ Talent Attraction and Retention (p 40 DJSI)
➢ Purpose statement formulation
○ Interface: Zero
○ Tony’s Chocolonely’s Slave-Free Chocolate: Nestlé and Tony’s are working together,
Nestlé makes Tony’s bigger and Tony’s gives sustainability reputation to Nestlé.
○ Q: any other examples?
And new sustainable enterprise:
,Why do firms care?
➢ Increasing revenues
➢ Reputation / Public trust: companies are afraid they might stop buying.
➢ Attracting talent: young people prefer to work for companies with a purpose, with a why.
➢ Saving costs / bonus
Identifying key drivers and Archetypes of Sustainability
The Corporate Social Responsibility Hierarchy (Archie Carrol, Chandler)
Economic responsibility
- To produce an acceptable return for investors (Unilever)
Legal responsibility
- To act within the framework of laws and regulations drawn up by the government and
judiciary (what about Shell and Nigeria?)
Ethical responsibility
- To do no harm to its stakeholders and within its operating environment (an Oath?!)
Discretionary responsibility
- Companies have more proactive, strategic behaviors that benefit themselves or society, or
both (Unilever soap in rural India, Tony Chocolonely, Tiny House Heijmans, van Oord, etc)
Archetypes (B. Leleux and J. van der Kaaij)
- Traditional: inherent risks (tobacco, weapons), compliance driven and focus on reporting to
regulatory affairs
- Communicative: opportunity seizing is complicated because sustainability measures are
costly (automotive, insurance). Focus on risk reduction and compliance.
- Opportunistic: opportunities offered by Sustainability (energy / renewables).
- Transformational: companies that have embraced Sustainability in a holistic fashion.
Sustainability programs are more closely tied to business operations.
Some examples:
Focusing on materialities that matter: generating a materiality matrix (page 68)
Q: what does sustainability mean to you in a few words?
- less waste, long-term impact thinking instead of short-term profit,
Materiality Assessment:
- Sustainability is a broad concept involving many different issues.
1
, - A materiality assessment helps to identify and prioritise the sustainability issues that matter
most to a business, and her stakeholders - such as consumers, customers (retailers), and
employees - and they expect the business to act upon.
- Identifying these issues helps to keep businesses alert to stakeholder concerns and
expectations, as well as to issues it believes presents the greatest risks and opportunities for
the business.
Prioritizing among stakeholders:
Materiality assessment matrix:
The materiality matrix depicts the issues that the company and its stakeholders consider as most
important. Identifying these issues helps to keep the business alert to stakeholder concerns and
expectations, as well as to issues it believes presents the greatest risks and opportunities for the
business.
2
, In the matrix below, material aspects are defined as those that are in the upper right-hand quadrant
when mapped against the importance attached to any given issues according to its significance to the
business (x-axis) and stakeholders (y-axis).
In the appendix a detailed overview of the different elements of the materiality assessment.
Materiality Matrix, relevant topics for Unilever
Heinkeyen example:
No water, no beer…
Human rights, related to
company-to-value-chain: it has young
girls in Vietnam serving the beers in
bars. Should it get involved? It has.
3
