In his Crisis Guru Commentaries, Jim Lukaszewski provides real answers to real questions about your most critical communications problems and issues.

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Question:
 
Dear Crisis Guru:

A national debate triggered by the abuses of extractive industries is going on in Canada. Our country is searching its soul about this because neither the government nor industry seems to be taking responsibility for the damage being done. Can Canada use corporate social responsibly to renew its reputation and repair the internal and external perceptions of the country?

Post Graduate Student
Seneca College, Toronto, ON, Canada

Answer:

Dear Post Graduate Student:

Managing the extractive industries is an important issue in the long-term ecological health of our planet. In my judgment, social responsibility is only one element of those things needed to remediate and prevent further damage, as well as to preserve what Canada already has.

In Europe, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is taken more seriously by those who run businesses. The European model seems to pervade business life from community relationships to ethics to integrity. In America, CSR has predominantly become a public relations activity. Perhaps it always was. When Americans write checks for things in the community, we now give that activity a name - social responsibility. We used to call it building a reservoir of good will. Corporate social responsibility has a different and, perhaps, better ring to it.

When you talk about corporate social responsibility, it’s all about responsibility. It’s about an individual or an organization initiating something that is important to get done or something that is important to mention. You start from the premise that corporations feel they should be doing something more, that they should be initiating something more. Corporate social responsibility is the self-initiated discipline of doing those things that matter, doing those things that are “right” in society or that affect people whose lives are directly affected by something the corporation does.

Once recognizing and admitting that their extractive industries are virtually out of control - and perhaps even uncontrollable, the policy question for Canadians is two-fold: Can social responsibility be legislated or imposed, and/or is there some structured kind of enforcement that will ensure responsible behavior on the part of the extractive companies, and with some consequence should public trust or rules and regulations be violated?

When you want to monitor corporate behavior, that’s enforcement. It is beyond corporate social responsibility. When a company is convicted of crimes, since you can’t put a corporation in prison, the corporate officers sign a plea agreement. This agreement contains elements of responsible behavior, which will be monitored by others. The plea forces the company to install an outside monitor who will become equal to the ranking officers. Even though an outsider, the monitor will run the company for some time. The monitor will see to it that everything the company does is what it should be doing, and everything it should not be doing, but is still doing, will be eradicated from business practice. If this kills the company in the process, tough luck. It’s all about enforcement.

The real question for Canadians is, “How do we hold corporations to account for their behavior?”

Enforcement will be done by the Canadian government, or by some very important independent body that everyone in Canada recognizes as doing the right things. Let’s say for example that Canada decided to establish a Canadian Corporate Social Responsibility Council (CCSRC). The CCSRC would probably begin by setting some standards for what was meant by “corporate social responsibility.” These standards would be specific.

The second element might be a verification process to validate or modify, through independent monitoring, that a company claiming to be socially responsibility is actually behaving in a socially responsible way.

Part of this monitoring might be self-initiated reports by companies to a special panel of this Canadian Corporate Social Responsibility Council. In other words, a company would both disclose a situation it is working to correct and report on its progress. The companies engaging in these programs, though not required, would be encouraged to publish a CSR report every year. It would be a public document, and it would be given to a Canadian organization charged to disseminate the information as it chose.

The approach over time would be to define what CSR means, and to build a public expectation of responsible corporate behavior. A taxonomy of expected behaviors for the extractive companies, for shoe stores, for bus lines, for government agencies, for educational institutions, for every kind of industry and institution, needs to be developed. Canada would create an environment of expectations for corporate responsibility. Once you start doing this, you can start working towards making Canadians feel better about themselves.

There has to be a champion for this process - probably a political leader. I would be surprised if it was a business leader, but it is possible. This person would begin the push toward the concept of a public expectation of responsibility. This way, the entire matter is owned by the public with the responsibility placed on businesses and corporations where it belongs.

What does the public expect? You probably would be under-whelmed. First and foremost, it will take appropriate behavior by corporate executives and corporations as a whole because all things begin with appropriate behavior. It will not take a major public relations program to respond to public concerns.

One other problem is that this topic is that it is not newsworthy. To me, this is where the media really fall down on their responsibility. When real solutions come along, the media are not eager to cover them. They do not consider solutions to be news. To them, news is about a leaking pipeline or a gold mine contaminating a river in western Canada.

I can tell you what I think society expects based on my experience. The expectations are predictable. The first thing the public expects is a healthy and safe place to live, to work, and in which their kids can play. They want to be healthy, and they want to be safe. This is number 1.

The second expectation is to preserve the value of those things they collect, accumulate, buy, or own over a lifetime. They want the value of their personal property to be maintained.

The third expectation is an environment that is pristine. They want the environment to be left alone.

The fourth expectation relates to quality of life. By quality of life I mean things like peace of mind and absence of conflict. People don’t want to be arguing. And, they want to have pride in where they live, in their communities, and in their country.

The fifth expectation is freedom from fear.

And down there somewhere toward the bottom, they would like to have economic security but, in my experience, if it’s a toss up between economic security and anything else on this list, they will sacrifice economic security for all the other things - peace of mind or pride in community - in a minute. We see this every day. This is why it is so hard to site common sense things like high tension power lines. The use of electricity in Canada is growing; the use in American is growing. Yet, it’s a nightmare to site power lines or to even expand the ones we have. Why? Because it offends every one of there core values I just talked about.

When it comes to quality of life issues, everyone wants to feel that they have some control over interferences in their quality of life, which is why, when things are not to their liking or don’t meet their expectations, they will gather with their neighbors and go pound on someone.

If we need to landfill, why can’t we site one? If a company wants to expand a plant or, heaven forbid, Wal-Mart wants to build a store nearby, all of these - what I call core values in the community - come into play. Why? It’s because every one of these core values is an expectation of the community about a government’s behavior, a corporation’s behavior, a neighbor’s behavior.

I work all over the world. Wherever you go - China, Japan, Central America, South America, anywhere, this list of core values embodies the minimums people expect to have and to be able to control. If you want to codify what meeting the expectations of the public means, it starts here

Until you deal with core values issues directly, you will have problems. This is very powerful stuff. This is how to begin thinking about getting it right. Corporate social responsibility that only concerns how many baseball tickets you buy from the local YMCA, or how many opera companies you support, or how much money you donate to the Red Cross is not corporate social responsibility. It’s only money. Corporations have money. Money is not the problem.

The problem is behavior. Meeting society’s expectations is the issue. So corporate social responsibility, to me, first and foremost, is meeting society’s expectations of our behavior. Public relations begins as one gets the behavior right. Public relations is one thing. Corporate social responsibility is another.

It’s a big mistake to think that PR equals CSR. That means anybody who does anything in a charitable way is a corporately social responsible individual or organization. Responsibility begins with behavior - doing things correctly, doing things reasonably, and meeting the expectations of the community. And certainly corporate social responsibility, that is getting things done and meeting expectations, can and should be the subject of communications and public relations. But I do believe that if all you do is public relations, you’ve failed to be corporately social responsible.

The lesson of public relations always is behavior precedes communication. Spin is talking without acting. Ethics starts with behavior. Tone at the top starts with behavior at the top. It’s a much deeper concept than just being PR.

It’s a great subject, and important issue for Canada to resolve.

Cordially,

Jim Lukaszewski