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“Corporate Social Responsibility” emerged in the 1990’s as a new buzz in
the business world, and since then has developed into a field with substantial
and diverse career opportunities. The term ‘corporate social responsibility’ or
CSR has been coined to define how companies behave in social, environmental and
ethical contexts. Corporate social responsibility is about integrating the
issues of the workplace, the community and the marketplace into core business
strategies. Driving this emerging field are customers who choose products with a
good reputation, investors who put money into a company with an exemplary record
and firms which invest in the future or training of their employees, and in
employers interested in mutually beneficial relationships with local
communities. Career opportunities in CSR reflect the diversity of the field and incorporate the private, public, and non-profit sectors. Private Sector
The first place to find CSR-related positions is within companies. ‘CSR’
departments can be located in anything from the public relations, compliance, or
legal divisions and be called anything from ‘human rights programs’ to
‘reputation management’ and ‘environmental risk’. Opportunities are also opening
up in the large accounting and consulting firms, many of which are trying to
compete with the niche CSR consulting firms and offering their own CSR client
services. The growth of interest in socially responsible investing (SRI) has
also led to opportunities working for companies which screen firms on CSR issues
and produce the stock indices and socially-conscious mutual funds. As with
strategic CSR consultancies, SRI jobs can be found either within larger
investment houses or as independent boutique firms. Public Sector
The public sector CSR career options can be found mainly in national
government agencies, or international organizations.
There are now CSR positions in international organizations such as the
UN’s International Labor Organization and the World Bank (Business Partners for
Development). National governments have also started building CSR departments,
often in their international development branches such as USAID, UNDP in the US,
and DFID or the Foreign Office in the UK. The British government has even gone
as far as instituting a Minister for Corporate Social Responsibility.
Internationally, both the UN and the World Bank have become very involved in
promoting CSR. Through the UN, there is the International Labor
Organization, the Global Compact, and some initiatives within the UNDP.
Both the World Bank and World Bank Institute have their own initiatives in CSR,
corporate governance and private sector development. Non-Profit Sector
There are a wide variety of NGO’s, industry associations, think tanks,
and academic institutions engaging in learning and/or advocacy within the CSR
arena. These include everything from the group Business for Social
Responsibility to Harvard Business School’s Center for Social Enterprise.
Such groups promote and examine the use of CSR concepts within the private and
public spheres. Career Paths and Entry Salaries
There is no such thing as a typical career path in CSR. A career in this
field could start in big business, working in the compliance department of a
firm such as Levi Strauss, and continue in the public sector, designing
government policy, and go onto a niche consulting company providing CSR client
services.
Entry salaries vary as much as career paths and could vary from the lower
end working for a CSR non-profit to a better remunerated position in the legal
department of a corporation. Qualifications Necessary/Application Procedures to Enter Field
There are no prerequisite qualifications to enter in this field. Because
the field itself is so new, direct experience in the sector is less important
than it might be in some other professions. Rather, transferable skills and
knowledge is valued. For example, a law degree might be necessary for certain
human rights positions or a scientific degree or background to work in
environmental CSR. Sample Employers Academia and Research
Associations
Consultancies
Corporations
International Organizations
Law Firms
Nonprofits
Socially Responsible Investing
Demand and Future Challenges of Profession
While many of the world’s industrial giants have been under the
environmental and safety spotlight since the 1970s, the recent Worldcom and
Enron scandals have broadened public and media interest in just how companies go
about their business. Consumers are demanding more information on everything
from where and how their goods are produced to the environmental record of the
companies they invest in. Both Dow Jones and FTSE now produce specialist indices
to provide investors with information on which companies score highly on
CSR-related concerns. The governments of some countries are even setting new
reporting requirements which require companies to assess and monitor their wider
social, environmental and ethical performance.
The large natural resource extraction companies such as Shell, BP and
ExxonMobil were the earliest to address CSR issues and hire CSR professionals,
due to the nature of their products and the places that sourced them. Then came
the footwear and apparel companies which were first forced to address the
problem of sweatshops in their supply chains in the 1980s.
Recently, the spotlight is widening and companies as diverse as Hershey’s
and Hewlett Packard are looking very carefully at their wider responsibilities,
being either forced to because of adverse publicity or because they see the
obvious business benefits from the approach. Jobs in CSR have expanded as this
spotlight has grown and brightened.
As a corollary to the growth in interest of CSR among these companies the
large consulting and accounting firms are now offering their own CSR-related
services. These include Arthur D. Little’s environment and risk services, Ernst
and Young’s environmental and sustainability services, KPMG’s sustainability and
advisory services and social auditing services, and PWC’s reputation assurance
practice. Even the large development consulting companies such as Development
Alternatives Incorporated (DAI) whose clients are usually government agencies
are getting in on the game due to the huge impact so many organizations have in
developing world communities.
The demand for people with an interest or experience in the CSR field is
growing at a fast pace as communications improve and a demand for increased
transparency and accountability in the corporate sector increases. In addition,
recognition of the important positive role that the corporate sector can play in
the communities it touches has encouraged companies themselves to get involved,
spurred on by governments and the non-profits.
It should also be noted that the commitment to CSR and hence supply of
related jobs is, at present, more developed in Europe than it is in the US,
although the market is growing rapidly on this side of the Atlantic.
Alongside the increasing interest in and development of the field of CSR
there are some challenges of the profession. Like every new field some people
have tried to downplay its importance and labeled it a ‘trend’ which may go out
of fashion. There is certainly a backlash in some quarters; Nestlé has recently
pulled out of some of its commitments and Nike is currently fighting to defend
some statements it made back in 1996 about its working conditions which may make
other companies wary of addressing CSR issues. The economic downturn has made
honoring CSR commitments difficult for some firms. In addition there is also
much work to be done to make the CSR field itself more rigorous, to find ways to
gather qualitative and quantitative information more efficiently and easily and
make standards more uniform and accepted in specific sectors. Despite these
challenges, a momentum behind the CSR ‘movement’ has been created which would be
hard to reverse and people with CSR-related skills and experience are likely to
be in demand. Resources For More Information Internet Resources
Publications
Common Interest, Common Good: Creating Value through
Business and Social Sector Partnerships
by Shirley Sagawa, et al, Harvard Business School Press, 2000.
Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make
Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well,
by Marc Benioff and Karen Southwick, Career Press, 2004.
Harvard Business Review on Corporate Social
Responsibility, Harvard Business School Press, 2003.
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and
the Power of New Ideas,
by David Bornstein, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial
Revolution, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, et al, Back Bay
Books, 2000.
Profits with Principles: Seven Strategies for
Delivering Value with Values,
by Ira A. Jackson and Jane Nelson, Currency Publishers, 2003.
Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and
Business: The Story of Clif Bar Inc.,
by Gary Erickson, Jossey-Bass, 2004.
Saving the Corporate Soul and (Who Knows?) Maybe
Your Own: Eight Principles for
Creating and Preserving Wealth and Well-Being for You and Your Company Without
Selling Out, by David Batstone, Jossey-Bass, 2003.
Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good, by Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner, Nan A. Talese,
2003.
The Cathedral Within:
Transforming Your Life by Giving Something Back,
by William H. Shore, Random House, 2001.
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid:
Eradicating Poverty through Profits,
by C.K. Prahalad, Wharton School Publishing, 2004.
Tomorrow’s History: The Collected Writings of Simon
Zadek,
by Simon Zadek, Greenleaf Publishers, 2004 What Matters Most: How a Small Group of Pioneers is Teaching Social Responsibility to Big Business, and Why Big Business is Listening, by Jeffrey Hollender and Stephen Fenichell, Basic Books, 2006.
This page current as of: April 24, 2008 |
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