If you’re in the business of reputation management and/or corporate social responsibility (CSR), you need to be familiar with the musings of Mallen Baker. Mallen is the founding director of a UK-based website on CSR, Business Respect. Last month, Mallen was named a contributing editor of Ethical Corporation, a global business intelligence organization. His bio paints the complete picture, but I really encourage you to follow his blog. I find his voice to be one of the most persuasive and balanced on CSR and reputation matters.
That is certainly the case below, as Mallen addresses some of the intersections between CSR and crisis management through these Three Tough Q’s:
Q1: In your experience, how often do CSR experts team up with crisis management professionals to assess and address threats, before they become crises?
This happens a lot less than it should. Part of the reason is that we are only gradually improving the understanding of what CSR should be about – that it can play this role of avoiding a crisis. For too many businesses it remains a low-level function that is about issues seen as peripheral to the business, rather than central to it.
It is changing. I see more companies appointing internal senior people to CSR or sustainability posts. These companies have understood that they need people with weight and seniority who understand the business extremely well. Companies that seek to bring outside CSR experts or environmental scientists into their posts are more prone to sidelining those people as specialists.
The most effective CSR teams aim to influence across the business. They are still in the minority, and many teams are too focused on what goes in the CSR report to make real headway in this regard.