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A Commentary on CSR View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE): E-Journals Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting Vol. 1, No. 1 June 2007 Pp. 160-164 A Commentary on CSR Alistair M. Brown School of Accounting Curtin University of Technology, Australia Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Foundation (EJF, 2005), Friends of the is lauded by well-intentioned CSR inter- Earth (FOE, 2007), Global Witness est groups 1 but has been mocked by big (Global Witness, 2004; 2006), Green corporations such as British American Alliance (Green Alliance, 2007), Green- Tobacco, Coca-Cola and Shell where peace (Greenpeace, 2002a; 2002b; 2004; bad business behaviour persists despite 2006), IFAW (IFAW, 1999) and Inter- assurances of best CSR practices national Alert (International Alert, 2005) (Amnesty International, 2007; Christian are awash with the recent failings of Aid, 2004; Other Shell Report, 2003). CSR and the way companies, individu- ally and collectively, use and abuse CSR The sites of Amnesty International to further company ends. (Amnesty International, 2007), Catholic Agency for Overseas Development Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (CAFOD, 2007), Centre for Corporate fails because it does not make compa- Accountability (CCA, 2007), Christian nies keep their promises and ignores Aid (2004), Corporate Responsibility problems by allowing company reports (Core Responsibility, 2007), Corporate to gloss over core business impacts Watch (2006), Environmental Justice (FOE, 2007). Its voluntary approach ren- ders CSR useless in enforcing signed-up principles, while at the same placing 1 See for example the Equator Principles (2007), the legal frameworks for international trade Global Sullivan Principles (1977), OECD’s (2007) and investment (Doane & Holder, 2007). Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, UN’s At best, companies implementation of (2007), Business for Social Responsibility (BSR, 2007), World Business Council for Sustainable Devel- CSR is fragmented and shallow (World opment (WBCSD, 2007), Instituto Ethos (2007), Bank, 2007); at worst, CSR is ignored or Centre for Social Markets (2007) African Institute of Corporate Citizenship (2007), International Business used to emote about the wretchedness of Leaders Forum (2007), SustainAbility (2007), Eth- the earth without really changing corpo- ics Officer Association (2007) rate practices. Alistair M. Brown is Associate Professor, Governance & Corporate Social Responsibility Research, School of Ac- counting, Curtin University of Technology, Australia, email: [email protected] A. M. Brown / Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting 1 (2007) 160-164 161 Accounting has always managed to ones – and Index , suggesting technical trample over public domains and con- proficiency, renders the term an unam- struct them into new ways of being – biguous and authoritative reality of sus- health (Llewellyn & Northcott, 2005; tainability, rather than a highly con- Samuel, Dirsmith & McElroy, 2005) and structed one based on a core-financial war (Chwastiak, 2006), for example - self-interests. and CSR is no exception. The guru- esque Balanced Scorecard (Nørreklit, Indeed, the DJSI manages to express 2003), lapidary Global Reporting Initia- sustainability as a corporate possessive tive (GRI, 2006), technically bound ‘corporate sustainability’ which in turn AA1000 Framework (AccountAbility, is defined as ‘a business approach that 1999a) and AA1000 Assurance creates long-term shareholder value’. (AccountAbility, 1999b), and bureau- This, of course, falls wide of the inter- cratic ISO certification (ISO, 2007) and pretations of either the Bruntland Com- Social Accountability International pro- mission -“to meet the needs of the pre- gram SA 8000 (SAI, 2007) are symbolic sent without compromising the ability of of the way accounting popularized con- future generations to meet their own ceptions of CSR as professional artifacts needs” (Bruntland, 1987) or that of the that allow regulators, governments and World Conservation Union, United Na- accounting standard boards to shirk their tions Environment Programme and responsibility from legislating on CSR. World Wide Fund for Nature - "improving the quality of human life One of the foulest examples of account- while living within the carrying capacity ing’s complicity in constructing CSR as of supporting eco-systems" (IUCN, professional artifact must surely be the 1991). Moreover, it allows the Dow egregious Dow Jones Sustainability In- Jones to engineer a defined set of criteria dex (DJSI) which claims to measure and weightings that makes its financially ‘objectively’ an index of corporate sus- loaded index look like a natural meas- tainability. The conflation of Dow Jones , urement of sustainability. Thus, data a symbol of American market capital- proficiency is ritualised by summoning ism, Sustainability , a term to do with up both the preposterously constructed future needs – not just market capital Laspeyres formula 2 (DJSI, p. 33) and the elevated PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Re- view which both suggest an unproblem- 2 One illustration of the absurdity of this formula is the atic and authoritative stream of calcula- placement of the different weightings given to the tion of sustainability. sub-categories (‘criteria’) of ‘economic’, ‘environment’ and ‘social’ sustainability categories (or ‘dimensions’). For example, the environmental CSR claims to speak for the next genera- sub-category of Environmental Reporting is given a weight of 3.0% while the social sub-category Talent tion of people but is informed and Attraction & Retention is given 5.5%; the economic guided by powerful financial instru- sub-category of Risks & Crisis Management is given ments like the DJSI . Accounting aca- 6.0% while the social sub-category of Social Report- ing is given 3.0%. Quite why Talent Attraction & demics and environmental and social Retention is worth double the weight of Environ- special interest groups may agonise over mental Reporting or Social Reporting is not explicated the pros and cons of CSR but when ac- but clearly, the picture of sustainability that the Laspeyres formula wishes to show might politely be countants wittingly and unwittingly described as Dow Jones-esque. drum up artefacts of nonsense for corpo- 162 A. M. Brown / Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting 1 (2007) 160-164 rate gargantuans, like the Dow Jones and rate Accountability”, http:// their rich clientele, then it is time to drop www.corporateaccontability.org/ CSR from our vocabulary. What is international/deaths/tables/ really needed from those interested in summary/main.htm social and environmental reform is the Centre for Social Markets (2007) exertion of pressure on both the Interna- www.csmworld.org tional Accounting Standards Board, Christian Aid (2004) “Behind the mask: which has yet to come up with interna- the real face of corporate social tional stand-alone environmental or so- responsibility”, http:// cial standard (Porter et al., 2006), and www.christian-aid.org.uk/ first world national governments, which indepth/0401csr/ sanctify constructions like the Dow csr_behindthemask.pdf Jones Sustainability Index , to come up Chwastiak, M. (2007) “Rationality, per- with regulations and laws to stop compa- formance measures and represen- nies harming the planet and its people. tations of reality: planning, pro- gramming and budgeting and the Vietnam war”, Critical Perspec- References tives on Accounting , Vol. 17, pp. 29-55. AccountAbility (1999a) AA1000 Frame- Corporate Responsibility (2007) “Why work Corporate Social Responsibility is __________(1999b) AA1000 Assurance Failing Children”, http:// African Institute of Corporate Citizen- www.corporate-responsibility.org/ ship (2007) www.aiccafrica.org module_images/ Amnesty International (2007) Corporate WhySCRpagesHR.pdf Social Responsibility: Human Corporate Watch (2006) What’s Wrong Rights for All People for All With Corporate Social Responsi- Times, http://news.amnesty.org/ bility?, Corporate Watch, Oxford, pages/csr pp. 1-28. Bruntland Commission (1987) World Doane, D. & Holder, A. (2007) “Why Commission on Environment and Corporate Social Responsibility is Development. Our Common Fu- Failing Children, Save the Chil- ture. (Oxford, Great Britain: Ox- dren and The Corporate Responsi- ford University Press, p. 8. bility (CORE) Coalition”, Lon- Business for Social Responsibility don, http://www.corporate- (2007) www.bsr.org responsibility.org/ CAFOD (2007) Corporate Responsibil- module_images/ ity, Catholic Agency for Overseas WhyCSRpagesHR.pdf Development,http:// DJSI (2007) Dow Jones Sustainability www.cafod.org.uk/about_cafod/ Indexes, www.sustainability- what_we_do/ indexes.com) corporate_responsibility EJF (2005) Impact Report: Protecting CCA (2007) “Promoting Worker and People and Planet 2004-2005, Public Safety: Number of work- Environmental Justice Foundation ers who died in different regions http://www.ejfoundation.org/pdf/ of the world, Centre for Corpo- impact_report_04-05.pdf A. M. Brown / Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting 1 (2007) 160-164 163 Equator Principles (2007) www.equator- news/investment-firms-tell-dow- principles.com to-i# Ethics Officer Association (2007) _________ (2004) Exxon Valdez disas- www.eoa.org/home.asp ter – an ongoing history of lies, FOE (2007) Corporate Social Responsi- http://www.greenpeace.org/ bility: Friends of the Earth, http:// international/press/releases/
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