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Can NGO’s be the only organisational thought leaders in the CSR / Sustainability field?

October 5, 20103:00 pm

The social media / tech world was taken by surprise last week when Techcrunch (one of the largest tech / social media blogs globally) announced that it has been acquired by AOL. Immediately the future editorial independence of Techcrunch was questioned now being a part of the AOL empire. Rightly so in my view.

Here is a thought. So what if this kind of acquisition would be happening in the CSR / Sustainability business sector? What would happen what would happen to their credibility?

I think this question is impossible to answer at this point due to the lack of examples (to my knowledge their have been no acquisitions of this kind as of yet) but thinking about it brought up another issue I never really thought about before.

The question is: Are all organisations that are so called thought leaders in the CSR / Sustainability sector all NGO’s or government funded?

Or lets put this another way: Can we have genuine organisational thought leaders in this field without them being NGOs or government funded? Lets not talk about individuals but focus on organisations that are being seen as thought leaders.

My thoughts on this:

The problem is that all profit driven organisations which are intending to be thought leaders in the CSR / Sustainability field will always try to sell their product in some shape or form. This is the nature of our free market economic system unfortunately in this case. As far as I am aware there is no organisation out there that are thought leaders, not trying to sell a product / service and are not an NGO or government funded. I also doubt that these organisations can ever exist as every organisation needs to pay their bills and earn a decent living for their founders and employees in order to carry out their work.

I can only therefore conclude that NGO’s are and can be the only real thought leaders in the CSR / Sustainability field.

This is my conclusion. What is yours?

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamed/327939900

On the relationship of the government and the CSR / Sustainability field

May 12, 20104:14 pm

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Yesterday was an extraordinary day if you are of British nationality or are living in the UK. David Cameron became new prime minster. Here is the link to the BBC website for more information. For me this change in government here in the UK brings up the big question which is so difficult to answer.

What should the relationship between governments and the CSR/ Sustainability field be? And by this I mean each and every government across the globe. Not just the UK government of course.

Downing Street On the relationship of the government and the CSR / Sustainability field

I am not a political expert and would never dream of getting into a political debate. But I realized today that I have not written a blog post about this topic so far and I feel that this topic is very important to discuss. So today seems a good day to write about this difficult and very sensitive topic (for some people). Please also note that the following points purely reflect my opinion based on my experience working in this field.

The role of governments from across the globe with regards to Sustainability / CSR as I see it:

Governments need to be involved to a higher degree in the Sustainability / CSR affairs of companies nationally. I believe that government rules/legislation, taking the country context into consideration, is essential to the future success of the Sustainability / CSR field. I know that this is a highly sensitive topic but the past has shown that no role of the government does not really work in my opinion. Business will not thrive to me more responsible. The government amongst other influencers of course need to play its role.
But at the same time governments need to take a gentle lead. Not forcing but also not tolerating to much flexing of the rules by companies with regards to Sustainability / CSR practices and corporate spin.
Once this gentle lead has been established governments needs to start listen more to what the companies and individuals in the field are saying in order to promote innovation and progress.

These are the three main points I feel would be important to promote Sustainability / CSR across the globe. The important aspect here is that they all work in a close partnership and not as separate entities. Just like the new political coalition here in the UK, companies and the government need to form a partnership in order to achieve overall progress.

The points above are not rocket science and are pretty straight forward. But as I stated in previous posts, innovation and working in a partnership will bring us a long way and I feel that a bigger steer from governments can provide more structure and certainty for the professional field as a whole.

Video: What you need to find a job in CSR / Sustainability field

March 5, 20106:37 pm

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I have recently conducted my first interview for the Report section of the new 3bl TV web video channel.

This weeks interview was with Toby Young, a senior Recruiting consultant from Acre Resources, on how to get a job in the CSR / Sustainability field. Here Toby talks about his job at Acre Resources and what he believes is important for job seekers in the field to be just right for potential employers. He provides us with examples for graduates and senior managers. Lot’s of great information here.

This is the video. Please let me know what you think.