{"id":1656,"date":"2014-07-24T12:10:41","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T16:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.uncc.edu\/inss\/?p=1656"},"modified":"2014-07-24T12:10:41","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T16:10:41","slug":"corporate-idealism-an-unconventional-love-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/inss\/blog\/2014\/07\/24\/corporate-idealism-an-unconventional-love-affair\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Idealism: an unconventional love affair"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review of Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil<\/em> by Christine Bader<\/p>\n

Christine Bader starts off her memoir<\/a> with the admission that she fell in love with oil giant BP. The rest of the book struggles with this admission, tempering it with her misgivings about BP and other corporations in her search for corporate social responsibility, with a focus on human rights. This quest takes her to Indonesia, China, the UK, and the UN, though discussions of resource curses, corruption, cultural differences, complicity, and compromising.<\/p>\n

Told as a personal narrative, the book nonetheless reaches past her experiences to discuss what she calls \u201cCorporate Idealists,\u201d those people who work across the globe attempting to address human rights, environmental issues, and other corporate social responsibilities. Throughout\u00a0her story, but particularly in the last chapter, Bader brings in the voices and lessons from many other Corporate Idealists (her capitalization). I’m impressed by her efforts – from my experiences as an interviewer, she must have spent several months just interviewing people, even if by phone.<\/p>\n

Using both personal narrative and interview snippets, Bader is able to tell her unconventional love story. But by the end, the love affair is with corporate idealism, not the corporation, and Bader is clear about what she means by corporate idealism, ending with 10 principles in a manifesto (p. 209):<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 What is good for society is good for my company.
\n2.\u00a0 \u201cResponsible business\u201d should be redundant.
\n3.\u00a0\u00a0 Sharing the stories of the people and communities my company affects is part of my job.
\n4.\u00a0\u00a0 Evangelizing to my colleagues is not helpful. Figuring out how my work supports theirs is.
\n5.\u00a0\u00a0 The \u201cbusiness case\u201d is important. So is morality.
\n6.\u00a0\u00a0 Leadership transitions and financial downturns are irrelevant if I\u2019ve truly embedded my work.
\n7.\u00a0\u00a0 All human rights are relevant to my company.
\n8.\u00a0\u00a0 If consultation and collaboration aren\u2019t both frustrating and worthwhile, I\u2019m not doing it right.
\n9.\u00a0\u00a0 Transformational change is needed. Incremental change is good too.
\n10. The challenges we face are systemic and complex. But that doesn\u2019t mean I can\u2019t do anything about them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Bader is adept at using her experiences to explain why each of these matters and how each can work in practice, a few key points seem especially relevant to the INSS\u00a0efforts. #4, for example, is a recurring theme throughout the book. The author\u2019s experiences in China underscore the difficulty and importance of convincing colleagues, and how her success depends on their ability to do their job while integrating CSR principles, an issue we discovered in Charlotte<\/a>. Cases like hers are not unique in their insistence that compromise is necessary, but Bader is careful to make the stronger case for morality (#5 above), and changing corporate cultures (#6), with a lot of attention to the role of individual leaders like Browne and Ruggie.<\/p>\n

The other major theme I found riveting was that of complicity and compromise. I teach applied anthropology, which shows students how they can apply their (largely theoretically-focused) training in anthropology to real world problems. Every year, students ask (with reason) if they aren\u2019t just using their skills \u2018for evil\u2019 if they don\u2019t work for NGOs or other similar \u2018socially-benevolent\u2019 organizations. Bader is no stranger to these kinds of arguments, particularly in the wake of the Deep Horizon oil spill, which makes her doubt whether she really knew BP at all. But she skillfully, if with brutal honesty, finds her way through debates about selling out vs changing the organization from the inside. Other voices join hers, revealing a variety of potential solutions. Her reflections lead to #8-10 above, which admit both that corporate idealism is very hard work but\u00a0that change is possible. The larger arc of the book traces the increase in interest in CSR, and the experiences of Corporate Idealists like Bader reassure us that this is not just whitewashing, at least not in intent.<\/p>\n

The final lesson for me is one about the ecosystem or context of CSR, and the role that Corporate Idealists can play in corporate change. #9 particularly highlights the overwhelming sense that something is broken in corporations, and chapters 3 and 4 tackle this through her work with the UN and the guidelines the Ruggie Group drafted for corporate human rights. Through the book, Bader shows the vantage points of both insider and external expert roles, and one of the strengths of the book is the deft ways she weaves these together to show how they support each other and corporate change.<\/p>\n

I could write more about Bader\u2019s book, which I will be thinking about for months or years. But I also want to consider what this contributes to our discussions of social sustainability in the INSS group.\u00a0 I have heard from many in the network that corporate social responsibility is only part of what we mean by social sustainability, and I think that this reflects our sense the CSR often does not go far enough to tackle issues of human rights, living wages, environmental problems, and other related topics. Reading Bader\u2019s book, I have a hard time seeing any firm line between my ideas of social sustainability and her ideas of CSR, at least in terms of the human rights focus of the book. The world would be well-served to have more of what Bader is advising as CSR, and I hope that she will continue this discussion and important work.<\/p>\n

Photo by identity chris is<\/a>, used under a Creative Commons License<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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