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Dr. Macagno is my academic advisor and a sustainability professor at Chatham University. Prior to teaching here, he served as the Head of Sustainability for engineering firm May Gurney Ltd. In Norwich, UK. Here, his major accomplishments included saving the equivalent of 2.5 million dollars by reducing CO2 by 18 percent and site waste by 21 percent. He worked extensively in the software industry before transitioning to the field of sustainability.

During his lecture, Dr. Macagno defined corporate social responsibility A responsibility among firms to meet the needs of their stakeholders and a responsibility among stakeholders to hold firms to account for their actions. There are several “arguments” for CSR: ethical, moral, rational, & economic. People who argue for more environmentally focused CSR say that one should either view environment as a stakeholder or take care to observe how it affects stakeholders. No matter what action is taken, there is a “sweet spot” and “danger zone”. We compared the mandatory reaction to cost of business vs voluntary action for competitive advantage, as well as the potential risk of not acting vs potential benefit from acting. Ideally, CSR functions as a “filter” to identify a company’s mission (what) and vision (why) within strategy (specifics) and tactics (how) to approach business.

              In her book, Exploring Business, Karen Collins defines CSR as “the approach that an organization takes in balancing its responsibilities toward different stakeholders when making legal, economic, ethical, and social decisions” (Collins, 2017). Overall, it is how a company is socially responsible to stakeholders (anyone who, like owners, employees, customers, and the communities in which it does business, has a “stake” or interest in it).

Additionally, she pointed out the signs of an ethical organization which include the following:

• Treating employees, customers, investors, and the public fairly
• Making fairness a top priority
• Holding every member personally accountable for his or her action
• Communicating core values and principles to all members
• Demanding and rewarding integrity from all members in all situations

Some argue that CSR should reach beyond its current definition and make sure to encompass risk management because the wellbeing of employees and customers depends on the ability of a company to keep their data safe, and the images of companies such as amazon and Facebook are influential of many people. Just as some places prioritize environmental protection and encourage their customers to care as well, so should businesses look out for the data of their stakeholders. Adrienne Day writes for The Stanford Review that “CSR correlates to better access to funding due to changes in social expectations for companies; investors care more about the effects that their money is having” (Day, 2014). She says that “some companies truly excel at ESG practices, and some merely pay lip service to improving their performance in this area. The big task for investors over the next decade, Serafeim suggests, will be to find ways to distinguish between those two groups” (Day, 2014). It is essential for investors who care about the effects of the money to learn to distinguish between these. Greenwashing has become all too common in business, as CSR is seen soley as a marketing tool and not as a defining principle of a company’s actions, poiting directly back to Dr. Macagno’s comparison of CSR vs Strategic CSR – true, strategic CSR is about value creation.

References:

Research – Thomas Macagno. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://blogs.chatham.edu/macagno/tm/

Faculty Spotlight: Tom Macagno. (2016, June 21). Retrieved December 12, 2018, from https://blogs.chatham.edu/businessblogs/2014/12/10/faculty-spotlight-tom-macagno-2/

Karen Collins. (2017). Exploring Business. Boston, MA: FlatWorld

Day, A. (2018). The Upside of CSR (SSIR). Retrieved December 10, 2018, from https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_upside_of_csr

Dr. Macagno’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmacagno/