Session 4: Consumer Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility
Can CSR be the driver of change?
Jonathon Hanks
Incite Sustainability (www.incite.co.za)
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Session 4: Consumer Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility
Can CSR be the driver of change?
Session 4 - Aims
 Can CSR really be the driver of renewed trust between consumers and business?
 Are consumers really interested in CSR and is it really changing business behaviour?
 Is a CSR approach sufficient to deliver sustainable development on a global level?
 How can consumer groups inspire and empower consumers to achieve sustainability?
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While trust in business is understandably low…
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…we nevertheless need to recognise
and harness the power of business
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To do so, we need to appreciate what drives business
“Terms like triple bottom line
(TBL) and environment, social
and governance (ESG) have
played their roles as booster
rockets and will fall away as
new forms of integrated
accounting and reporting take
over.”
John Elkington et al (2010).
We should acknowledge that there is only one bottom line in business, and
that to suggest otherwise results in the issue being marginalised
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We need to embrace this thinking that is informing the
shift globally to integrated reporting
“It is becoming increasingly apparent that the success or failure
of organisations is dependent on their ability to create or
sustain value without depleting the capital assets – financial,
human, manufactured, social or natural – on which that
value depends.
South African Discussion Paper on Integrated Reporting
Financial and
manufactured capital
Human and social capital
www.theiirc.org
Natural capital
SUSTAINABILITY
“An approach to creating value that sustains or enhances the
systems on which that value depends”.
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We need to embrace this thinking that is informing the
shift globally to integrated reporting
This shift is reflected in the concept of ‘shared value’: “creating economic value in a way
that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges”
Creating Shared Value, Harvard Business Review; Michael E.Porter and Mark R. Kramer, Feb 2011
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We need to encourage (and challenge) progressive business leaders
who recognise the link between societal and economic value…
“Success will require completely new business models.
It will demand transformational innovation in product and
process technologies…
Interestingly too, the challenge is likely to encourage a much
more collaborative form of capitalism.”
Paul Polman, CEO Unilever(2010).
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…acknowledging the role (and limitations) of C/SR initiatives
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We need to lobby for progressive policy reform by government
Addressing the system flaws
• Systematic under-pricing of the true costs and risks of
our activities
• Pervasive application of the worst sort of business and
ecological values characterised by a profligate and
hedonistic approach to economic life
• The tendency of markets to privatise gains and
socialise losses
incite |ɪnˌsʌɪt|
verb [ trans. ]
encourage or stir up (unlawful behaviour)
urge or persuade (someone) to act in an unlawful way: he incited loyal subjects to rebellion
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And we should acknowledge the responsibilities (and significant
challenges) for the consumer movement
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Environmental Impact is a function of Population, Affluence and Technology
“The situation we face has arisen not from the old working class
vice of excessive copulation, but from the modern middle class
vice of excessive consumption…
In practice green consumerism has failed to induce significant
inroads into the unsustainable nature of production and
consumption and is unlikely ever to do so…
By shifting responsibility on to individuals and reinforcing the
sacrosanct nature of consumer lifestyles, green consumerism
threatens to entrench the very attitudes and behaviours that
have given us global warming.”
Clive Hamilton
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Empowering Tomorrow’s Consumers
Empowering consumers for “interesting times”
We are here
Breakpoint
Breakthrough:
• Global co-operation
• Radical innovation
• Economy operates
increasingly within
ecological limits
Breakdown:
• Runaway warming?
• Escalating violence?
• Large-scale extinctions?
Transition
2012 -
Source: The Natural Step (2004) and Erwin Laszlo (2006) – amended
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Transformation?
2020 -
A closing thought
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Thank you
Jonathon Hanks – Director Incite Sustainability
jon@incite.co.za
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