Social Responsibility & The Corporate Values ​​Statement

Corporate Values ​​reflect the culture of a company. Values ​​make culture want to communicate which is a difficult task. To understand a proper value statement for a company, one must understand what culture is and whether the statement truly represents the culture of the company.

In a nutshell: culture is what a group of people have in common, for example, that they face similar questions and problems because they operate in a similar business. This is the internal element of culture, the other is externally oriented: in what environment does this group of people operate and how does this affect them. How do they interact with the environment?

Social responsibility is obviously a value that focuses on this second element: the interaction of the group (corporation) with its environment.

How it could work: A socially responsible company charges more for its products and uses part of the profit margin for social projects…

A first question to ask about corporate values ​​is whether a value should be used as such, such as: “entrepreneurial”, “customer focused” and also this “social responsibility” are values ​​that are better not to use in the values ​​statement corporate. The reason is that they are too vague.

However, they appear in value declarations:

Social responsability. We are committed to a culture of being environmentally friendly by adhering to a high standard of corporate citizenship, protecting the health and safety of our employees, and positively impacting the communities where we operate… A strong sense of social responsibility… etc. .

So what does this mean?

A company like Siemens, a conglomerate whose social responsibility could really be an issue, is investing in Africa in projects to make energy available for small town development. The idea is that energy in Africa is one of the main problems holding back development and Siemens could play a role there.

Sure.

But does Siemens add social responsibility to its set of values? No: Siemens corporate values ​​are: “responsible, excellent and innovative”. Once “responsible” is defined, social responsibility is managed automatically, but not as a corporate value, it is not a shared value among employees.

Another reason not to use social responsibility is that it is not a value that can be translated into individual behavior. Imagine that two people meet on vacation and find out that they work for Siemens: would you think they feel connected because of Siemens’ socially responsible role in energy projects in Africa? That is too far away and does not connect people (emotionally) and therefore is not a cultural element.

In addition to this point of view, there is another point of view on social responsibility and that is the value of long-term relationships with the (social) environment versus short-term business success. Social responsibility is another way to ensure that a company is not just focused on short-term benefits to stakeholders.

Another example is Microsoft and the Gates Foundation. This is another vision of social responsibility: a clear separation of business (Microsoft) and a responsible role in global society (Gates Foundation).

One of the reasons for keeping these areas separate is that with the concept of social responsibility one enters the arena of politics. On the internet I found this statement: “Responsible business leaders know that business cannot succeed if society fails…” but still, call this a business opportunity and marketing problem rather than a social responsibility.

Take another example: Google’s social responsibility. For example, Google could be held responsible for the increase in garbage on the Internet. In addition to indexing more and more pages, it could function as a policeman so that Internet users do not mess up.

Take Google Answers, for example, and the following post:

I’m looking for an English translation of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Dies Slowly”. thanks (1)

Today a newspaper published an article about this poem that was supposed to be by the Chilean poet. But in reality the real author is the Brazilian Martha Medeiros.

Now, who is responsible for this (mistake) and that 10,000 surfers continue to believe in a mistake?

I’d say Google is. It offers the main gateway to the web and thus the main part that makes it possible for bugs like these to be distributed. It obviously conflicts with Google’s neutral “don’t be evil” approach. But how long can you remain neutral? I think Google can be compared to the British Petroleum of the Internet. BP has been reinvented by Beyond Petroleum. Google has introduced a new four color icon. I guess the move to a more socially responsible role is underway.

Regarding corporate value statements… I would leave out “social responsibility.”