Last week, Goldman Sachs (GS) announced their new partners for their 10,000 Women scheme.  Some news sources viewed this as ill-timed.  But why should current economic conditions affect their Corporate Responsibility (CR) announcements? Would they delay the announcement of new contracts, investment decisions or any other business as usual? 

The GS announcement is only insensitive if we believe other institutions will be significantly scaling back their CR activity.  Let’s be honest.  There will need to be efficiency savings in CR budgets - and possible resource cuts, but this will also be true across other departments.  Let’s not forget there is a strong business case for CR activities.  Consequently, CR activities should not experience any more pressure than other departments.  If we don’t stick by that business case when it matters, what is the point of promoting it in the first place?

Those who aren’t convinced by the business case for CR will be looking to make substantial cost savings from cutting CR budgets (if not teams) during this economic decline.  This is a mistake.  We are now operating in a climate of accountability and responsibility.  Severely cutting back on CR programmes now will not only expose all businesses to a threat of future regulation, it will also continue to damage your reputation even once we are through these difficult times.

Take for example Bank of America and HSBC, who have stuck by their business case.  Both are retail banks (and therefore consumer-facing) and recognise the importance of maintaining a global brand value by developing strong CR identities.  And they continue to weather this economic storm quite well.  Let’s hope their colleagues and competitors follow suit.

For more assistance on developing the business case for Corporate Responsibility, please visit:

http://www.city-action.org/resources/index.html

http://www.volunteering.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/2A38DB92-7B74-4CA5-9C79-46364B7FC2FA/0/business_case_SMEfinal1.pdf

http://www.responsiblepractice.com/english/issues/wbcsd-business/

http://www.bitc.org.uk/resources/publications/cr_business_case.html

Tags: business case for csr, corporate responsibility, Credit crunch, economic decline

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Credit crunch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.