The importance of being earnest: transparency, dialogue and participation

in CSR communication

…or how to put the “social” & the “responsibility” in CSR

Digital culture has transformed the way people live and work by making it easier to connect and engage, by building new life

forms, social practices and human institutions

It has affected our everyday life as citizens and individuals, as politicians or scientists, as members of a family or a group of interest.

Digital culture has deeply changed the way we rule and manage corporations

Four key moments in the evolution of the Digital Culture

Four unknown authors wrote a now well-known text of 95 theses, that can be summarized as :

“Markets are conversations”

1999: The Cluetrain Manifiesto the end of “business as usual”

“ Corporations will not convince us they are human with lip service about ‘listening to customers’. They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf. “

the best example of creation and collaboration among users and a model of “self-organized” and distributed production of knowledge

2001: the birth of Wikipedia

2.0 is the convergence of all the technologies and practices in favour of the horizontal, transparent participation or any other form of user involvement in its management

2004 : What is Web 2.0 Tim O’Reilly

2006: Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration Andrew P. McAfee

Wikis, blogs, group-messaging software and the like can make a corporate intranet into a constantly changing structure built by distributed,

autonomous peers.

Flatnesses Flexible Bottom-up Distributed Global Teams Transparent Open Agile Information sharing

That is Entreprise 2.0

openness adaptability flexibility social and collaborative skills shareability participation honesty transparency trust engagement interactivity communities individuals global local

Digital Culture stands for

The Effects of Digital Culture on 4 key areas

CSR Strategy Corporate Communication

Reputation

Management Customer Behaviour

CHANGE IN CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR

As a customer we want to know to what extent a business is contributing to the community and to common value creation.

Corporate reputation is more than ever influenced by the thoughts and conversations of consumers. The dialogue between consumers and businesses can be very beneficial for both and create or strengthen the sense of community.

CHANGE IN REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

To Manage is more and more to talk with others and to have the capacity of building up contexts in which the stakeholders of a company can develop collaborative projects that contribute to the community and to common value creation.

CHANGE IN CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

We no longer broadcast. There is a new way to manage the dialogue with the stakeholders. Not so much based on giving and receiving information or suggestions, as on finding ways of co-creation to launch joint ventures.

Companies must not only incorporate the digital culture and social networks as new communication channels. The fact that conversation about our products, services and activities is already taking place spontaneously, forces us to engage in that conversation.

CSR is not a question of writing a flashy CSR report, printed on recycled paper. CSR should surpass the idea of being just an action of marketing of goodness.

CHANGE IN CSR STRATEGY putting the SOCIAL & the

RESPONSIBILITY in CSR

“CSR has to be fully integrated in and a fundamental part of the organizational culture”

A socially responsible company is one that runs a profitable business, taking into account all the environmental, social and economic-positive and negative generated in society.

Creating positive change requires the engagement and motivation of people. Crowd power is built on engagement and interactivity. Crowd power is probably the most useful tool to add the “social” component to CSR.

Digital communities play an important role in how companies build our Corporate Social Responsibility policies. Engaging the “social” crowd power transforms the CSR from just a set of guidelines to avoid

problems into a platform of open innovation capable to solve society problems and needs and at the same time to improve efficiency & results.

CSR as a platform of innovation

answer to society needs

be in line with our your stakeholders needs

Let’s be open to alter processes, products, services, behaviours and

approaches to stakeholder engagement

Ready to listen, talk to and try to understand our stakeholders

Prepared to involve our stakeholders directly from beginning to end-two way

communication

Carlos Magro Mazo EOI Escuela de Organización Industrial I European Congress on CSR Communication CC by-sa-nc Photos : www.flickr.com/creativecommons/