Sarah Ford | January 28, 2015

Back to the future: Harvard ditches the business case

Harvard Business Review (HBR) has started the year with a controversial claim: that it is 鈥渁sking too much鈥 of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to 鈥渄eliver business results鈥. The authors of听听assert that there is too much pressure to 鈥渄ress up CSR as a business discipline鈥. Instead, they advocate the softer approach of aligning company activities with 鈥減urpose and values鈥. In other words: forget the business case, let鈥檚 get back to doing some 鈥済ood鈥 through bolt-on activities and warm words. With this worrying stance, HBR seems to be marking the start of 2015 by attempting to turn the clock back to the 1980s.

This is dangerous talk. Many听,听听,听听and even听听have spent decades advancing the case that responsible and sustainable business practices are in the long-term interests of companies and their shareholders. This commercial case is not easy to measure. But it鈥檚 crucial to recognise. Without it, corporate responsibility remains stuck as a side-show.

It is particularly maddening for this nonsense to come from HBR. Over the years, the publication has brought us Michael Porter and Mark Kramer鈥檚 world-famous听; Stuart Hart鈥檚 landmark 鈥溾 (1997); and much more besides.

Yet this month鈥檚 鈥淏ig Idea鈥 suggests that 鈥渂usiness results鈥 from CSR initiatives 鈥渟hould be a spillover, not their reason for being鈥.

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