There is nothing like an economic downturn for sharpening thinking - when times are tight and budgets are being cut, every investment has to prove its worth.

 

It is a good way of separating the wheat from the chaff, which is exactly what the discipline of corporate responsibility needs.

Everything that is done in the name of corporate responsibility that is poorly thought-through, non-strategic and superficial will be tested more rigorously. Tolerance is diminishing for the “nice-to-have” add-ons.

 

In the long term, we will be left with corporate responsibility done right.

 

The greater emphasis on efficiency will force companies to identify which social and environmental issues matter most to them and how they must address them.

 

The financial services sector is a good example. An effective corporate responsibility process for any financial services organisation in the past couple of years would, through systematic research with core stakeholders, have identified a handful of key social, environmental and ethical issues that posed a risk to the business. Right up at the top? Responsible lending, defined as how an organisation determines who to lend to and how much to lend. In our survey this month, concerned consumers ranked objective financial advice above all else.

 

You certainly would not have seen anything about charitable donations in the top level of priorities, and even carbon footprints would have come somewhere further down the list. Fast-forward to today and the writing is - emphatically - on the wall.

 

When push comes to shove and the crunch hits, the value of real corporate responsibility actually becomes more, rather than less, obvious and essential.

 

So, just as social and environmental risks, and opportunities, are not going anywhere - just ask any manufacturer of 4x4s - nor is effective corporate responsibility.

 

It is the superficial puffery and fluff that will be left as a relic of flabbier economic times.

 

 

Giles Gibbon