Corporate Social Responsibility Positioning Statement

I enjoyed reading the final draft of the CSR document on our website after the two or three times it has circulated amongst the working group of which I was part...but I am still not happy with the outcome.

There are a couple of points, if I may, that I would ask to review before a final version is put for approval to the global alliance board:

a- The suggested 'commandments' on page 5 are out of context and certainly at best incomplete. I would much prefer to elaborate in more details the paragraph which follows, indicating that advanced and generally accepted (at least in lip service style) public relations theory and practice (i.e. two way symmetric relationship-oriented communication) is essential to the very concept of social responsibility, instead of suggesting that one should not overpromise (in what sense other than just communicating behaviour rather than intentions!?) or tokenlishly remember that there are cultural differences.....(so what else is new? it is certainly not CSR which has made us aware of these...).

As to the issue of differences, a specific point somewhere in the document should also warn against tokenist, cultural relativist as well as etnocentricist worldviews...which appear to be driving most CSR communication today.

b- It appears from the text that the GA is in all-out support for the Global Compact and Kofi Annan: which it is. However, as you know there are many reservations about this initiative and not only in the no-global or the neo-cons arenas. Many companies who signed the document have ominously failed to pursue their commitment and still participate... No qualms about this, but one thing is to support and the other is to patronize.

c- Also, as you somewhere in the document say yourself, CSR begins at home and an overproportionate part of the document is related to the issues of large American headquartered multinational companies as if they had invented the CSR theme...which as you well know is everything but true.

In my view the document should be more catered to organizations in general (and not only private businesses) who are more concerned about CSR with their employees, local communities, suppliers, regulators...

d- You seem to foster an overlapping of globalization with CSR: in my view these are two quite distinct dimensions which sometime have something in common.

e- Finally, I wonder if this document gives a convincing answer to the original question which, if I remember correctly was:

• In line and coherently with the ethics protocol, can the GA produce an elaborated statement on the CSR phase that our profession is living in many countries, in a way which gives our members an opportunity to thematize to their members how and to what extent they can and should capitalize on it?

Maybe we should put more 'pep' in the paper in order to be more critically rather than ideologically aware on the 'whatever is good for PR is good for the world...' line of thought on an issue like CSR which I believe is really a mixed blessing for our profession and full of risks which our document should at least indicate.

Thank you for your patience.

Toni Muzi Falconi
31 July 2004