Social Responsibility & The Corporate Values ​​Statement

Corporate Values ​​reflect the culture of a company. Values ​​make culture want to communicate which is a difficult task. To understand a proper value statement for a company, one must understand what culture is and whether the statement truly represents the culture of the company.

Simply put: culture is what a group of people have in common, for example, that they face similar questions and problems because they operate a similar business. This is the internal element of the culture, the other is externally oriented: in what environment does this group of people operate and how does this affect them? How do they interact with the environment?

Social responsibility is obviously a value that focuses on this second element: the interaction of the group (corporation) with its environment.

How it might work: A socially responsible company charges more for its products and uses part of the profit margin for social projects…

A first question to ask about corporate values ​​is whether a value should be used as such, such as: “entrepreneurial”, “customer focused” and also this “social responsibility” are values ​​that it is better not to use in the values ​​statement corporate. The reason is that they are too lazy.

However, they appear in value declarations:

Social responsability. We are committed to a culture of being environmentally friendly by meeting a high standard of corporate citizenship, protecting the health and safety of our employees and positively impacting the communities where we operate… A strong sense of social responsibility… etc .

So what does this mean?

A company like Siemens, a conglomerate for which social responsibility could really be an issue, is investing in Africa in projects to make energy available for the development of small towns. The idea is that energy in Africa is one of the main issues holding back development and Siemens could play a role there.

Sure.

But does Siemens add social responsibility to its set of values? No: Siemens’ corporate values ​​are: “responsible, excellent and innovative”. Once “responsible” is defined, social responsibility is automatically managed, but not as a corporate value, it is not a shared value among employees.

Another reason not to use social responsibility is that it is not a value that can be translated into individual behaviour. Imagine two people meet on vacation and find out that they work for Siemens: would you think they feel related because of Siemens’ socially responsible role in energy projects in Africa? That’s too far gone and doesn’t (emotionally) connect people and is therefore not a cultural item.

In addition to this point of view, there is another point of view on social responsibility and it is the value of long-term relationships with the (social) environment versus short-term business success. Social responsibility is another way to ensure that a company is not just focused on short-term stakeholder benefits.

Another example is Microsoft and the Gates Foundation. This is another vision of social responsibility: a clear separation of business (Microsoft) and a responsible role in global society (Gates Foundation).

One of the reasons for keeping these areas separate is that with the concept of social responsibility one enters the arena of politics. On the internet I found this statement: “Responsible business leaders know that business cannot succeed if society fails…” but still, call this a business opportunity and marketing problem rather than a social responsibility.

Let’s take another example: Google’s social responsibility. For example, Google could be held responsible for the increase in garbage on the Internet. In addition to indexing more and more pages, it could work as a policeman so that Internet users do not get dirty.

Take Google Answers, for example, and the following post:

I am looking for an English translation of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Die Slowly”. thank you (1)

Today a newspaper published an article about this poem that was supposed to be by the Chilean poet. But in reality the real author is the Brazilian Martha Medeiros.

Now, who is responsible for this (mistake) and for 10,000 surfers still believing in a mistake?

I would say Google is. It provides the main gateway to the web, and thus the main part that makes the distribution of bugs like these possible. It obviously conflicts with Google’s neutral “don’t be evil” approach. But how long can you stay neutral? I think Google can be compared to the British Petroleum of the Internet. BP has been reinvented by Beyond Petroleum. Google has introduced a new four-color icon. I guess the move to a more socially responsible role is underway.

Regarding corporate values ​​statements… I would leave out “social responsibility”.