By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest
The catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 gave rise to the modern corporate social
responsibility movement; the current spill in the Gulf of Mexico marks
its collapse.
The past two decades have been an experiment in corporate behavior
modification. An array of well-intentioned organizations such as CERES
promoted the idea that large companies could be made to do the right
thing by getting them to sign voluntary codes of conduct and adopt other
seemingly enlightened policies on environmental and social issues.
At first there was resistance, but big business soon realized the
advantages of projecting an ethical image: So much so that corporate
social responsibility (known widely as CSR) is now used as a selling
point by many firms. Chevron, for example, has an ad campaign with the
tagline “Will You Join Us” that is apparently meant to convey the idea
that the oil giant is in the vanguard of efforts to save the earth.
What also made CSR appealing to corporations was the recognition that
it could serve as a buffer against aggressive regulation. While CSR
proponents in the non-profit sector were usually not pursuing a
deregulatory agenda, the image of companies’ agreeing to act virtuously
conveyed the message that strong government intervention was
unnecessary. CSR thus dovetails with the efforts of corporations and
their allies to undermine formal oversight of business activities. This
is what General Electric was up to when it ran its Ecoimagination ads while lobbying to weaken
air pollution rules governing the locomotives it makes.
Recent events put into question the meaning of a commitment to CSR.
The company at the center of the Gulf oil disaster, BP, has long
promoted itself as being socially responsible. A decade ago it adopted a sunburst logo,
acknowledged that global warming was a problem and claimed to be going “beyond petroleum” by investing (modestly) in renewable energy sources. What did all that social responsibility mean if the company could
still, as the emerging evidence suggests, cut corners on safety in one
of its riskiest activities — deepwater drilling? And how responsible is it
for BP to join with rig owner Transocean and contractor Halliburton in
pointing fingers at one another in an apparent attempt to diffuse
liability?
BP is hardly unique in violating its self-professed “high standards.” This year has also
seen the moral implosion of Toyota, another darling of the CSR world.
It was only months after the Prius producer was chosen for Ethisphere’s list
of “the world’s most ethical companies” that it came to light that
Toyota had failed to notify regulators or the public about its defective
gas pedals.
Goldman Sachs, widely despised these days for unscrupulous behavior
during the financial meltdown, was a CSR pioneer in the investment banking world. In 2005 it
was the first Wall Street firm to adopt a comprehensive environmental
policy (after being pressured by groups such as Rainforest Action
Network), and it established a think tank called the Center for
Environmental Markets.
Even Massey Energy, which has remained defiant in the
face of charges that a preoccupation with profit over safety led to the
deaths of 29 coal miners in a recent explosion, publishes an annual CSR report.
When the members of a corporate rogues’ gallery such as this all
profess to be practitioners of CSR, the concept loses much of its
legitimacy. The best that can be said is that these companies may behave
well in some respects while screwing up royally in others — the way that
Wal-Mart is supposedly in the forefront of environmental reform while
retaining its Neanderthal labor relations policies. Selective ethics,
however, should be no more tolerable for corporations than it is for
people.
Heaven forbid that we violate the free speech rights of CSR
hypocrites, but there should be some mechanism — perhaps
truth-in-image-advertising laws — to curb the ability of corporations to
go on deceiving the public.