{"id":566766,"date":"2010-05-17T11:36:46","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T15:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12267"},"modified":"2010-05-17T11:48:18","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T15:48:18","slug":"corporate-social-irresponsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/566766","title":{"rendered":"Corporate social irresponsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BP-stain.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

The catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 gave rise<\/a> to the modern corporate social
\nresponsibility movement; the current spill in the Gulf of Mexico marks
\nits collapse.<\/p>\n

The past two decades have been an experiment in corporate behavior
\nmodification. An array of well-intentioned organizations such as CERES
\npromoted the idea that large companies could be made to do the right
\nthing by getting them to sign voluntary codes of conduct and adopt other
\n seemingly enlightened policies on environmental and social issues.<\/p>\n

At first there was resistance, but big business soon realized the
\nadvantages of projecting an ethical image: So much so that corporate
\nsocial responsibility (known widely as CSR) is now used as a selling
\npoint by many firms. Chevron<\/a>, for example, has an ad campaign with the
\ntagline “Will You Join Us” that is apparently meant to convey the idea
\nthat the oil giant is in the vanguard of efforts to save the earth.<\/p>\n

What also made CSR appealing to corporations was the recognition that
\n it could serve as a buffer against aggressive regulation. While CSR
\nproponents in the non-profit sector were usually not pursuing a
\nderegulatory agenda, the image of companies’ agreeing to act virtuously
\nconveyed the message that strong government intervention was
\nunnecessary. CSR thus dovetails with the efforts of corporations and
\ntheir allies to undermine formal oversight of business activities. This
\nis what General Electric was up to when it ran<\/a> its Ecoimagination ads while lobbying to weaken
\n air pollution rules governing the locomotives it makes.<\/p>\n

Recent events put into question the meaning of a commitment to CSR.
\nThe company at the center of the Gulf oil disaster, BP, has long
\npromoted itself as being socially responsible. A decade ago<\/a> it adopted a sunburst logo,
\nacknowledged 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
\nstill, as the emerging evidence suggests, cut corners on safety in one
\nof its riskiest activities — deepwater drilling? And how responsible is it
\n for BP to join with rig owner Transocean and contractor Halliburton in
\npointing fingers at one another in an apparent attempt to diffuse
\nliability?<\/p>\n

BP is hardly unique in violating its self-professed<\/a> “high standards.” This year has also
\n seen the moral implosion of Toyota, another darling of the CSR world.
\nIt was only months after the Prius producer was chosen for Ethisphere’s list<\/a>
\n of “the world’s most ethical companies” that it came to light that
\nToyota had failed to notify regulators or the public about its defective
\n gas pedals.<\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs, widely despised these days for unscrupulous behavior
\nduring the financial meltdown, was a CSR pioneer<\/a> in the investment banking world. In 2005 it
\nwas the first Wall Street firm to adopt a comprehensive environmental
\npolicy (after being pressured by groups such as Rainforest Action
\nNetwork), and it established a think tank called the Center for
\nEnvironmental Markets.<\/p>\n

Even Massey Energy<\/a>, which has remained defiant in the
\nface of charges that a preoccupation with profit over safety led to the
\ndeaths of 29 coal miners in a recent explosion, publishes<\/a> an annual CSR report.<\/p>\n

When the members of a corporate rogues’ gallery such as this all
\nprofess to be practitioners of CSR, the concept loses much of its
\nlegitimacy. The best that can be said is that these companies may behave
\n well in some respects while screwing up royally in others — the way that
\nWal-Mart is supposedly in the forefront of environmental reform while
\nretaining its Neanderthal labor relations policies. Selective ethics,
\nhowever, should be no more tolerable for corporations than it is for
\npeople.<\/p>\n

Heaven forbid that we violate the free speech rights of CSR
\nhypocrites, but there should be some mechanism — perhaps
\ntruth-in-image-advertising laws — to curb the ability of corporations to
\ngo on deceiving the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4533,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4533"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}