CSR – as defined in Wikipedia – is also called corporate conscience, corporate citizenship, social performance, or sustainable responsible business or Responsible Business) is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby a business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international norms. CSR is a process with the aim to embrace responsibility for the company’s actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere who may also be considered as stakeholders.

Our accelerated culture combined with the new power of social media puts us in an interesting period in history.
The relationship that businesses and brands have with society is undergoing a fundamental, permanent change as communication through Social Media and the Global Connectivity have resulted in a large rise in consumer activism and ‘story’-mobility. Thus more and more companies are seeing the need to be building long-term commitments to CSR and rethink how to improve sustainability in how they produce, design in order to meeting the need of consumers now wanting to have new and better ways of more sustainable consumption. As discussed in under the topic of the 4 Dimensional Brand  the brand strategies and activities of CSR should ideally be embedded in the Brands Dream Dimension that ensures your long-term license to operate.

As the new socio-cultural symbols of consumerism are no longer about ‘bling’ but about ‘Authenticity’: to the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.  Thus corporate ambitions of a social contract with stakeholders will bring new demands for business leaders to navigate around issues of sustainability and environmental resources especially towards using ‘Cradle to Cradle’ production and design principles in the way of doing business. Read more about ‘Cradle to Cradle’ at EPEA.

Once you have gotten your CSR approach right don’t forget to let it be experienced and talked about!

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