Over the last two decades, the subject of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has made the journey from NGOs and academia on to the front pages of the financial and business press and into the boardroom and MBA courses. Indeed, as that most hard-headed of business media – The Economist – announced in the opening line of its 2005 special supplement on CSR, ‘The movement on corporate social responsibility has won the battle for ideas.’ Yet despite this, much literature on the subject still seems to be aimed at academics, concentrating on theories rather than on practical ideas and real-life perspectives of what being in the CSR sector entails. This book is thus aimed at those who – be they at university or already in business – are looking to pursue or build upon a career in a CSR-related field and deals with the nuts and bolts of how to run a CSR strategy successfully in a company or public orga­nisation. As such, it unashamedly steers clear of most of the theories and academic debates surrounding the subject; rather, it concentrates on setting out, in a jargon-free way, strategies for incorporating a responsible business approach within an organisation in a way that is accessible to both those new to the subject and those more established in this area.

The book is divided into chapters that deal with the building blocks of CSR and sustainability, informed, wherever possible, by practical, real-life examples. The chapters and authors fully reflect the wide responsibilities now covered under the general term CSR, with practical advice on the individual aspects of a CSR manager’s role as well as industry information and perspectives from those responsible for managing CSR in specific companies.

While we make no claims that this volume is completely exhaustive in the rapidly changing world of CSR, we have attempted to cover as many topics, perspectives and responsibilities as possible. This publication has also been deliberately structured so that while each chapter should complement the others, they can all be read and referred to individually on a stand-alone basis as need dictates.

The first chapter introduces us to the role, aims and activities of a sustainability manager through the personal experience of Jason Leadbitter, sustainability manager for a large chemical company. He not only deals with the tasks of the position itself, but also examines the relationship of a sustainability manger to top management and provides clear guidelines to enable sustainability/CSR managers to realise their potential to advance sustainable business practices within their organisation. Following this, Bettina Palazzo then outlines the reasons why stakeholder dialogue is so fundamentally important to modern business. Indeed, for many CSR managers, managing expectations, communication and dialogue with their various stakeholders has become, over the last few years, the major part of their role. As well as outlining what stakeholder dialogue involves, Palazzo also provides best-practice examples from the business world and provides a step-by-step guide to successful implementation. In the third chapter, Andrew Cartland looks at the CSR employment situation and examines who works in the sector, as well as addressing some of the key questions in CSR recruitment from both the employers’ and the potential employees’ perspectives. The chapter also includes information how to retain CSR staff, how CSR staff are organised within a company, how much they’re paid and how the positions are placed. Jonathan Lux and Marie-Louise Orre provide an insight into the fast-changing legal world of CSR management in Chapter 4. Here, they examine how the legal implications of CSR practices are rapidly shifting from being a matter of voluntary practice to a subject of legal pressure and enforcement. Real-life examples such as Nike and Chiquita are used to illustrate the enhanced legal demands companies face as well as the absorption of CSR norms into standard business law.

Moving on to an issue that has risen rapidly up the CSR management agenda over the last few years – corporate volunteering – Kirsten Wenzel looks at how to achieve the best results in this field. Wenzel outlines the advantages of strategic corporate volunteering as part of a CSR strategy and illustrates the beneficial impact of corporate volunteering on human resources, stakeholder relations and company reputation as well as providing specific guidelines on how to successfully plan and implement corporate volunteering as part of a CSR strategy. In Chapter 6, Martin Viehöver looks into what CSR verification in practice involves. As the demand for responsible business practices has grown, so has the requirement for such activity to be properly measured and verified – both inside and outside the company. The chapter continues by examining the most important aspects that a CSR manager should know about sustainability verification, and outlines the most important assurance standards for CSR managers, as well as providing a first-guidance and a best-practice checklist. Following on from auditing, Ralph Thurm from Deloitte considers the importance and benefits of sustainability and CSR reporting, and provides background on the rapid development from the first generation to the next level of ‘strategic sustainability reporting’. The chapter sets down the necessary steps to be undertaken to achieve the best results, provides information on Global Reporting Initiative’s sustainability reporting guidelines and finally outlines pointers to future trends in this area.

The difficult subject of how best to communicate CSR is addressed by Norbert Taubken and Irina Leibold of Scholz and Friends in Chapter 8. They outline the dos and don’ts of successful CSR communication and stress the importance of communication in two crucial areas: internally with the company’s own employees, and externally with target groups. Finally, the chapter provides a practical checklist for turning the CSR of a brand into a selling point and identifies the best communication channels for this. The next chapter, by Siegmar Ley, deals with the practicalities of events (CSR, HR or volunteering) from a project management perspective, as increasingly such events are organised under the auspices of a CSR department. Here the emphasis is on the business plan and tools for developing good practice in the run-up to events in order to align such events with other corporate goals.

Chapter 10 deals with the vital role that advances in IT can play in achieving sustainability goals and reducing companies’ carbon and ecological footprints. Here Chris Preist illustrates this not only by examining how existing equipment can be used more efficiently but also by using IT proactively to develop more sustainable business models.

After looking at specific activities within CSR, the emphasis then switches to how CSR managers in industries and particular sectors tackle their roles, with four articles drawn from the banking, automotive and pharmaceutical industries. In the first of these, Hélène Roques, director of sustainable development at Accor, offers a personal perspective of a CSR manager in an international hotel business, detailing the various programmes enacted, an insider’s guide to why specific CSR projects were undertaken, the personal characteristics required by a CSR manager and the vital importance of CSR managers having operational experience in order to ensure success. This is followed by a chapter on sustainable banking and microfinance, which provides a background to one of the fastest-growing CSR tools in the finance sector – microfinance. The author outlines the aims, approaches and challenges of microfinance, as well as the benefits both for the recipients and for the bank itself, in this case Credit Suisse. Gerhard Prätorius then presents a personal insight into CSR in the automotive sector with a perspective on Volkswagen CSR activity, from stakeholder relations to supply chain management and the mission of the company. The author places particular emphasis on the environmental challenges facing the industry, as well as addressing challenging issues such as carbon-neutral travel. Moving from one of the major corporations to smaller and medium-sized enterprises, Nick Tolhurst interviews Horst Erhardt, one of the leading lights behind Betapharm’s groundbreaking use of CSR as an innovation and marketing strategy in the pharmaceutical field. As well as exploring the possibilities for CSR in this sector, the interview also examines the often underestimated potential for CSR in smaller companies.

A more traditional aspect of CSR is given a new angle in Chapter 15, as Clemens Mulokozi & Klaus-Peter Storme from HypoVereinsbank outline the advantages of sponsorship in business terms and how it can fit in to a CSR strategy. The authors look at the new CSR dilemmas and challenges facing sponsoring – in this case sport – which can involve political and social sensitivities. As sport sponsorship is being transformed from traditional ‘passive’ forms to more socially proactive ones, the authors look at the role that sports sponsorship can play in terms of social responsibility, where to engage and what to avoid. In Chapter 16, Anselm Iwundu explores the increasing importance of supply chain management as a part of a company’s overall commitment to responsible business and provides a five-step practical guide to ensuring that companies’ supply chains are sustainable. The author provides real-life business examples from the agri-food industry sector, which has become perhaps the most crucial, and in many ways the most visible, industry in debates on supply-chain good practice. Staying with the international aspects of CSR, the next two chapters look at CSR in developing countries, firstly through Judith Köhler’s article on the role, advantages and challenges of public private partnerships (PPPs). Informed by her experience with the German development agency, the author outlines the role that cross-national PPPs can play in capacity-building and environmental projects, while Isaac Desta provides a background to CSR in developing countries, with particular emphasis on the burgeoning role of local CSR initiatives as well as the supply chain and how companies can achieve staggeringly effective – and efficient – results through imaginative, well-thought-out CSR policies.

The book is rounded off with three chapters devoted to the future of CSR. First, an aspect of CSR that has rapidly shot up the agenda in recent years – carbon offsetting – is addressed, and the question of how this can become an integral part of a company’s CSR strategy is explored. Then, Oliver Laasch and Ulises Flores examine emerging management tools and how companies are finding new ways and techniques to realise the full potential of CSR in business. The chapter is based on a number of interviews and surveys with business leaders from internationally recognised companies. Finally, Wayne Visser considers the future of business as he argues that CSR in its present form has only gone part of the way, and outlines how the next step – CSR 2.0 – will become less Western-orientated, less risk-averse and less of a ‘nice-to-have’ niche, instead evolving into a mass-market ‘must have’ that will become incorporated into ‘companies’ DNA’.

We very much hope this book proves useful for you and we welcome feedback on any issue that arises out of it.