Is CSR a unicorn, or a horse with a shell glued to its forehead? Is it a mythical beast that can only be seen by virgins and saves communities from the poverty pollution and problems they face – sometimes also caused by business? Or is CSR a way to dress up an old nag – business – and make everyone believe in the magic, when you just whitewashed horsemeat?

I don’t believe CSR is anything more than a case of the emperor’s new clothes – or a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That’s not just because of the over-abundance of ‘sustainability’ and ‘stakeholder-driven’ acronyms and slick new-speak. CSR is in direct conflict with the sole objective of a corporation – generating profits for owners. Companies are actually money-mercenaries – they are sworn to generate profit. Aside from that, corps can do whatever they want. But what if they want to do something that would make – gasp – less money?! That could actually end in a lawsuit with stockholders.

What kind of CSR can companies do without having to kick their own butts? Selective, self-serving projects that can improve efficiencies, employees or investments. According to company reports, the reasons for CSR include improvements to efficiency, security, innovation, employee pool, and investor confidence. The public relations bump and return on investment are perceived as a net gain for the corporation. If a project isn’t considered somehow beneficial, it’s not happening. What about the broad economic and environmental changes that need to happen to create an equitable society? Not in the company’s best interest? Too bad!

CSR is a power-grab and an attempt to avoid mandatory regulation, weaken government oversight, and get a seat at the negotiating table for labor and environmental standards. Companies try to establish themselves as experts and opinion-makers in their fields so they can leverage power and sway decisions. This is the obvious action of a rational actor, we shouldn’t be surprised that CSR is sustainability greenwashing! Yet we act as though companies should have society’s best interest at heart, even when that’s in direct opposition to their mandate.

Any CSR the Free Market institutes has a seedy underbelly. Of course there are good programs, health literacy and education initiatives, and labor and environmental commitments. But CSR smacks of old boys’ club – there’s a benevolent captain of industry aura about the whole concept. There’s no proof that the invisible hand can successfully work for the public good in these complex discontiguous challenges. There’s no clear transaction to put on the ledger addressing pollution, caste systems or sexism. How do we quantify human and ecological rights for a financial balance sheet? Right now most of these esoteric concepts have a default value of zero, which CSR is trying to address. But should companies get to set the value of social goods in a cronyistic no-bid contract? Or should the public sector be running the show?

Unlike people or proprietorships, companies don’t die. That can accrue an amount of power and momentum that is frankly disturbing, and has weighted the scales of justice. Allowing companies to use CSR for brand-building without real accountability is one more step in the wrong direction – do we really want to privatize the public good? CSR cannot challenge corporate power, it is corporate power. They fund social projects with crumbs from the profit garnered through predatory practices, and call it magnanimous, when it’s actually ethically criminal. Society’s laws aren’t a match for this beast called the corporation, but that doesn’t make the naked avarice of multinational conglomerates acceptable. There are great things about business and innovation, but the current climate of the conversation makes CSR sound like the emperor’s greatest outfit ever. It’s time to expose the wolf in sheep’s clothing for what it is, and mandate the social and environmental considerations we consider necessary as society instead of abdicating personal responsibility to inherently pathological organizations.

“No one would seriously suggest that individuals should regulate themselves, that laws against murder, assault and theft are unnecessary because people are socially responsible. Yet oddly we are asked to believe that corporate persons – institutional psychopaths who lack any sense of moral conviction and who have the power and motivation to cause harm and devastation in the world – should be left free to govern themselves.
–       Joel Bakan, The Corporation (emphasis is mine)

So we basically have a bunch of psychopaths walking around, like one long Law & Order episode, full of motive and opportunity. And we’re the rubes who believe they’re our best friends! Let’s not let our naïve optimism disguise the true nature of corporate involvement in social issues. I’m happy to have companies contribute, as long as it’s not the façade on an agenda of opposition and obfuscation. Until an organization can prove why true social justice is in their own interest, I will remain skeptical, because I’m invested in our collective futures, not just future customer demographics.