Aliki Consulting
Overview
Extra attention can be drawn to these key elements:
1) The five stages of CSR development from the itCSR Framework are represented here in green. The first spiral represents good governance and risk management, mixed with traditional philanthropy of charitable giving. The second spiral represents the development of strategic operational CSR. The third spiral represents organizational movement into multi-stakeholder collaborative CSR where systems thinking and learning (ie. systems learning) co-exist, shared value is created, and game-changing impact is achieved.
What is apparent from my research is the need to keep an organization's vision, mission and values fresh, activated, and front and center in framing culture. Quite likely and often, this means revisiting these drivers of an organization's purpose, and usually I see this happen in and around stage 3 of organizational development. It seems to be increasingly important at this stage in order to fully activate, what I call, the leadership metronome (ie. the tempo set by the leadership that reports to the executive leaders that drives CSR adoption, activities, implementation, thinking, framing and delivery). This translates to executive efficacy.
2) Several authors agree that the hardest transition is from stage 3 to stage 4. Why? It seems to be that stage 3 development is comfortable. Though not perfect, organizations have their groove. They have systems in place to create order, and they are realizing profitability from their products and services. However, for an organization that wants to put into practice triple bottom line (people, planet and profits) - or even, quadruple bottom line (with the addition of purpose) - impact, the organization requires some courage to 'get real' and confront the concern areas that make it vulnerable, and stagnate growth and innovation.
To "do CSR the right way" means to embed it throughout the organization, rather than be a siloed vertical within the organization. It means that it is THE driver of strategy and all decisions are made in the context of CSR. RELM is an organizational development model to use to ensure that CSR and all of its components - care for the environment, talent development, DEI, profits with a purpose, attention to community, citizenship - are present at all levels of the organization