I have been mulling over this: if we are successful in our jobs of fully integrating CSR into a company ethos, its business practices, and its product development, then surely we CSR practitioners will have made ourselves redundant?
Our extinction, then, will become proof of a job well done. We have made visible progress and are now seeing an acceleration in the trend towards applying CSR to the actual business. More and more companies and investors are seeking and reporting information on non-financial key performance indicators, especially environmental indicators. We have gone from no reporting on CSR (1980s-1990s) to a flourish in superficial reporting on CSR (2000-2010) and are now are moving into a push for fundamental, integrated CSR reporting. Companies are now atually integrating CSR into all of the business. So where will responsibility for CSR go? I imagine it will move into the hands of the CFO for reporting, the engineers for innovation, HR for training all employees, compliance officers and supply chain specialists. As more companies are maturing in their CSR and integrating it into the overall strategy and development, we are witnessing a brave new re-structuring that threatens CSR specialists as a species. I applaud our extinction because it means that we will have helped change the company model from one based solely on monetary profit to one based on being responsible. But even though the job of communicating it all will still exist within corp coms, I still wonder: what next for me? All morphing suggestions warmly welcome.
– Vicky Valanos