The Age of Responsibility E-Book

Wayne Visser

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 620

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This landmark book shows how the old model of corporate sustainability and responsibility is being replaced by a second generation movement that goes beyond the outmoded approach of CSR as philanthropy or public relations concern to a more authentic, stakeholder-driven model. The author describes the new concept and mission of the new movement and explains its agenda in a succinct guide that will be useful for CSR professionals, including managers, consultants, academics, and non-governmental organizations.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Figures

List of Tables

Foreword

Acknowledgements

About the author

PART I - The call to responsibility

CHAPTER 1 - Our ability to respond

The failure of CSR

Our global footprint

Our global weather

Our global village

Our global dishonesty

Awkward questions

The ages and stages of CSR

PART II - The ages and stages of CSR

CHAPTER 2 - The age of greed

An unhealthy appetite

Executive greed

Banking greed

Financial market greed

Corporate greed

A personal odyssey into greed

Discovering institutionalized greed

An inSANE economy?

The belly of the beast

Reforming the citadels of greed

Accomplice to the crime?

CHAPTER 3 - The age of philanthropy

The wheels of wealth

For the love of humanity

Philanthropic traditions

American icons

Modern philanthropists

Philanthrocapitalism

Institutional philanthropy

The rise of foundations

The state of corporate giving

Strategic philanthropy

Venture philanthropy

CHAPTER 4 - The age of marketing

Magic tricks and military tactics

Using smoke and mirrors

Sowing the seeds of doubt

Hanging greenwashing out to dry

The invisible hand of marketing

From misdirection to redirection

CHAPTER 5 - The age of management

Business ethics through the ages

The industrial welfare movement

Cracks in the industrial edifice

Spaceship earth on a collision course

Towards a theory of responsibility

The voluntary versus mandatory debate

Challenging shareholder supremacy

The quest to civilize cannibals

If the (sweatshop) shoe fits

The rise and fall of corporate governance

The rise of shareholder activism

A cornucopia of codes

The curse of peripheral CSR

The curse of incremental CSR

The curse of uneconomic CSR

CHAPTER 6 - The age of responsibility

Radical confessions

Web 2.0: seeds of a revolution

The birth of CSR 2.0

The principles of CSR 2.0

Shifting from CSR 1.0 to CSR 2.0

The DNA model of CSR 2.0

PART III - The principles of CSR 2.0

CHAPTER 7 - The principle of creativity

Stagnation through standardization

When creativity is a bad thing

Creative destruction

Making money mobile

Self-sufficient electronics

Entrepreneurs on a mission

Kickstarting development

Africa’s first free university

EVOKE-ing a responsibility revolution

We are the champions

Mapping the innovation territory

The Googlemorph

CHAPTER 8 - The principle of scalability

The limits of ethical consumerism

Fairtrade coffee for you, sir?

Choice editing for good

Government’s visible hand

A flotilla of little boats

The long tail of CSR

Bottom of the pyramid (BoP)

Blessed unrest

Collaborative social entrepreneurship

Crowdsourcing CSR solutions

Smart vs. dumb growth

The era of ‘leading big’ on CSR dawns

CHAPTER 9 - The principle of responsiveness

Pharmaceuticals on trial

GSK’s patent pool

Mining for a cure

Cabbages and condoms

How not to McDo engagement

Cross-sector partnerships

The ten future faces of CSOs

Opening an eco-patent commons

Making a GreenXchange

CHAPTER 10 - The principle of glocality

Origins of glocality

CSR around the world

Myths of CSR in developing countries

An alternative CSR Pyramid

Anglo American’s CSR pyramid

Local CSR drivers

Global CSR drivers

Going native and becoming indigenous

Social media muddle

A new way of SEEing

Glocality in practice

CHAPTER 11 - The principle of circularity

Holistic science

Spaceship earth

Life cycle assessment

Sustainable production and consumption

Cradle to cradle

Nike’s considered design

Timberland’s eco-confession

Seventh Generation cleans up

Water neutral Coca-Cola

Carbon neutral at Tesco

Waste not, want not

Circular urban design

PART IV - Our ability to change

CHAPTER 12 - The matrix of change

Stories of the future

The matrix of change

The power of ideas

Progress is slow but sure

When change gathers momentum

When the world changes forever

Dynamics of the change matrix

Change management

The process of change

Wheels of change

Theory U

A new mythology

CHAPTER 13 - Making a difference

Are we happy?

We are the champions

Types of CSR change agents

Dynamics of CSR change agents

Making a difference

To scare or to inspire?

Reasons to be optimistic

To hope is human

Experiments in generosity

Answering the question ‘why?’

Bibliography

Index

Other books by Wayne Visser

Table of Figures

Figure 1 Archie Carroll’s CSR Pyramid

Figure 2 CSR Pyramid for Developing Countries

Figure 3 Four Basic Types of Change

Figure 4 Types of Inventive Change

Figure 5 Types of Intentional Change

Figure 6 Types of Evolutionary Change

Figure 7 Types of Revolutionary Change

Figure 8 Ainger’s Organizational Change Matrix

List of Tables

Table 1 The ages and stages of CSR

Table 2 The curses of CSR 1.0

Table 3 Similarities between Web 1.0 and CSR 1.0

Table 4 Similarities between Web 2.0 and CSR 2.0

Table 5 CSR 1.0 to CSR 2.0 – macro shifts

Table 6 CSR 1.0 to CSR 2.0 – micro shifts

Table 7 DNA model of CSR 2.0

Table 8 Ten paths of the future for CSOs

Table 9 Myths about CSR in developing countries

Table 10 Local drivers of CSR

Table 11 Global drivers of CSR

Table 12 Characteristics of CSR change agents

Praise for The Age of Responsibility

Wayne Visser’s The Age of Responsibility elegantly and persuasively demonstrates the limits and failures of traditional CSR and also the kinds of reforms needed to create conditions for genuine corporate responsibility. Rich with insight, information and analyses, and highly readable for its excellent writing and poignant stories, the book is a crucial contribution to understanding where we are with CSR and what we need to do to move forward.

Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (book and documentary film)

Amongst the advocates of CSR as an innovative management approach, Wayne Visser is a well-known voice. This new book states more clearly than most why CSR should not be dismissed, but would benefit from some serious rethinking.

Michael Blowfied, Senior Research Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University and author of Corporate Responsibility

The Age of Responsibility is an important book that should be studied carefully by all those seriously interested in the past, present and future of CSR. For me, the most noteworthy contribution is his “ages and stages” of CSR. Visser identifies five overlapping economic periods and classifies their stages of CSR, modus operandi, key enablers, and stakeholder targets. In forward-looking fashion, he crafts five insightful principles of CSR 2.0 and presents his DNA Model of CSR 2.0 which integrates knowledge and sets forth a more inclusive view of CSR. This book is a significant contribution to the theory and practice of CSR and it will be valued by academics and practitioners alike. I strongly recommend it.

Archie B. Carroll, Professor of Management Emeritus, Terry College of Business and co-author of Business and Society

A challenging and thought provoking book. In an age when corporate responsibility is a must for most large businesses, Wayne Visser reminds us that global environmental and social pressures show little sign of receding. He asks: are we as practitioners complacent, or worse, part of the problem? There is hope and optimism but only if we are brave and bold enough to re-engineer corporate responsibility. Read on . . .

Yogesh Chauhan, Chairman of the Corporate Responsibility Group and BBC Chief Adviser Corporate Responsibility.

An authoritative tome on the CSR movement. It provides a comprehensive framework to understand the various stages of (and motivations for) CSR in organizations and the economy to date, and a clear vision of what a truly sustainable and responsible tomorrow entails. This is an eminently well-researched and well-structured book that flows coherently with deep insights and valuable vignettes.

Willie Cheng, author of Doing Good Well: What does (and does not) make sense in the nonprofit world.

The Age of Responsibility provides a much-needed wake up call for the corporate responsibility movement. This highly readable account of where CSR has gone wrong and where it needs to go next is essential reading for anyone interested in the role business can play in creating a just and sustainable society. This is the best CSR book you’ll read all year.

Andrew Crane, George R. Gardiner Professor of Business Ethics at Schulich School of Business, York University and co-author of Business Ethics

The Age of Responsibility breathes new life into CSR, both by redefining it as Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility and by highlighting why CSR has so far failed to make much difference in the way companies respond to pressing global challenges. In his inimitable style, using clear frameworks and illustrative case studies, Wayne Visser brings real insight to a complex set of ideas at a time when they are needed most. Bring on CSR 2.0!

Polly Courtice, Director of the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership

In this time of seemingly widespread corporate malfeasance Wayne Visser has put his finger on why CSR has failed to deliver on its promise and what can be done to right the ship. The Age of Responsibility is a must read for anyone concerned about the future of business.

Bob Doppelt, Executive Director of The Resource Innovation Group and The Climate Leadership Initiative

CSR 1.0 did remarkably well through the latest Great Recession, despite having precariously little to say on the big issues of the day and no ready-to-go blueprint for economic transformation. As a result, we are seeing a massive reboot going on in the CSR industry – and Wayne Visser is a consistently reliable guide to (and champion of) the emerging CSR 2.0 mindsets and practices.

John Elkington, Co-Founder and Director of Volans Ventures and co-author of The Power of Unreasonable People

It is difficult to run a sustainable business in an unsustainable world. So forget about the defensive, charitable, promotional and strategic versions of CSR. The Age of Responsibility is a call for companies to shift to CSR 2.0 – where success is judged by improvements in the overall socio-cultural, economic and ecological systems. If not, CSR will continue to fail, argues Wayne Visser. With an array of cases Visser guides you through the evolution of business responsibility – from the Ages of Greed, Philanthropy, Marketing and Management to the Age of Responsibility – and shares the five principles of sustainable business actions. Wayne Visser’s insightful book is at the same time a compelling personal story about the existential questioning of whether or how it is possible to make a difference through CSR.

Tania Ellis, international speaker, business advisor and author of The New Pioneers

Through a concise analysis of recent economic history and through the wisdom of parables, Visser’s book offers an illuminating analysis of the heart of greed—and of the path our institutions can take to move from corporate responsibility as a form of occasional philanthropy to an ethic of responsibility that is radically transformative. Visser’s new economic myth or meta-narrative creates a compelling vision of a possible sustainable world.

Betty Sue Flowers, Professor Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society

Wayne Visser has rightly identified responsibility as one of the defining issues of our time. Executives, students and citizens should read this book, and make it an integral part of our conversation about business.

Ed Freeman, Director of the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and author of Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach

High marks for Wayne Visser who brings us a book that both challenges the conventional state of CSR in very fresh and bold fashion, and offers a provocative new vision of CSR 2.0. What is most energizing about this book is that it provides a well documented historical and analytical framework on the progression of CSR over the past century. But in analyzing the current state of CSR, it recognizes that despite amazing achievements and progress, CSR has to leap frog into a new world, one that recognizes the new DNA of business, and one that calls for a CSR 2.0 that goes far beyond the models that currently exist. The new Principles of CSR 2.0 that Visser puts at the heart of this book provide the business community and the CSR world a new path for incorporating the complexity of the social and environmental issues that confront today’s corporation, a CSR that can serve as a more transformative force for economic and social sustainability. What a refreshing and creative read! There are few books that can cut to the chase and provide a thoughtful analysis of the current state of CSR while at the same time opening up a vision for tomorrow. This is a contribution to the CSR world that is long overdue and most welcome.

Brad Googins, Associate Professor in Organisation Studies at the Carroll School of Management, and former Director of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship

Your new book deserves to become an instant classic. It brings together so many ideas, writings, and stages in the development of CSR. It is a liberal education on the relation of business to society. I hope that it is read not only by companies but becomes a required reading in business schools to prepare business students for a higher level of thinking about their future role and impact. I am happy to endorse the book: A most impressive book! I will recommend it to every company to figure out why they are practicing CSR and how to really practice it to make a difference to their profits, people, and the planet.

Philip Kotler, S. C. Johnson and Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and author of Corporate Social Responsibility

The Age of Responsibility will change the way you think about CSR, allowing you to discard myths and to work towards a systemic view of CSR. Wayne Visser holds up a mirror to the CSR community and to business and society itself, providing a brilliant lens with which to see our past and envision a new future. Visser projects a new type of CSR he terms “CSR 2.0”. The Age of Responsibility is a call to arms: inspiring, engaging and visionary.

Deborah Leipziger, author of The Corporate Responsibility Code Book and SA8000: The Definitive Guide to the New Social Standard

The Age of Responsibility and its proposed CSR 2.0 – perhaps better called Systemic or Radical Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility – shows, in the same way that Natural Capitalism does, that reinventing our industrial model is not only imperative – socially, environmentally, economically and morally – but also a great opportunity for those pioneers that blaze the trail.

L. Hunter Lovins, President of Natural Capitalism Solutions and co-author of Natural Capitalism

Whether corporate social responsibility has failed, or whether it is still finding its feet pending further market pull, one thing is clear: without a life-giving understanding of responsibility as the ability to respond there’s no point to anything. Wayne Visser does us all a service in exploring the opportunities and challenges that such responsibility entails.

Alastair McIntosh, Professor at the Centre for Human Ecology, Strathclyde University and author of Hell and High Water

All individuals interested in the evolution of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility should feel compelled to join Wayne Visser in his quest to better understand why efforts to implement CSR practices have not yet yielded the desired outcomes. In The Age of Responsibility, he draws on his gift for language and storytelling to lay out the case for a new kind of CSR – CSR 2.0. Using Web 2.0 as a metaphor, Visser identifies the interconnectedness of humans in their efforts to define what the world of business should look like. The journey is thought provoking, an education on where CSR has been and where it needs to go and a story imploring the reader to seek out “a unique and invaluable way to make a difference through CSR”.

Josetta McLaughlin, Associate Professor of Management at Walter E. Heller College of Business Administration, Roosevelt University

The good news: Business is shifting from making money in the simplest way possible towards solving global problems and making money in the process. The bad news: Progress is slow. Wayne Visser paints the big picture using an astounding amount of detailed knowledge.

Jorgen Randers, Professor of Climate Strategy at the Norwegian School of Management and co-author of Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

A world based on rights without responsibility can only lead to destruction. And when the rights are unbridled rights of giant corporations they trample on the earth and people. Wayne Visser’s The Age of Responsibility calls for a vital shift from rights to responsibility. It is a must read for all.

Vandana Shiva, author of Earth Democracy and Soil Not Oil

CSR 2.0 is a great concept. Good luck with it. And as Wayne Visser rightly adds: smart government regulation is absolutely essential.

Ernst von Weizsäcker, author of Factor 5: Transforming the Global Economy through 80% Improvements in Resource Productivity

The book is a thought provoking and cutting edge addition to the CSR literature. It integrates strategic and stakeholder perspectives to provide a new model of implementing change and innovative thinking. In extending the paradigm of CSR it promotes the role of leaders in bringing about positive societal change through stakeholder engagement and it does so through an understanding of the practical issues facing business leaders of today. Moreover, it challenges every one of us to think and act differently, to bring about mass global change enacted at the local level, and to incorporate social enterprises and social networks in this transformation. The global financial crisis has further reinforced the timeliness of this book and its arguments of a new way of thinking and acting in the area of sustainability and responsibility to bring about systemic change.

Suzanne Young, Associate Professor and Director of Corporate Responsibility and Global Citizenship at the Graduate School of Management, La Trobe University

This edition first published in 2011

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Visser, Wayne.

The Age of Responsibility : CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business / Wayne Visser. p. cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-68857-1 (hardback)

1. Social responsibility of business—Case studies. I. Title.

HD60.V56 2011

658.4ˈ08—dc22

2010050390

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-470-68857-1 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-119-97099-6 (ebk), ISBN 978-1-119-97338-6 (ebk), ISBN 978-1-119-97339-3 (ebk)

Typeset in 9.5/15pt Bitstream by Thomson Digital, Noida, India

FOREWORD

BY JEFFREY HOLLENDER

Seeing farther, going further

In the beginning, responsible businesses were going to save the world. I remember because I was there. It was the late 1980s, and a new brand of socially and environmentally benevolent companies were emerging on the corporate landscape. The Body Shop, Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and my own company, Seventh Generation, to name just a few, were out not only to make money but to fundamentally change the way things worked doing it.

Driven by equal parts societal need and personal desire, and an ethos carried on patchouli smoke from the late 1960s, these companies were founded by entrepreneurs who confronted the regressive bent of the Reagan era with a determination to create a different operating model for the business community. This new paradigm would reconcile the historic conflict between corporate profits and cultural progress by selling products and services whose creation took every possible precaution to safeguard the environment and respect the rights and dignity of the people responsible for bringing them to market.

Those were heady days. We thought we could save the world and earn a living doing it. The idea seemed obvious and its execution relatively straightforward. And though the things we were doing had largely never been tried, every time one of them worked, the possibilities appeared even more endless than before. By the time of the big 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, it was clear that corporate responsibility was a concept whose time had come. People the world over were eager for an evolutionary change from business-as-usual and the harm it was causing, and we were sure that it was only matter of time before the rest of the corporate world beat a path to our doorstep

Indeed, the business community did come knocking. Flash forward two decades, and it’s rare to find a company of any appreciable size that doesn’t offer a corporate responsibility (CR) report or tout some kind of progressive initiative. There are CR officers sitting in executive suites around the world and conferences on the subject well attended by Fortune 500 companies. Touchy-feely ad campaigns and self congratulatory press conferences abound. And some days it seems like nearly every product label has something to say about the change the goods within are helping to create.

Yet by virtually every measure, the world is in worse shape than it’s ever been. Our atmosphere is overburdened with dangerous levels of greenhouse gases. Our planet’s biodiversity and its ecosystems are under siege. Growing numbers of people are living in increasing poverty. Deadly toxins pollute our land and our bodies, yet health care remains a distant dream for far too many. We’re running out of water. We’re running out of natural resources. And we’re running out of time.

So what happened?

The short answer is not enough. As the CR movement spread to the corporate mainstream, it lost its focus. What started as a relatively simple set of goals to protect the environment and human rights degenerated into a philanthropic free-for-all in which causes proliferated and an ever-expanding array of do-good choices and options presented itself to business management teams who were already on confusing ground. Corporate executives who saw the need for CR failed to adequately help their staffs translate their vision into action, and public expectations about what was truly important were misunderstood or not understood at all. The resulting disconnect between what was needed and what actually got done neutered too many promising efforts.

At the same time, countless companies did what companies do: they created an office or a department to deal with CR and told it to grow CR initiatives. But this compartmentalized approach had the effect of decoupling innumerable CR agendas from their company’s actually daily workings and left programs trapped “inside the box” where nothing meaningful could happen.

In other cases, companies simply co-opted CR for their own purposes. This “greenwashing” was all about hype and appearance rather than honesty and action, and too many firms simply sought CR window dressing to help them look better in an increasingly informed world. They released fancy reports with pretty pictures. They had their CEOs photographed at CR conferences and summits. They purchased smaller more legitimately responsible companies for their halo effect and little more. But very rarely did they walk their talk.

Ironically, forces like these resulted in the one thing that CR supporters and naysayers can agree on: corporate responsibility in its present incarnation has been an enormous disappointment at best. It has not lifted people out of poverty. It has not protected the environment. It has not boosted community wellbeing. It has been too little, too late and at most has succeeded in getting some companies to aspire to simply do less damage than they did before. Instead of changing the world, CR merely evolved into a baseline requirement in every company’s license to operate. Where it succeeded, it only managed to slow the rate of decay, which is hardly enough to do much more than maintain the status quo.

This, say CR’s detractors, is proof that the movement’s fundamental ideal—that a business can remake itself so as to create an overwhelming net benefit for society and the environment in addition to its own bottom line—is not a valid model for moving forward and tackling the extremely big issues we now need to address.

But that’s wrong, and in this book, Wayne Visser shows us not only why but where we go from here. CR remains a valid approach ripe with promise and possibility. Yet as Visser quite importantly notes, this reaffirmation is dependent on the emergence of a new form of CR that takes a far more holistic view of its work and seeks not to affect piecemeal change but to engineer a series of systemic corrections that wisely recognize that since all our problems are connected our solutions must be, too. The job of CR advocates is to pull these new values into every last corner of the world’s companies in order to impact each process and decision, and deliver a return on purpose as well as a return on investment.

Because though much has changed in the last 25 years, one thing hasn’t: business is still the only force with the reach and resources to do what needs to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

After watching America’s political process devolve in recent years into what is essentially an oversized argument punctuated by self-serving bursts of alarming obstructionism, it’s clear that government is not the answer. Real leadership in Washington and other political capitals has long since been replaced by fearful strategic triangulation that replaces big ideas and bold action with anemic incremental change.

Nor are NGOs an effective alternative. There are too many of them too narrowly focused and too often at odds with each other. Even when added up, the non-profit world simply hasn’t the authority, influence, or financial base to engineer change on a mass scale.

That leaves business as the only force in today’s world that’s got it all: a universal presence, an ability to get things done quickly and on as little as a CEO’s say-so, and the economic clout required to engineer widespread systemic change with remarkable speed. Business is our best and indeed last hope, and it’s time to put that hope to the test.

As this book wisely notes, change is no longer a matter of choice. Our present trajectory tells us it’s coming whether we want it to or not. The only question is what form this change is going to take. If the corporate community fails to adopt and embrace meaningful CR, those changes will be grim indeed, and the world that will emerge may very possibly be too environmentally degraded and socially unstable for business to survive at all.

Business needs CR as much as the world itself does. This book is how we get to that better future. The journey starts with Visser’s critical dissection of the role that business has played in the development of the many challenges we face and the first-generation failures of the CR movement to prevent them. It’s as key an instructive moment as the movement has ever had, and we will do well to heed the important lessons this analysis brings to the table.

Yet it’s when Visser looks at where we go from here that the book you are holding offers its biggest payoff. Upon seeing that the first iteration of CR was not enough, we could easily be left wondering what to do next. Having once given it our all, what’s left to give? In Visser’s view, the answer is plenty, and I agree. Rather than be frustrated by our previous lack of meaningful success, this roadmap to a more sane and just future offers ideas to get excited about. Visser’s vision of what a new brand of CR could and should look like and his exploration of the kind of businesses it would breed is the medicine the movement has been seeking. It’s at once a way out and way forward. We would be foolish in the extreme not to take it to heart and put it to work.

Over twenty years ago, a handful of individuals at a ragged assortment of companies tried to start a revolution. You’re holding the book that can finish it. Take what it knows and use this wisdom to set your own business on the path to a better and more profitable place. Whether you’re a CEO in a corner office or a worker on the line, read it, learn it, and spread its gospel as far and wide as you can. The hour may be late and the clock loudly ticking, but the story of responsible business is not over yet. There’s still room for a happy ending. And the time has come for us to write it for ourselves.

Jeffrey Hollender Co-Founder, Seventh Generation Charlotte, VT October 2010

Acknowledgements

As this book is the fruit of my efforts in corporate sustainability and responsibility (CSR) – through studies and work – over the past 20 years, there are too many people to thank individually.

However, I would like mention colleagues at Cap Gemini (Stephen Asbury) and KPMG (Petrus Marais, Shireen Naidoo, George Molenkamp and Michael Kelly), as well as fellow scholars at the Universities of Cape Town (Vic Razis and Bruce Phillips), Nottingham (Jeremy Moon and Wendy Chapple), York (Andrew Crane and Dirk Matten), La Trobe (Suzanne Young) and Cambridge (Polly Courtice and Mike Peirce).

Some of the quotations from thought leaders in the book are taken from interviews I conducted as part of the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership ‘Top 50 Sustainability Books’ project in 2008, an opportunity for which I am most grateful.

I would like to thank Josetta McLaughlin from Roosevelt University for her detailed review of the manuscript and helpful suggestions for improvement.

As ever, I am grateful to my family, who are a wellspring of encouragement, and my beloved Indira, who inspires me daily and is unfailing in her support.

About the author

Dr Wayne Visser is Founder and Director of the think-tank CSR International and the author /editor of twelve books, including nine on the role of business in society, such as The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility and The World Guide to CSR.

In addition, Dr Visser is Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, Visiting Professor of Sustainability at Magna Carta College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor of CSR at La Trobe Graduate School of Management, Australia. Before getting his PhD in Corporate Social Responsibility (Nottingham University, UK), Dr Visser was Director of Sustainability Services for KPMG and Strategy Analyst for Cap Gemini in South Africa.

His other qualifications include an MSc in Human Ecology (Edinburgh University, UK) and a Bachelor of Business Science with Honours in Marketing (Cape Town University, South Africa). Dr Visser lives in London, UK, and enjoys art, writing poetry, spending time outdoors and travelling in his home continent of Africa.

In 2010, Dr Visser completed a 20 country ‘CSR Quest’ World Tour, to share best practices in corporate sustainability and responsibility. A full biography and much of his writing and art is on www.waynevisser.com. He will continue to upload new content on CSR 2.0 at http://ageofresponsibility.blogspot.com and www.csrinternational.org. If you wish to contact Dr Visser and share your own experience of CSR 2.0, or book him for a presentation, you can email him at [email protected].

You can also follow him on Twitter (WayneVisser).

PART I

The call to responsibility

CHAPTER 1

Our ability to respond

We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.

—Bill Maher

It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

—Josiah Charles Stamp

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In times like these men should utter nothing for which they would not be willingly responsible through time and in eternity.

—Abraham Lincoln

The meaning of responsibility

Do you sigh when you hear the word responsibility? Perhaps responsibility is even a dirty word in your vocabulary. Perhaps you associate it with burdens and restrictions; the opposite of being carefree and without obligations. But responsibility doesn’t have to be a chore, or a cage. It all depends how you think about it.