A business is not a mission.

So why do so many businesses have “mission statements”? Because they think that to print pious sentiments proves that they are Socially Responsible Corporations and this will convince people that they only practice decent business behaviour.

Mission statements are as effective as a fig leaf in a gale.

It is right that a business should aspire to serve all the parties who have needs of it or claims on it. Maybe a statement of the “apple-pie, motherhood and pre-martial chastity” sort fills the minds of work-experience interns with laudable thoughts, although most of the interns I have met are more savvy than that, and sometimes more aware of their social responsibilities than are their bosses. Better than universally accepted, desirable standards would be a list of exactly what these lofty ideals mean for any particular organisation.

Here are some of the realities.

Transparency is the first code of social responsibility. We don’t do the nastier things in our lives within sight of others. The points at which a business is subject to dishonest dealing can be spelt out and the light of scrutiny shone on them. If you’d rather other people didn’t know about it, chances are that it’s wrong.

None of us likes what we described at school as ‘sneaks’ – that cadre of maladjusted youngsters who aim to curry favour with teacher by exposing the minor offences of their classmates. But we are all quite glad of the prefect who prevents an arson attack during gym by exposing the fire monger. Every business must have the door open to the whistleblower who is genuinely concerned to prevent a tragedy befalling the organisation. Very few businesses seem to make responsible use of inside information.

Fairness dictates the larger part of whether employees are happy at work and yet very few organisations make it a focal point of management. When did you last see an appraisal form with a fairness rating on it? If ‘behavioural anchors’ are meant to cover the subject, why don’t they say so? In the businesses I built I never punished genuine mistakes, preferring to let people learn from them, but I punished unfairness ruthlessly. Malicious judgement is a killer scourge for any organisation.

Lying is an endemic problem in dealings of all sorts. It pervades business, authority, religion, education, the family. Can a business survive without lying? Except very rarely, where highly valuable commercial intellectual property is concerned, it can. If transparency is to be the watchword of the future, lying must be eliminated. The two are incompatible.

Surely Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) doesn’t cover these matters? Isn’t it about avoiding pollution, making the planet sustainable and contributing to the welfare of the people and places from which the corporation derives its commercial benefit?

It is certainly these things and more. But they are the consequences of the fundamentals I have listed above. Unless the fundamentals are correct CSR will become just another version of the fig leaf. The result of that is potential annihilation. As with disease, it’s no good tackling the symptoms if the body remains rotten. A medical plaster covers either something getting better – or something getting worse.
Capitalism has demonstrated that competition creates wealth and brings huge benefits including a longer useful life on earth. How can we reconcile capitalism with the right of everyone to have a fair crack at life?

Corporate Social Responsibility is potentially a major step in the right direction. Let us hope that we appreciate that it is created only by personal responsibility and does not have some sort of ritual, checklist life of its own.