{"id":6254,"date":"2011-02-10T07:11:03","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T15:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ietransfer.wpengine.com\/?p=6254"},"modified":"2011-02-10T07:11:03","modified_gmt":"2011-02-10T15:11:03","slug":"perhaps-the-definition-of-csr-is-semantics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/articles\/perhaps-the-definition-of-csr-is-semantics\/","title":{"rendered":"Perhaps the Definition of CSR is Semantics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>An interesting anecdote was described in a recent Vault.com blog post entitled \u201cWhy Don\u2019t Executives Understand CSR<\/a>?\u201d The author discusses an event that she attended which dealt with the advancement of women in the workplace. She had a discussion on the side with an executive that basically boiled down to this. The author saying she was at the event because this is an important \u201cCSR issue\u201d and the executive stating incredulously that this is not a \u201cCSR issue\u201d but something of great importance, one that is very strategic (whatever that means). The author was frustrated as anyone who spends their life trying to get CSR on the agenda would be.<\/p>\n

First I want to say that Vault has done excellent work profiling the CSR space of late. I think is of great importance because it\u2019s become a well-known brand that people go to in order to find information on various corporations. Secondly, I believe the broader issue that is pertinent due to this short, one-off exchange is really something worth exploring.<\/p>\n

What exactly was going on here? Well, someone who firmly believes in the principles of CSR and regularly works in this space came to an event regarding female advancement in the workplace, which I think would fall under anyone\u2019s definition of CSR. On the other hand you have an executive that is clearly interested (dare I say passionate) about the same issue, but as evidence of the exchange, clearly believes that CSR is not a legitimate business strategy.<\/p>\n

What I think is interesting is that I can see both sides of the issue and in a sense it seems as though they are arguing about the definition of something that, in principle, they both agree upon. Much has been made about what the definition of CSR is and how it\u2019s implemented, but I wonder if arguing about that is really the best use of our time. We want CSR to be taken seriously and to be implemented properly so I can understand the author\u2019s annoyance by the conversation, but clearly the executive found the issue equally important even if said executive displayed how important an issue they thought it was by disparaging something (CSR) that they did not find so strategically important.<\/p>\n

So my question is, how important is it to define something when, ostensibly we\u2019re working towards the same goal? Is this just semantics and does semantics like this get in the way of pursuing a common goal, which in this case happened to be the advancement of women in the workplace. Or perhaps I just started another argument that is taking away from this pursuit of common goals.<\/p>\n

Image Credit by Gerard Fritz<\/a> via Flickr under a CC license <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting anecdote was described in a recent Vault.com blog post entitled \u201cWhy Don\u2019t Executives Understand CSR?\u201d The author discusses an event that she attended which dealt with the advancement of women in the workplace. She had a discussion on the side with an executive that basically boiled down to this. The author saying she 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Banco","author_link":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/author\/jonathanbanco\/"},"uagb_comment_info":4,"uagb_excerpt":"An interesting anecdote was described in a recent Vault.com blog post entitled \u201cWhy Don\u2019t Executives Understand CSR?\u201d The author discusses an event that she attended which dealt with the advancement of women in the workplace. She had a discussion on the side with an executive that basically boiled down to this. The author saying she…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6254"},{"taxonomy":"adace-sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adace-sponsor?post=6254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}