RSC events: best practices and… failures?

Why? Why in most of the CSR events we attend they only talk about the good practices of the companies whose representatives are invited to the debates? Where are the difficulties, challenges and failures of these organizations in CSR?

I usually go to all CSR events taking place in the city where I live and I’ve also been to some in other cities. And since the first event, I keep hearing the same things and sometimes even coming from the same people. Companies fill their mouths with the initiatives carried out, well, not always… even in some big companies they continue confusing CSR with social action (and sometimes not even that, but that would be the subject for another post).

But yet no company has told us what difficulties they have found when implementing their actions, nor in what things they have failed (because we do not believe that everything happens in a perfect world in which everything goes well). Sometimes, and in particular events, they talk about the “challenges of CSR” but is usually done in a very general and futuristic way, almost assuming that so far so good, that the challenges are for the future, and also as if these challenges were the same for all types of companies and sectors. And the truth is that it creates frustration among those of us who attend to these events not only to hear the good but also the bad, to see how we can help improve organizations through our work. We have to end, in the best case, basing our opinion on knowledge of any direct business we know, on assumptions in other cases and, in the worst scenario, when the problems of the companies erupt, are made public and just splash their credibility and reputation.

Who is to blame for this lack of transparency? The companies for hiding what can be improved in their management? The organizers of the events for not promoting this kind of debate? Do they propose the debates but companies don’t want to attend? Are some events “bought” by the companies that sponsor them? Is the fault ours (professionals, society in general) for not demanding that the companies are transparent? Perhaps it is the fault of all?

Some questions to ponder…

Note: This article was first published in spanish and can be found here.