Sharing Economy, CSR and Sustainability: Making the Connection — I

I remember the time when an internet search for CSR used to yield a number of results for ‘customer sales representatives’ and invariably used to land on the BPO and call center industry pages. We have come a long way since then. Today, while the sales representative CSR definition still shows up in the search, there are plenty of meaningful links on corporate social responsibility, that crowd the results pages. The awareness of the field has come a long way, but how enduring is its meaning and impact? What innovative and granular changes have practitioners of the discipline made to the domain to create discerning long term value that demonstrates social and commercial good. Well, the good examples are many, yet few and far between and certainly not fully thought through.

I am a reformed CSR and sustainability professional. After years in the domain and seeing limited impact owing to the deep rooted inertia within the discipline and its practitioners, I have come to realize that true solutions to sustainability, CSR, corporate citizenship (and the numerous names that we call the ‘thing’ by) are not found within these disciplines, but in an adjacent and emerging domain of “Sharing Economy”, typically referring to enterprises such as, for example, Uber, airbnb and the like, where access rather than ownership becomes the key to economic growth, scale and profits.

Well, this is not to say that there are no virtues left at all in the pure play disciplines of CSR and sustainability as they are practiced today. Nor is it right to say that Sharing Economy in its present form is the ultimate panacea. Through this piece, I am proposing a reformed definition for all disciplines, keeping in line with my own reformation and de-addiction after spending much of the past intense introspective months being CSR Anonymous. Unfortunately, this support group has only one member (me) unlike Alcoholics Anonymous!

One of my most cherished thoughts and beliefs is “there should be no difference between corporate social responsibility and corporate sales responsibility”. Done right, both sales=profit and social impact=real change for communities can co-exist. It’s an unfortunate parody and travesty of our times that most businesses, individuals, including those that profess a healthy tolerance for innovation and social change, still equate CSR to charity and philanthropy, and sustainability to environmental stuff, energy management, climate change et al. The new CSR mandate as per the revised Companies Act in India, in a way accentuates this anomaly.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a great supporter of the bill and an admirer of the folks at Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, who are the custodians and advocates for the Clause 135 in the Act that pertains to corporations earmarking a set percentage of past three-years profits to charitable giving, through NPO projects, on an annual basis. While this does make the domain of corporate giving more transparent and governance led, it does nothing to integrate the wider world of businesses, social enterprises, government and public private partnerships, impact investing as an asset class, and of course sharing economy, trust and inclusion.

It’s also unnerving and worrying as to how not-for-profit organizations (NPOs) in the country have latched on to clause 135 as a source of easy funding only and some in fact are actively lobbying for the clause to mean only donations to charity. I understand the predicament of such NPOs — it is their job to ensure sustenance of their organizations and if the CSR clause in the Companies Act enables this mechanism, then the savvy amongst the NPOs will grow both their organization and hopefully their impact in the communities. But the point I am trying to allude to, is not this. My point is to do with scalable, replicable, enterprise grade social and environmental impact, that creates level playing field for all people and communities to participate in an inclusive and sharing economy. For how many years would we continue to lament the same problems and with our lack of speed, clarity and alacrity, create new ones?

Within the numerous social and human development conferences and seminars that dot the capital city of New Delhi every winter, most discourses are standardized around normal ways of CSR and NPO work — how we did what we did, how more financial support is required, how some NPOs are not getting funds when they should, how corporations treat NPOs and vice versa (this is another topic for further debate), small pilots, small impact and the like. Even the discourses on Beyond CSR don’t go beyond! The last I saw someone really go beyond was William Shatner, aka Captain James D Kirk of Starship Enterprise, in the famous televised space drama Star Trek– we all remember “to boldly go where no man (and of course woman, to be gender correct) has gone before, as the hard hitting punch line!

Humor apart, suffice to say that the present thinking is centered around “business as usual” and future impact, that is measured further into the future, by which time, the situation on the ground has further worsened. One only has to visit the poverty statistics in India- while money poverty may have gone down (despite inflationary pressures, as some pundits say), the quality of life and living has worsened across sectors. One does not have to go too far into statistics and microeconomics to see and know that slums in Mumbai continue to grow, patients continue to lie on hospital floors and not beds, primary healthcare centers continue to be an anathema for health, the gender equation continues to be lopsided, and my favorite of course, tigers continue to be found mostly in the CSR brochures of companies than in the forests they are supposed to roam as an apex species, denoting the absolute health of the ecosystem and all that it sustains — plants, agriculture, rivers, agriculture, people, culture and local and national economies. (More about the tiger tiger burning dull, later!) The situation in many countries of Africa, South America and South East Asia is no different.

So where does that leave us!

I did not know CSR and sustainability jargon phrases when I started working in the domain over two decades ago. Those days were the age of customer sales representatives! Over the years, as the domain evolved and got a name, I too started telling people that my vocation is CSR and Sustainability, which many good old simple folk (including my parents!) still don’t understand. And today, I am evolving yet further again, leaning purposefully and proactively on the shoulders of a Sharing Economy, which to my mind, is a much appropriate living concept to have evolved, that means better and scalable impact success.

My firm belief has always been to amalgamate a living that converges profits, economic growth and thriving communities. And with this thinking, over the years, I have launched numerous initiatives that today could be labeled as Sharing Economy practices, of course in the limited sense of the term, if only because my definition is different from the normal. Let me give a few examples.

Brands need to be socially responsible and truly at the level of sales, marketing and inclusive profit and not necessarily in a post facto manner making a mere mention when talking about a company’s sustainability initiatives in an annual report, even if it is based on GRI (global reporting initiative) norms. Consumers reside in communities that may not always have the buying power, howsoever differentially a product is priced across price-points to garner market share! For brands to be truly socially responsible, they need to create purchasing power amongst communities so that they are able to participate in the buying process, and further need to meet needs not only as espoused by the product specifications, but also those that the communities, individuals and families see as emerging and well, needy! The latter essentially are those that helps resolve problems and create a better quality of life and happiness.

With this premise in mind, many years ago, I designed and ran a campaign for Castrol and bp that helped farmers build water harvesting structures through demonstration models, enabling harvesting and storage of water for both irrigation and drinking. It also helped farmers practice agriculture in an otherwise drought prone region, building an affinity for the Castrol lubricants brand, which then became a matter of preferred choice for all farmers in the region. This is a case of creative purchasing power through social investments and then selling to it for inclusive and sharing economy gains.

Similarly, when I launched microfinance for HSBC, it was with the explicit intention of creating a mirror or sharing economy that helped poor access credit at the same time rich were accessing it through former banking channels. This piece is not about the virtues or otherwise, of the oral contraceptive pill as a reproductive healthcare and family planning measure, but my work with Ogilvy and USAID some years ago, created a commercial marketing strategy that helped women accept the pill through the reproductive healthcare awareness interventions that I could launch in the community, helping pharmaceutical companies create a sales channel as well as a feedback mechanism and health impact.

I can continue with multiple examples and some recent ones, especially pertaining to brands, are also found in the Tata Tea Jaagore campaign and Idea Cellular social good advertising. But coming back to my earlier point, at the design level, such interventions are not integrated into the broader CSR and sustainability domains, and certainly not at all in the current drama unfolding over NPOs accessing corporate funding through the new CSR mandate as promulgated by the Indian government. As a result, CSR, sustainability and a little bit of sharing economy continue to travel in parallel with little or no hope for convergence.

My definition of sharing economy and the one I am intentionally attempting to practice in my work is one that not only creates access but also purchasing power for the have-nots and in the process also practices proven tenets of corporate social responsibility and sustainability. It is almost tantamount to saying that airbnb should preferably enable sharing of environmentally friendly housing inventory. Uber should attempt to have and grow its fleet of low emission and electric cars with due attention to reducing carbon footprint which is a direct result of their consumers commuting using Uber! That’s how I would define the basic contours of a sharing economy and I would then make the business, enterprise and community interventions sustainable. I would further add an element of circular economy (more about this later) and ensure all product and consumption cycles have the least impact on society and environment through the cradle to cradle approach.

And this is something that I don’t see in the present CSR and sustainability movement. That heady and spirited commitment to scalable and enduring impact at all costs that show results now in real time, is missing. The need of the hour is to fundamentally put an end to the culture that is very comfortable discussing child malnourishment and diarrhea as the single largest (among others) parameter for child deaths, over a martini in a luxury hotel. Rather sharing economy and purposeful brand combination can creative disruptive innovation in the way the luxury hotel manages its business to put an end to child issues being discussed in their lounges.

(To be continued…Part II: Sharing Economy + Circular Economy; Defining the Purposeful Brand)