Key Findings

RESPONSE Project Unique Findings and Recommendations

At a time when consensus continues to grow that business needs to be more conscious of society’s expectations, the findings of Project RESPONSE showed there is still a wide gap between how managers in multinational companies and external stakeholders view the role of business. In many cases, the stakeholder CSR initiatives are surprisingly ineffective in addressing this gap.

RESPONSE advocates that closing the gap between managers’ and stakeholders’ understanding of what constitutes their company’s responsibility towards society will require:

• Rethinking CSR as a fundamental internal change challenge, rather than simply as a stakeholder engagement one. This challenge involves changes across strategy-making processes, organizational structures and incentive systems, operating procedures and organizational culture, aimed at integrating principles of responsibility and sustainable development.
• Establishing a new form of in-depth collaboration among companies and their stakeholders aimed at helping each other design and execute the deep internal change programmes required to embed responsibility in every decision made and each action taken.
• Focusing on the individual rather than solely on the organizational aspects of corporate responsibility.  Unless and until there is greater understanding about how managers can develop sensitivity about the social impact of their decisions and actions, no real progress can be made on the alignment of business conduct with society’s expectations.
• Changing fundamentally the way managers are educated, including a shift from standard, awareness-building, executive development approaches to deep introspection and inner change coaching processes.

For more information about selected views on the project insights and findings: