The global spread of the occupy Wall Street movement is a tipping point for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) . Just check out the CBS News Video report from yesterday that includes Pete from NYU who is planning to drop out of his Finance program to help manage the funds of the movement. "Economic justice" is an unifying message of the disparate bunch of people who are assembling worldwide from such hotbeds of enterprise and capitalism as New York to Hong Kong.
And this is the very first time in history that a people's movement is gathering against the excesses of business. Why has this never happened before ? Three possible reasons come to mind :
- The Internet and social media that allows sharing of information,particularly about the perceived excesses of business-worldwide at almost no extra cost.
- The caving in by swathes of different world Governments via bailouts to irresponsible banks that continue to cause immense pain to millions worldwide. This blog had posted about Karl Marx smiling.…
- The collapse of Marxism/Socialism ideology worldwide has perhaps magnified the worst of exploitative capitalism as Marx had so forcefully argued. Sort of you need the "evil" to see the "good"!
So instead of eulogizing Wall Street leaders as John Galts they are being demonized as robber barons .
This loss of credibility for business is highly dangerous for the economy and company leaders must seriously re-look at their definitions and execution of CSR initiatives. For example, in this emerging scenario it is not good enough to sponsor a walk for a good cause but CSR must explicitly tie in specific public pain points like jobs created.
Today companies do not seem to be linking hiring to CSR explicitly and its perhaps time to do so.