BSR has developed an important niche but should maintain a focus on its members

Strategy and management

The story of Business for Social Responsibility has been one of constant reinvention.

It was founded in 1992 in Washington DC by Josh Mailman, Laury Hammel and Mal Warwick and originally focused on activist mid-sized companies. It was essentially a lobby group.

Within a couple of years, however, the board had revised its mission to provide resources to help companies to implement more responsible practices, and had moved the headquarters to San Francisco, where it remains to this day.

The agent for change at this point was Bob Dunn, who had argued against the lobbying role because he thought it would be a barrier to getting greater business involvement. He came in as chief executive in 1994.

Dunn had been a vice-president at Levi Strauss, and brought with him a corporate mindset, experience of key issues such as labour rights, and a wealth of corporate contacts.

Some of the smaller companies were outraged at the influx of the big corporates as members, whose presence they saw as betraying the values of the original concept. And the shift was confirmed when BSR moved to shut down its local chapters in favour of focusing on the big companies. One of the founders, Laury Hammel, went on to create the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies as an alternative.

Under Bob Dunn, BSR quickly grew to become a serious force as a network of major corporations committed to social responsibility. The BSR annual conference became the most important event of its kind in the calendar, and many of the most influential US corporations became active members.

Then in 2004, the mantle was handed to Aron Cramer, formerly a vice-president at BSR who joined to lead its work on human rights. Cramer’s leadership helped to reinforce the evolution of BSR towards being an organisation that achieved significant income through consultancy. He is also directly engaged in the content of the issues, and has been positioned as an active thought-leader in social responsibility.

Heart of the network

One of the great benefits of a membership organisation is the creation of a peer network. Making the most of this has been a challenge for BSR because of the sheer size of the United States territory. This has led the organisation’s annual conference to take on a primary importance as the one occasion in the calendar when members come together.

The conference built its reputation in the early years by providing a safe space for companies to discuss the issues – it actively limited non-profit attendance at the start. This was before most companies became more relaxed about dealing with NGOs.

Dave Stangis of Campbell Soup is one of those members for whom the conference works well. He says: “This year, I was able to take a team member who is relatively new. She was immediately able to go to a range of different content sessions and to access this huge network of people from different companies. It was like drinking from the fire hose.”

The conference routinely attracts more than 1,000 delegates. Cramer says the event has been evolving in three important ways in recent years. First, he says, the audience has become more global in scope. BSR’s expanding activities in different parts of the world have served to bring more key people to the conference.

Second, the parallel sessions cover content in greater depth, and the focus on different topics has identified where companies can be shaping the agenda.

Third, the web is used to change the way people interact. This has helped BSR to offer its delegates enhanced ways of making the most of the event in terms of its networking potential. For instance, BSR was one of the first organisations to enable delegates to contact each other via its website to set up meetings in advance of the event.

Such moves have probably been supported by the changing nature of the delegate list. The rise of the CSR professional has resulted in higher expectations of attendees. Stangis says he also sees more communications professionals, lawyers and other key business functions present that are now much more knowledgeable about how the social agenda affects their company.

A global role?

BSR has long aspired to be a global in scope, rather than limited to the US. The organisation’s international presence has historically involved a few outpost offices. But in recent years, that has begun to change, with a major build-up of its presence in Asia, and particularly China.

Three years ago, Cramer says, 95% of the staff were based in San Francisco. Today, it is about 45%, with most of the rest in Asia.

However, although some Asian and European companies have begun to appear on the membership list, BSR retains its strong US bias, and few of the organisation’s stakeholders believe that BSR has yet become a truly global force – more a bipolar one focused heavily on the US-China relationship.

One longstanding member, who asked not to be named, says BSR is “not a true international organisation in the way that the World Business Council for Sustainable Development has become. The collaborative groups they put together are still often very much US-focused, for instance.”

The same member still saw BSR’s focus on global issues as a valuable asset, and praised the international participant list at the conference.

The greater number of people on the ground in China, Cramer says, is reflective of the fact that BSR is doing more projects now in the field. BSR has undertaken projects in more than 75 countries, including direct work in factories in China, Mongolia and Peru.

Is there a danger that BSR might be simply exporting a US world view when it comes to social responsibility that won’t fit the local context? Cramer says not. “As I go around the world, the issues that I see people talking about are the same issues. The local context shapes how people see those issues, and the priority they give to them, but something like climate change is relevant wherever you go.”

In common with most CSR membership organisations, BSR does not get sufficient income from member subscriptions alone to run its operations.

Initially, it grew using income from a number of foundations with the aim of raising the standard of corporate practice in social responsibility, or spreading corporate responsibility to countries and continents where it was in a much earlier stage in formation.

Such projects are still a major feature of BSR’s activity. For instance, it runs HERproject, a factory-based women’s health initiative with funding from the Levi Strauss Foundation and the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, among others.

But in recent years, BSR has become more focused on achieving income through consultancy services. These services are offered at a significant discount for members, and have developed over time to cover a range of industry sectors and a number of practices, such as stakeholder engagement, supply chain management and reporting.

But, can you remain focused on being a membership organisation while simultaneously operating as a consultant? Not everybody is sure. The quality of consultancy is highly regarded, but the question mark is over the value of membership.

Only game in town

recalls that when he initially had his former employer Intel join BSR, the organisation was pretty much the only game in town, and was the main source of information and research. “Since then, basic information has become commoditised. They need to offer greater degree of expertise,” he says.

At one point, Intel had considered leaving BSR because the company was not getting enough value. This moment passed when BSR was able to involve it in a supply chain initiative.

However, the membership proposition remains fragile. Longstanding member Timberland has recently opted to allow its membership to lapse. Colleen Van Haden, senior manager for code of conduct at Timberland, says the company continued to value the conference and its presence on some of the working groups, but these benefits were available for non-members. “The cost differential does not for us currently equal the cost of actually being a member,” she says.

She adds: “I do feel that BSR gives great value for those just getting started. For companies like us that already have a sophisticated and forward-looking programme it’s less obvious.”

Cramer acknowledges that the membership proposition has changed over time. When BSR was first created, almost none of its members had a dedicated corporate responsibility function, and basic information was scarce. Now, he says, the organisation has tried to go much further towards analysis and insight that adds real value, as well as the excellent growing network of the CSR practitioners.

It must be doing something right. Membership has remained stable, and even slightly grown to the current number of 275, over the past two years of economic hardship.

Is there a danger that as its members become more sophisticated, it will become redundant? Only if it forgets its membership base entirely and focuses too much on being a consultant, says former vice-president Mark Lee.

“BSR is currently fairly unique among the boutique players and the big consultancies. If organisations like this try to define themselves too much as consultancies they will lose that difference and find it hard to compete.”

Lee adds: “BSR can have a major role in keeping people focused on broader sustainability.”

Cramer expects that BSR will continue to evolve as global circumstances for business change. New challenges lie ahead, particularly if the value of open markets begins to be more seriously questioned.

“BSR,” he says, “will continue to engage and become more global. Through our history our mission has stayed the same, but our methods have changed. That is how we have stayed relevant.”



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