Businesses should share best practices
Businesses and the wider society collectively benefit from putting it all out there
By necessity, the business world doesn’t go in for a great deal of sharing. The nature of market competition, and the need to get (and stay) ahead of your competitors often doesn’t leave much room for niceties.
If you find an approach that works — whether that’s a more efficient system for boosting your productivity, or a better system for engaging your employees — a business leader will always be reticent to share specifics with their closest business rivals. You may want other boardrooms to be aware you’re doing very well, but it’s usually considered better to keep them wondering how you’re actually managing it. This isn’t selfishness, of course; just good business sense.
But what about corporate social responsibility (CSR)? In principle, you might argue logically that the same principle holds true. There are many business advantages to be gained from a robust CSR approach — from improving the way you manage your supply chains and the positive public image.
But I would also argue that there need not be the same compulsion to keep a great idea quiet when it comes to CSR. Indeed, I would suggest that an individual business’s winning CSR approach is improved much more when standards of things like accountability and environmental awareness are pushed higher by collective effort.
You could argue that this is only true because investing in sustainability always comes with the potential for higher costs or reduced trading opportunities. If you’re the only competitor doing it, some businesses might feel they are only putting themselves at a disadvantage.
This isn’t, however, a course of argument that holds much weight. It’s not hard to think of examples of corporate scandals where an individual company was caught doing something unethical or environmentally questionable. The potential for a negative impact to a brand can often be enough on its own to prompt companies to stay at the leading edge of CSR efforts.
In short, then, everybody wins when individual businesses expand their CSR efforts, share their best practices, and help support other parts of their market to keep moving forward with sustainable business practices. When companies meet and explain how they have become more sustainable, the whole community gains.