CSR - The Business Case For CSR - Superb Data for BUSS4

A reference in a Guardian article today will take students to a treasure trove of evidence to support their research on CSR. Some cracking examples here for students wanting to top up their evidence crib sheets ahead of the A2 exams.

This is the Guardian article, in which David Grayson of Cranfield School of Management makes the link between the business case for sustainability and Michael Porter’s concept of “shared value” which we featured in our CSR toolkit and revision workshops.

Here is the link to the joint Cranfield / BITC report from a few weeks ago which provides all the research data, explanation and evaluation.

The Cranfield report suggests that there are over 60 seperate benefits that may arise from being a responsible business. That’s far too many to remember! But these benefits are grouped into 7 broad groups; namely

1. Brand value and reputation
2. Employees and future workforce
3. Operational effectiveness
4. Risk reduction and management
5. Direct financial impact
6. Organisational growth
7. Business opportunity

The report decribes and provides examples of each business benefit. For example:

Brand value and reputation’ - which refers to any benefits realised from responsible business that improve the value of the brand and/or the reputation of the brand or organisation.

The report showcases the Cooperative Group (a favourite of the tutor2u CSR toolkit) and provides a nice piece of evidence for students to memorise:

The Co-operative Group report that its ethical policy has positively impacted customer attrition. 88% of The Co-operative Food’s customers believe that its ethical policy made the business more appealing

[terminology alert: customer attrition is like staff turnover - it is the rate at which customers decide to leave and shop elsewhere]

Similarly, there is evidence of the business benefits of CSR for the second benefit group - employees and future workforce.

The report provides some stats from Marks and Spencers to support its view:

“Through the Sustainability Framework and Ethical Model Factories, M&S worked in partnership with factories to improve process efficiency as a means to increase wages, reduce working hours and protect the quality of products. Productivity in the Bangladeshi Ethical Model Factoriesincreased by 42%, while staff turnover reduced from 10% to 2.5%, and absenteeism reduced from 10% to 1.5%.”

Great stuff - and highly recommended for students making last minute preparations for the BUSS4 section A exam.