Healthcare: The corporate social responsibility of Johns Hopkins Hospital

Are there any companies or corporations that stand out in your mind for their efforts in corporate social responsibility?

Johns Hopkins Hospital is definitely worth mentioning. Not only do they offer services to help people, they go above and beyond that with their corporate social responsibility. In fact, they were actually named one of the world’s most ethical organizations by the Ethisphere Institute. To be nominated and selected for this, there is certain criterion that needs to be met. This includes: corporate citizenship and responsibility, corporate governance, innovation that contributes to public well-being, industry leadership, executive leadership, legal and regulatory performance, and solid ethics-compliance programs. 

Additionally, Johns Hopkins Hospital just recently started helping other companies develop employee wellness centers. These new centers play a pivotal role in helping the companies maintain reasonable health costs as well as ensuring the health of these corporations’ employees. Some corporations that are participating in this program include: Nestle Crop, Hughes Network Systems, and Nordham Group.

A Smart Communication Plan for CSR

You might have developed an amazing CSR plan, but how do you communicate your plan to those key players? What are some challenges that you might face? How will you convey to the company and all of its departments the significances of CSR? Will you be able to justify to stakeholders and interests groups why it is in your company’s best interest to take on this CSR plan?

Here are some essential things to keep in mind when communicating your plan:

1.       Timing is everything. Be sure to communicate in the beginning what your plan is. Next, once you begin implementing your plan let the stakeholders and employees know what they are responsible for. Lastly, get together with everyone to see how you performed and how you reached your plan’s goals with their help.

2.       Be sure to address the right issues to the right audience. Stakeholders are more concerned about the numbers and financials. Leave those details out of your communications to your employees.

3.       Use a variety of communication mediums. Make sure that your consumers are aware of what you are doing with your CSR plan. Put this information up onto a website where anyone can access it. You should also create more internal and specific information to your employee and stakeholders as well. This way everyone can be on the same page.

4.       Celebrate your success and address your obstacles. You need to let everyone know if you reached your goal to provide good feedback from your stakeholders and consumers. Let your employees know that their efforts are appreciated.

Is there anything else you think is essential to creating a smart communication plan for corporate social responsibility? What helped your company? What are some challenges you faced?

Some of the Critical Elements of a CSR Initiative

Does your company have enough of a competitive edge? How about using corporate social responsibility as an edge? 67% of consumer will most likely buy products from a company that gives back to the community over their competitors that don’t.  Toms is definitely a good example of a company that can back that statistic up with their success.

What are some critical elements that successful corporations use for their CSR Initiative?

1.       Sticking to what they know and using that to help the community. For example, Toms is a shoe company, and they are donating shoes to individuals who don’t have shoes.

2.       Being able to justify the why of it all with solid research. Why should everyone else care about the corporation’s cause, and what exactly is the business doing to solve this issue?

3.       Focusing on one social issue/cause at a time. Everyone knows that if you want to make a big impact and get something done, you need to just focus on it solely instead of trying to juggle multiple things at once.

4.       Don’t be afraid to get help from experts. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel. If there’s an organization/non-profit that is already working towards a cause you want to help, partner up with them and let them teach your company what you can do to make the biggest impact.

Those are some key factors to focus on when starting your CSR initiative. Are there any other elements that you think should be focused on as well?

The Genesis of Corporate Responsibility

We hear about corporate responsibility fairly frequently in our daily lives, but where did it begin? When did corporations start to feel the need to give back to society?

The term corporate responsibility, or more so social responsibility, was first coined by Howard R. Bowen, an American economist, who wrote “Social Responsibility of the Businessman.”  This book focuses on how companies should behave towards society in regards to morality and ethics. Some could also argue that it started even early than that in 1930s and 1940s, with Chester Barnard’s (1938) The Functions of the Executive, J. M. Clark’s (1939) Social Control of Business, and Theodore Kreps’(1940) Measurement of the Social Performance of Business. However, Bowen was the first to have a clear definition of social responsibility. Bowen definition was “It refers to the obligations of businessmen to pursue those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objectives and values of our society”.

Although, there was a variety of literature that was published on social responsibility after Bowen, the first company to actually publish a social report was Ben and Jerry’s in 1989 followed by Shell in 1998. Shell was forced to take social responsibility seriously as they were facing accusations of being compliant with the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists in Nigeria. Shell was also being attacked by Greenpeace for their decision to sink the Brent Spar oil platform. Because of all these issues that were arising against Shell, investors and the public lost confidence in Shell.

Shell spent over 20 million dollars on their publicity to rebrand and outline their values “Honesty, integrity and respect for people.” They also incorporated on their website “Tell Shell,” allowing individuals and shareholders to share their concerns with Shell. It gave them a sense of having a more active voice in Shell’s decision making. Tom Delfgaauw, former Vice President for Sustainable Development at Shell, said in regards to the issues the company faced in the mid-90s “The best thing that ever happened to us, first because we’ve come out of it much, much stronger as a company, and second, because it accelerated a great many needed corporate developments.” Because of the incident with Shell, it was an eye opener for other corporations to self-reflect and prepare themselves for any possible backlash they might receive on any of their decisions. They also needed to refocus on how their corporation was affecting the communities and lives of people around them.

This also began the rise of other organizations who wanted to help corporations instill corporate responsibility into their vision and mission. These companies include: PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Burson Marsteller. Other companies that would serve on a more consulting side of corporate responsibility are: SustainAbility, Business for Social Responsibility, and CSR Europe. Also, as business began to travel overseas and internationally, organizations such as Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations Center of Transnational Corporations began to emerge around the 1970s.

How does your company fit in with social responsibility? Has the corporate and social responsibility actually begun at your workplace? Who is in charge of making sure that you are giving back to your community and making the right choices?