Last year I tried to establish a centre for corporate responsibility at Lancaster University and, in the process of securing funding, I made contact with many companies in the UK and discovered - to my horror - that very few of them had a separate corporate social responsibility (CSR) department or group. Many didn't even have a senior executive responsible for the environment and other corporate responsibility issues like business ethics or sustainability
Indeed, I found that many of these companies had allocated responsibility for environmental issues to corporate communications, with little if any budget.
Given all the press coverage over the past year on climate change, the environment, sustainability and CSR, I was shocked by the lack of focus and commitment to this important business issue, other than as a bid to spin the positives or defend the negatives in this area. And in most of the companies I talked to, green issues were unorganised and there were no managers to deliver the agenda.
Now that we are entering a recession I suspect the corporate world will show even less interest in green issues, except where there is a sector or governmental requirement to do so.
For most companies the concerns will turn on issues to do with cutting costs, marketing products or services, competing globally - in essence, survival - even though there is evidence that being sustainable delivers to the bottom line in savings and enhanced productivity. The only issue that they may, or at least should reflect on, given the problems over the past few weeks in the financial sector, are the risks associated with their business activities, and the important issues of business ethics.
Indeed, I am surprised that as many as 25% plan to recruit green collar workers. I would have thought that if you take out the corporate communications staff recruited under this banner, the number of people actually working on green and sustainable issues would be much smaller. But there are exceptions, and they should be applauded.
Cary Cooper is professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University Management School and the co-author of Positively Responsible: How Business Can Save the Planet (Butterworth Heinemann, 2008).
