This commentary criticizes corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts by large corporations. The author argues that while CSR is touted by advocacy groups, in practice bad business behaviors persist at companies like British American Tobacco, Coca-Cola, and Shell despite their CSR assurances. The author also criticizes accounting practices that have constructed professionalized versions of CSR, such as indexes and frameworks, which are used by corporations and governments to avoid regulating CSR. The author concludes that rather than CSR, stronger laws and regulations are needed to enforce social and environmental protections.

1. Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting
Vol. 1, No. 1 June 2007
Pp. 160-164
A Commentary on CSR
Alistair M. Brown
School of Accounting
Curtin University of Technology, Australia
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Foundation (EJF, 2005), Friends of the
is lauded by well-intentioned CSR inter- Earth (FOE, 2007), Global Witness
est groups1 but has been mocked by big (Global Witness, 2004; 2006), Green
corporations such as British American Alliance (Green Alliance, 2007), Green-
Tobacco, Coca-Cola and Shell where peace (Greenpeace, 2002a; 2002b; 2004;
bad business behaviour persists despite 2006), IFAW (IFAW, 1999) and Inter-
assurances of best CSR practices national Alert (International Alert, 2005)
(Amnesty International, 2007; Christian are awash with the recent failings of
Aid, 2004; Other Shell Report, 2003). CSR and the way companies, individu-
ally and collectively, use and abuse CSR
The sites of Amnesty International to further company ends.
(Amnesty International, 2007), Catholic
Agency for Overseas Development Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
(CAFOD, 2007), Centre for Corporate fails because it does not make compa-
Accountability (CCA, 2007), Christian nies keep their promises and ignores
Aid (2004), Corporate Responsibility problems by allowing company reports
(Core Responsibility, 2007), Corporate to gloss over core business impacts
Watch (2006), Environmental Justice (FOE, 2007). Its voluntary approach ren-
ders CSR useless in enforcing signed-up
principles, while at the same placing
1
See for example the Equator Principles (2007), the legal frameworks for international trade
Global Sullivan Principles (1977), OECD’s (2007) and investment (Doane & Holder, 2007).
Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, UN’s At best, companies implementation of
(2007), Business for Social Responsibility (BSR,
2007), World Business Council for Sustainable Devel- CSR is fragmented and shallow (World
opment (WBCSD, 2007), Instituto Ethos (2007), Bank, 2007); at worst, CSR is ignored or
Centre for Social Markets (2007) African Institute of
Corporate Citizenship (2007), International Business
used to emote about the wretchedness of
Leaders Forum (2007), SustainAbility (2007), Eth- the earth without really changing corpo-
ics Officer Association (2007) rate practices.
Alistair M. Brown is Associate Professor, Governance & Corporate Social Responsibility Research, School of Ac-
counting, Curtin University of Technology, Australia, email: Alistair.Brown@cbs.curtin.edu.au

2. A. M. Brown / Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting 1 (2007) 160-164 161
Accounting has always managed to ones – and Index, suggesting technical
trample over public domains and con- proficiency, renders the term an unam-
struct them into new ways of being – biguous and authoritative reality of sus-
health (Llewellyn & Northcott, 2005; tainability, rather than a highly con-
Samuel, Dirsmith & McElroy, 2005) and structed one based on a core-financial
war (Chwastiak, 2006), for example - self-interests.
and CSR is no exception. The guru-
esque Balanced Scorecard (Nørreklit, Indeed, the DJSI manages to express
2003), lapidary Global Reporting Initia- sustainability as a corporate possessive
tive (GRI, 2006), technically bound ‘corporate sustainability’ which in turn
AA1000 Framework (AccountAbility, is defined as ‘a business approach that
1999a) and AA1000 Assurance creates long-term shareholder value’.
(AccountAbility, 1999b), and bureau- This, of course, falls wide of the inter-
cratic ISO certification (ISO, 2007) and pretations of either the Bruntland Com-
Social Accountability International pro- mission -“to meet the needs of the pre-
gram SA 8000 (SAI, 2007) are symbolic sent without compromising the ability of
of the way accounting popularized con- future generations to meet their own
ceptions of CSR as professional artifacts needs” (Bruntland, 1987) or that of the
that allow regulators, governments and World Conservation Union, United Na-
accounting standard boards to shirk their tions Environment Programme and
responsibility from legislating on CSR. World Wide Fund for Nature -
"improving the quality of human life
One of the foulest examples of account- while living within the carrying capacity
ing’s complicity in constructing CSR as of supporting eco-systems" (IUCN,
professional artifact must surely be the 1991). Moreover, it allows the Dow
egregious Dow Jones Sustainability In- Jones to engineer a defined set of criteria
dex (DJSI) which claims to measure and weightings that makes its financially
‘objectively’ an index of corporate sus- loaded index look like a natural meas-
tainability. The conflation of Dow Jones, urement of sustainability. Thus, data
a symbol of American market capital- proficiency is ritualised by summoning
ism, Sustainability, a term to do with up both the preposterously constructed
future needs – not just market capital Laspeyres formula2 (DJSI, p. 33) and the
elevated PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Re-
view which both suggest an unproblem-
2
One illustration of the absurdity of this formula is the atic and authoritative stream of calcula-
placement of the different weightings given to the
sub-categories (‘criteria’) of ‘economic’,
tion of sustainability.
‘environment’ and ‘social’ sustainability categories
(or ‘dimensions’). For example, the environmental CSR claims to speak for the next genera-
sub-category of Environmental Reporting is given a
weight of 3.0% while the social sub-category Talent tion of people but is informed and
Attraction & Retention is given 5.5%; the economic guided by powerful financial instru-
sub-category of Risks & Crisis Management is given ments like the DJSI. Accounting aca-
6.0% while the social sub-category of Social Report-
ing is given 3.0%. Quite why Talent Attraction & demics and environmental and social
Retention is worth double the weight of Environ- special interest groups may agonise over
mental Reporting or Social Reporting is not explicated
but clearly, the picture of sustainability that the
the pros and cons of CSR but when ac-
Laspeyres formula wishes to show might politely be countants wittingly and unwittingly
described as Dow Jones-esque. drum up artefacts of nonsense for corpo-

3. 162 A. M. Brown / Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting 1 (2007) 160-164
rate gargantuans, like the Dow Jones and rate Accountability”, http://
their rich clientele, then it is time to drop www.corporateaccontability.org/
CSR from our vocabulary. What is international/deaths/tables/
really needed from those interested in summary/main.htm
social and environmental reform is the Centre for Social Markets (2007)
exertion of pressure on both the Interna- www.csmworld.org
tional Accounting Standards Board, Christian Aid (2004) “Behind the mask:
which has yet to come up with interna- the real face of corporate social
tional stand-alone environmental or so- responsibility”, http://
cial standard (Porter et al., 2006), and www.christian-aid.org.uk/
first world national governments, which i n d e p t h / 0 4 0 1 c s r /
sanctify constructions like the Dow csr_behindthemask.pdf
Jones Sustainability Index, to come up Chwastiak, M. (2007) “Rationality, per-
with regulations and laws to stop compa- formance measures and represen-
nies harming the planet and its people. tations of reality: planning, pro-
gramming and budgeting and the
Vietnam war”, Critical Perspec-
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