Today, Macleans posted two articles that I found highly interesting. The first was Canada the good?, a look at why Canada is ranked very low on having socially responsible companies. The second article, Top 50 socially responsible corporations, takes a look at companies in Canada who are socially responsible, and what exactly it is that makes them socially responsible.
The companies who made the “Top 50 Socially Responsible Corporations” list have done anything from making their companies more “green” and sustainable, to improving accessibility for minorities, to collecting e-waste so that it doesn’t end up in landfills, to helping out their communities better themselves in some way. With a large variety of industries on the list (including financial, food, telecommunications, etc), it’s definitely positive to see how some Canadian companies are making a difference socially!
The other article, on the other hand, isn’t quite as positive:
A ranking of G7 countries performed for Maclean’s by Jantzi-Sustainalytics shows Canada near the bottom of the list when it comes to large publicly traded companies’ performances on corporate social responsibility (CSR) measures that fall under the umbrellas of environmental, social and governance criteria. Germany, Italy, France and the United Kingdom all scored well ahead of Canada.
Canada the good?
According to this article, while some Canadian companies are doing quite a bit of work in their communities and globally, it’s not something that most Canadian companies feel is important enough to make a priority. Unlike in other countries, Canada is more sparsely populated, with corporations not being in such close proximity to the general population. Dirk Matten, professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business, believes that when the corporations are more closely located to the public, there is more pressure on them to behave responsibly in the community. This could be a very good reason why companies in remote regions – the oil sands industry was mentioned in particular – don’t feel as much pressure from their local community to be socially responsible.
As Canadian corporations try to become more competitive on the global scale, I think that corporate social responsibility is something that is going to need to become more important to these companies. We’ve seen in the past how companies (not necessarily Canadian) have had their businesses impacted by the fact that they weren’t socially responsible, through the use of sweatshops and the like. It’s not hard to imagine that somewhere down the line, a weak corporate social responsibility may induce a similarly strong reaction again, and may hurt companies reputations – and a good reputation is a very good thing for business.
Becoming a country where corporate social responsibility is important to our companies is going to be a challenge, as it will be changing the mindset of large corporations. But in the long run, it will definitely be worth it.