The Empathy Economy: CSR and Web 2.0

I just got back from participating in an innovative discussion this week in Orlando at SAP’s SAPPHIRE event. The workshop covered the intersection of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and web 2.0. I am posting my initial thoughts on Fairer Globalization and the Ethical Blogger because the topics are relevant to both blogs. Here are some of the points I made and heard:

From an ethics point of view, web 2.0 has the potential of dissolving the false divisions between people—whether it is between nations and communities, producers and consumers, or labor and capital. With more ownership—both in influence and voting power—of the global economy, these divisions can fall away.

I start with the premise that companies are full of people, individuals, each of whom has an ethical duty. Naturally, some of these people are bloggers and some are stockholders. Companies can find champions outside the corporate walls to force change within a company for the benefit of society beyond the simple bottom line.

An ethics of the web is needed. Without one, we could face more government regulation, creating an excuse for governments to control information and connectivity. Some of the ethics of the web are simple: link to others, log in frequently, and share content. They are the principles that speak to the scientific origins of the web. Other principles might focus on the integrity of the information on the web; those would be transparency, honesty, and disclosure.

In the case of CSR, companies should consider the principles of sincerity, innovation, and pluralism (as Mikkel Sorensen and Nicolai Peitersen have argued in “CSR 2.0”). Companies can draw on the infinite wisdom out there (in publics). They have this great list of principles for CSR 2.0:

1. Inclusiveness – involving stakeholders directly from beginning to
end
2. Market driven – no longer expert driven
3. Innovation – smart companies turn market pressure into stakeholder led
innovation
4. Sincerity – you can no longer uphold an image that is not real
5. Co-ownership – a truly embedded value-based culture requires
involvement
6. Dynamics – standards and annual audits replaced by 24/7 engagement
7. Quality - CSR as immersive business strategy
8. Personal - It’s about you, not your sector! What are your own
ethics?
9. Pluralism – number and nature of CSR projects will expand
dramatically
10. Proximity - local impact is global

Megacommunities or multistakeholder initiatives become a reality with web 2.0, producing more sustainable solutions. Not only are the solutions drawing on more information but they also get more buy-in from increased participation. Web 2.0 has empowered civil society to do its job: producing social values and fostering the positive dynamic between companies and civil society.

The convergence of web 2.0 and CSR also occurs in the need for public goods. The web is a public good much like the environment, public health, and human rights. In this way, web 2.0 and public goods can help one another. The revolution in the relationship between corporations and society is syncing up with the IT revolution in web 2.0, democratizing corporate governance (I suggest democratic wealth funds here).

Formal compliance is giving way to informal compliance measures, making ethics more important relative to strict law. As I put it, in this new business environment, what is increasingly important is empathy, not regulation. As one panelist put it, it is democracy without rules, challenging the way companies communicate. As Booz Allen has put it, companies are now “always on.”

Does the intersection of web 2.0 and CSR bring about mutual benefit? I think so. Transparency is fostered when companies are forced to listen to their stakeholders. And privacy can actually be strengthened through transparency. Some people track themselves online to preclude further surveillance, and more information availability can eliminate the need to investigate. I have suggested blogging our emails in order to deter people from writing things that are hurtful or libelous.

Making sure web 2.0 brings about a better world will be about fostering trust. Software that can facilitate trust will be a huge business opportunity in this realm.

Finally, time is precious. I would assert that efficiency is ethical. Several people at the workshop dreamed of a day when our communications become more streamlined, eliminating the need of outdated methods like email. Remember when email was the future?

Channels for communication between the corporation and civil society were spelled out: blogs (topic specific); wikis (with a final goal); social networking such as Facebook (for awareness and promotion); crowdsourcing (to ask crowds to solve problems or prioritize goals); and the boycott and buycott.

Photo by linkerjpatrick.

Ethical Blogging vs. Email

We all know what a hassle it is to wade through hundreds of pieces a spam every week in your inbox just to keep up with your legitimate email correspondence. A Wall Street Journal article yesterday titled “Email’s Friendly Fire” has identified “colleague spam,” email from your coworkers who always press the “reply all” button. The article goes on to offer some solutions in the form of email sorting technology such as ClearContext.

Are we witnessing the death of email? Can blogs help out?

I always suspected the day would come when email would begin to die. First, with the wave of spam growing every year, legitimate email gets lost in the tide. There was an excellent article in the New Yorker in August describing this phenomenon called “Damn Spam: The losing war on junk e-mail”:

As the Web evolves into an increasingly essential part of American life, the sheer volume of spam grows exponentially every year, and so, it would appear, do the sophisticated methods used to send it. Nearly two million e-mails are dispatched every second, a hundred and seventy-one billion messages a day. Most of those messages have something to sell.

Second, corporate spam filters aren’t always accurate in identifying which emails are spam and which are not. I have witnessed several cases in which spam filters have gone berserk in the past few weeks inside my office and at the offices of others. The bottom line is: When you hit that “send” button on email, you can’t be so sure the recipient will get it, open it, and read it. Finally, the addressee can always claim, “I never got your email.”

Why not shift the responsibility on the readers by posting everything on blogs? Indeed, as you know, one of the origins of the blog in its current form was from an ah-ha moment: People emailing to one another discovered that the discussion thread amounted to something of value and thought the discussion could be posted publicly. Many corporations are trying out internal blogs as ways to share ideas and innovations, thus reducing the amount of “colleague spam,” I would hope—assuming their idea was more than “Brownies in the kitchen.”

Essentially communication is diversifying at a rapid pace. Chad Lorenz of Slate magazine declared “The Death of Email” just a few weeks ago. We communicators are hedging against the risk that email may not be infallible. Twitter, Facebook, text messaging, and blogs, I would argue amount to a communications potpourri. The great thing about blogs (and Facebook for that matter) is that you can see your post as soon as it goes online. “I didn’t get the message” can be a thing of the past if people trust the integrity of their message to be viewed by the public.

Perhaps a transparent blog posting in lieu of a secretive email message could save people from becoming victims of embarrassing gossip or other affairs. For private matters, it might be best to make a phone call or do what's sometimes called "Facebook in the flesh."