CSR, It's Not Just Marketing

November 24, 2011

Flickr/Michael Shaheen

I've been a bit skeptical of a spate of marketing-related Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) hires over the past couple of years. Effective communications are certainly an imperative in CSR roles, but I don't believe that external communications should be the position's raison d'etre.

A new study from KPMG appears to confirm my fears. The level of process maturity for sustainability U.S. firms is near the bottom of the scale, while they're rated as having above average "Quality of Communications." Of the two obvious outliers in the chart below, I'd rather be Denmark whose firms are generally underselling their efforts.