Introduction to Corporate Cultural Social Responsibility

This informal CPD article Introduction to Corporate Cultural Social Responsibility was provided by Carlos Dean, Managing Director at Authentic Purpose, an organisation offering the knowledge, skills, and support to enable businesses to maximise their positive social and environmental impact on the world.

Introduction to Corporate Cultural Social Responsibility

When we hear the term Corporate Social Responsibility it is so often equated with a tick box exercise aimed at creating the impression that businesses are being responsible for the impact that they have on broader society through the way they run their affaires.

We now have terms like Environmental SR, Community SR, Charitable SR. The whole world is talking about Social Responsibility like it’s the next great fashion and trend that people need to be seen to be doing to be acceptable to their clients and staff alike. ‘Social’ conveys the point that we live and work in a manner which is interactive and interdepend. That we achieve things and strive for things together.

However, from a layman’s perspective, what exactly does it mean to be socially responsible and how is it relevant to everyday life and experience? If it’s such an important thing, and yet not understood, then how do we engage and involve the majority population in participating in this activity?

This conundrum, in my view, is our primary challenge to resolve, if the Corporate Social Responsibility agenda is to be taken seriously by the majority of the workforce. Cultural Social Responsibility is the master key for unlocking the potential for all of us to embrace our shared responsibility and opportunity to make a difference that is relevant, not only to our own individual lives but to the individual lives of everyone.

What we need to do as business leaders and influencers, is to focus on creating the conditions within which people can awaken to their responsibility and the opportunity that is not only becoming increasingly necessary, but that is viewed as an attractive shift in priorities that can bring greater meaning and purpose to everyday life and work.

Cultural social responsibility is founded on a body of experience and thought that identifies and recognises what these conditions are, so that we can work together to create them within all our social arenas no matter what work sector, in the home and within our schools and colleges.

The urgency to understand and embrace Social Responsibility has come about because of the evidence of increasing environmental corrosion, community corrosion and inequalities of rights and opportunities. True Cultural Social Responsibility embraces not only the physical environment but recognises the existence of a social, emotional, and mental environment that we can and do experience individually and collectively.

Cultural Social responsibility is the willingness to look not only at our physical needs to survive on this planet but also our needs to be accepted and loved (social), to learn and understand (mental) and to feel and express ourselves creatively and honestly in safety and security that we will be respected and heard. 

It places a focus on the quality of our relationships in work, in schools and at home and aims to provide a structure and roadmap for quantifying and measuring the potential for improvement and the benefits of doing so.

Cultural Social Responsibility advocates that when the conditions in work and all social arenas are such whereby all these needs are met, we will have created a culturally socially responsible society that puts a priority on human health and happiness as a precursor to economic stability and productivity. Currently the former two are still deemed subordinate to the latter two, to the detriment of individual and collective social, emotional, and mental well-being.

The impact on industry as a social shared endeavour is at the root of the majority disengagement of the workforce. Cultural Social responsibility is a movement to inspire motivate and enable everyone to unite towards changing this situation.

We hope this article was helpful. For more information from Authentic Purpose, please visit their CPD Member Directory page. Alternatively please visit the CPD Industry Hubs for more CPD articles, courses and events relevant to your Continuing Professional Development requirements.