CSR and CSR Practitioners: Taking the corporate out of it?

Ah! My first CSR post of the New Year! Must say the news has been a little slow and have been racking my brains for a post that brings in 2011 with a bang but I've had no such luck, so I shall just hanker on with this...  2010 in retrospect will be perceived as the year where there was a seminal shift in the way CSR, sustainability affected mainstream economics.

This decade will be the one when sustainable business as well as CSR rise to their full potential. Consumers will become even more demanding with what they expect from companies and this in turn will make greenwashing increasingly difficult. Companies that do not have well-rounded CSR and good corporate governance will be left far behind.

The next few years will also be hard on CSR practitioners. They will be forced to think out of the box - I say this especially in the developing economy. Developing countries are not only growing at an expediented rate, they are also encumbered with environmental problems. Among these, India and China also have the biggest populations to contend with - all of these provide businesses unique challenges. CSR practitioners will play an important role in navigating businesses through these potholes as well as providing more holistic solutions for these and related issues.

This year will see the beginning of a shift from CSR itself to the CSR practitioner. Just like brand image is beginning to collate itself with CEO image, so will CSR with the CSR practitioner/manager. I believe this could be an important trend because putting a 'face' on CSR makes it not so 'corporate'. CSR practitioners deal with far-reaching environmental, social and ethical issues on a daily basis that are profoundly human. Taking the corporate out of CSR will bring to the spotlight of what the people in businesses are really capable of . This is a good thing not just for CSR but also CSR practitioners.

So what makes a good CSR practitioner? It is a given that practitioners come from a variety of academic backgrounds, have varied professional experiences and work for a variety of different companies. A strong ethical, moral stand is important but really any person working in the sustainability field who doesn't feel a sense of hopelessness from time to time, shouldn't be in it. Perhaps this is a strong statement to make: but on some level it is the very feeling of frustration that drives good practitioners to be more realistic, work better, harder and more innovatively.

Put differently: good practitioners are those who stay positive in the face of overwhelming odds, never give up on finding solutions... and then some!