CSR International Crowdsources Research on the Future of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility
Calling All Sustainability Experts, Practitioners and Academics to Participate
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May 20, 2014 /3BL Media/ - To mark its five year anniversary, CSR International, an incubator for CSR 2.0 solutions, partnered with Convetit, an online stakeholder engagement platform, to conduct a global online study examining how CSR may evolve over the next five years or so.
CSR International invites all sustainability experts, practitioners and academics representing diverse perspectives to share their insights in the CSR 2020 Visions of the Future ThinkTank at their convenience, from any time zone.
To engage in this research and dialogue, please visit here.
Dr. Wayne Visser, sustainability thought leader and founder of CSR International, is facilitating the online dialogue surveying sentiment and projecting future scenarios.
"CSR needs to either step up to our global challenges by adopting more transformative approaches, or bow out and let other, more ambitious sustainability management practices take its place," says Dr. Visser.
The co-facilitators are thought leaders from all over the globe, who have also contributed to the World Guide to CSR and/or the forthcoming World Guide to Sustainable Enterprise.
The CSR 2020 Visions of the Future ThinkTank is open to any sustainability professional interested in contributing to this critical research that will yield fascinating glimpses into the next five years. The expert dialogue is asynchronous, enabling busy professionals to contribute at their convenience.
The ThinkTank is staging discussions by inviting batches of CSR International network members, beginning with an American wave, followed by Europe, then the rest of the world.
A LinkedIn account is required for the login. Then insights can be added throughout the coming weeks, until May 31st.
The debatable research topics range from the biggest advancements in sustainability in the past five years to the biggest trends of the next five years, as well as a 5-question quantitative survey.
The CSR 2020 Visions of the Future ThinkTank has already generated great local, regional and global analyses, predictions and expectations for sustainability.
"The biggest advancement in the past 5 years is the advent of a shift from CSR as an inherently incrementalist movement, to a field guided by the light of empirical and normative thresholds that separate sustainable from unsustainable practices and performance. This can be seen in WBCSD's embrace of planetary limits, Oxfam's Safe and Just Operating Space "Doughnuts" work, the new WWF / CDP / WRI "Mind the Science, Mind the Gap" program, and the uptake of GRI's "Sustainability Context" Principle by GISR and B Lab (in its new B Corp Impact Assessment)," says Bill Baue, Co-Founder of Convetit as well as of the Sustainability Context Group.
"The world is evolving toward a phase where CSR is to become the norm, not necessarily through regulation, but as the result of the dynamics of the global market. This is especially true considering for instance the impact social media is having on all social institutions: bringing down governments, launching new trends, validating or criticizing facts, events and individuals would have totally been unnoticed couples of decades ago …thus a relevant question is what is the impact social media have had on the evolution of CSR in the past years?…and what ought to be the impact of social media on CSR in the future?" asks Thierry Galani Tiemeni, Mercantile Law Doctorate Candidate at The University of the Western Cape in South Africa.
By helping to shape the CSR 2020 Visions of the Future, contributors will be listed in the report of findings and will receive a free copy of the report of findings.
If you have questions or can provide feedback, please contact our research director at ileana@csrinternational.org.
About Wayne Visser
Dr. Wayne Visser is Director of Kaleidoscope Futures and Founder of CSR International. Wayne is the author of 19 books and has been listed as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior (2013) and a recipient of the Global CSR Excellence & Leadership Award (2013). He is a Senior Associate at the Cambridge University Programme for Sustainability Leadership and an Adjunct Professor of Corporate Responsibility at Deakin University. He was formerly Director of Sustainability Services for KPMG.
About CSR International
CSR International is an incubator for CSR 2.0 inspired, knowledge-based solutions. CSR 2.0 moves beyond defensive, charitable, promotional and strategic CSR to Transformative CSR (also called systemic or radical CSR), based on the principles of creativity, scalability, responsiveness, glocality and circularity. The CSR International network is a community of professionals, students and enthusiasts who are deeply concerned about the world’s social and environmental problems and profoundly inspired by the potential of business to contribute to the solutions.
About Convetit
Convetit is an online stakeholder engagement platform that enables crowdsourcing of insight from relevant experts asynchronously, at the convenience of users in any time zone, in a secure setting.
