What about the next five years in Corporate Social Responsibility?

The aim here is to seek to identify predictions that are by no means foregone conclusions, and some of which will be highly contentious or surprising. Well, I have some trends of what will happen within the world of CSR by 2013.

1. The focus for CSR will shift from the process of how things are managed to leadership actions by companies that significantly change the business environment. So, at the moment, tools such as the CR Index that focus on process profliferate and will continue so to do in the short term — but as such processes become completely standard, the focus will shift to strategic actions by companies that are about leadership, vision and risk-taking–some of which will be successful and some of which won’t.

2. There will be a crisis in CSR reporting — one serious enough to pose a real challenge to its current form. It may come in the form of current leadership reporting companies challenging its value, or in the collapse of the Global Report Initiative–GRI reports. , or the creation of a significantly different alternative. It won’t be a crisis that undermines the demand for information, and so it will be about adapting, simplifying or re-rationalising corporate communications, not about ending CSR reporting per se.

3.At least one current CSR champion will suffer a scandal serious enough to add weight to the CSR sceptics. I am not talking about an Enron — Enron had all the environmental and community programmes that a company might expect to have, remember — I am talking about a real CSR champion. To qualify, a company would have had to have been a sector leader for the Dow Jones or a regular award winner for its reporting or other aspects of its programmes. Why the pessimism? I just don’t think that existing measures are able to tell the full story about the depth of commitment of a company — some of the champions are just not as good as we think they are. It would, of course, not be a prediction at all to state that, separate to this, there will be future business scandals. That, sadly, is so mundane as to be obvious. No, I am talking a particularly surprising calibre of company here.

4. The entry of global Chinese and Indian corporations will challenge commonly held assumptions around what constitutes a consensus in CSR. China, in particular, will continue to enter the stage big time. The current assumption is that, in time, Chinese companies will acquiesce to the consensus of what constitutes CSR, and that this is an entry price into corporate membership of the big boys club. I think that they will arrive with greater confidence in their own priorities and values, and will actively challenge these assumptions. They will redefine CSR and it will be an active and angry debate at times.

5. The growing expectations on business will survive the next recession, but there will be a sharper conflict with countries where people may see CSR as a barrier to trade / jobs. The economic circumstances in the next five years will be tougher than the last five, recession and the inflationary effects of higher energy and food costs. But the new factor is going to be the growing tension now as environmentally motivated decisions impact negatively on developing country environments. Expect trouble in Africa and South America focused on jobs and trade that will target CSR approaches explicitly.

I would have added a prediction about how climate change action will have become so utterly commonplace in five years time but I think that is so obvious an outcome that I wouldn’t even make it a prediction.

I do know these trends are challenging and often quite counter-intuitive. However, I think this is the right time for sharing my own predictions with you.