Switzerland: Michael Hopkins, Csr expert

Michael Hopkins, 55 and a former UN official, is Director of MHC, a research think tank and corporate social responsibility (Csr) consulting firm based in Geneva, Switzerland. He is also a visiting professor at universities in Geneva (Switzerland), Middlesex and Brunel (UK). He has worked in the field of Csr since 1995 in about 120 countries across the world. His previous work experience includes working as a professor, in the corporate world in the UK and then 15 years experience in the UN?s International Labour Organisation.

How and why did you become interested in Csr?
Actually it all started after leaving a UN development meeting in New York. I was working on the UN human report ? they rank countries from 1 to 200 based on thier human development. I figured that the UN wasn?t getting anywhere and that ever since the fall of the Berlin wall the times had become of the private sector ? so I said to myself: Let?s see what the private sector is doing on development. My initial idea was to rank companies, not countries, using a similar methodology to the UN?s. So that?s what I started out on in the mid 1990?s; ranking the fortune 500 countries based on their Csr. Unfortunately I was never able to publish or complete the work as there was hardly any data available at the time so in the end I did it for the UK alone, with the help of a few university research assistance. What emerged was a list of 100 UK companies that I included in my first book – The Planetary Bargain: CSR Comes of Age (Macmillan, UK, 1999).

What does your Csr firm, MHC, actually do?
We are a research think tank on issues of Csr. We focus mainly on advising the private sector, the UN, NGOs and national governments. We focus on measurement Csr and how Csr is linked to development.

Where do you work?
World wide, but especially in Switzerland, UK, Geneva and New York.

How would you define Csr?
Treating the stakeholders of a company in a responsible manner, where responsible means societal norms. By stakeholders I mean those that are both internal and external to the company and would include the environment, suppliers, employees and so on. I think this definition is pretty widespread now, but there are of course variations: the EU, for example, uses it but also adds the ?voluntary? treatment of stakeholders? (he laughs) if you ask me the EU?s ?voluntary? clause is just a ploy that enables them to escape from any obligation towards Csr to please the conservatives?

To what extent is Csr a trend word and to what extent is Csr implemented in the way you defined it above?
Well, this obviously varies from country to country. I?d think the top companies define it pretty similar to the way I do, some drop the ?social? and use corporate responsibility, some use ?corporate sustainability? or ?citizenship? but most of them funnel round to look at the stakeholders. As you move away from the main western centres, like Holland, Scandinavia, the UK and Denmark, people start looking at Csr in different ways. In many developing countries it is looked on as a form of philanthropy. In the USA it tends to vary, you?ve got every shade of opinion from what Nike does to the whole Sarbanes Oxley debate of good corporate governance, but generally the US tends to focus on ethical considerations. Most companies try to take a systematic approach to Csr and try and cover most of the stakeholders. During our annual Csr update and from the conclusions we drew in December 2006, in the UK there has been a lot of movement towards climate change and carbon foot-printing, environmental concerns generally and many of my clients have moved over to corporate sustainability issues ? you know companies follow fashion as much as anything else!

Is Csr mainly stakeholder driven?
Well, you can?t really put it in a nutshell. It depends on the company – most large companies will have a mission statement that comes from the CEO and they will pretty much follow that. Interesting studies have demonstrated that companies that have lasted the longest are the ones with the clearest vision. It isn?t just about selling rubbish to consumers at the cheapest price. Then there are companies that are driven by their consumers. Generally I would say that most big companies tend to be ahead of the law, ahead of what is on the statute books, and they tend to be reasonably responsible.

How responsible are firms really?
You would probably be quite surprised as what hits the press tends to be the exceptions, rather that what really going on at an average level. Big companies may have up to 100,000 -150,000 employees – they are enormous – so they are not homogeneous, you might find the kabal at the top think very differently to the rest of the employees. It is hard to get every one walking in the same step however much you try, but I think companies like Nike and Gap try pretty hard, even though that is not to say they escape criticism.

What challenges does Csr face today?
Certainly in terms of the Csr movement, one of challenges is to explain what it is, what it is about and why it is relevant. Some people say that companies should only be obliged to observe the law and pay their taxes ? this might work quite well in, say, South West London, but companies operating in Bangladesh or Myanmar, can do more or less what they want and the law doesn?t reach out that far. So I think the Csr movement has got to keep on thinking about what it has to offer and where its going. I think companies these days pretty much agree that Csr increases profits and makes them profitable and sustainable so I think that the big companies pretty much accept that Csr is here to stay. Really I think Csr is pretty obvious and I don?t think what I?m saying is revolutionary in any way! The real challenge is to work with medium size companies. In our research we found that small companies tend to be reasonably responsible anyway, the CEO can talk to everybody, but when companies get to above 100 people (most companies of course are about 100 to 15,000 -20,000) and of course it gets very difficult for them: they are trying to survive, to get into the market place and they will cut all kinds of corners including a lot of socially responsible ones to achieve this. And I don?t just mean in the UK ? if you look at India, China, or even Southern Italy, you can see that there still is a long, long way to go.

What do you think is the potential for partnerships to be established between the profit and the non profit sectors?
I don?t think you really get equal partnerships between the two. The corporate world certainly is interested in what they have to say and in what they do and they will cooperate with them. But I wouldn?t call these real partnerships; I mean you won?t find Greenpeace on the board of Shell but you?ll get fairly close consultations between them. Corporate organisations do certainly take the non profit sector into consideration, but I think a formal marriage is pretty unlikely except for rare cases.

Do you have any particularly interesting website to suggest our readers?
I find one of the online Csr services I use most is Csr news groups, like a yahoo newsgroup called ?csr chicks?: www.yahoo/csr-chicks its nice because its very informal and includes a variety of information. As a company we are always looking at ways of getting info, putting info out there and keeping our heads above water! If I really wanted to make money I guess I would have been an investment banker, not a Csr manager!!

More info:
www.mhcinternational.com