Who is responsible for social problems? A discussion about CSR
At our penultimate General Meeting last Thursday, Adam Rosenzweig called in and talked to us about corporate social responsibility (CSR). Rosenzweig is the Senior Manager of Product Impact at Okta and was previously involved in teaching and EdTech. His unique background fit perfectly with the work ANova does and set the stage for a thought-provoking presentation + discussion about CSR.
Why CSR
From Investopedia, corporate social responsibility refers to “practices and policies undertaken by corporations that are intended to have a positive influence on the world.” Why did a college student organization choose to learn more about the social actions of corporations?
As students who plan to enter tech, but also aspire to make an impact, we’ve learned about the disparities caused by tech and why it’s important to continue our teaching efforts. Still, there can be unanswered questions. To what extent is it a company’s responsibility to give back? What exactly does it look like for tech companies specifically to give back to their communities?
For many of our graduating seniors, this was also a fitting discussion to wrap up our time in ANova and look ahead to what we want our impact to be after graduation.
What We Learned
The business of business is no longer merely business.
Quoting Marc Benioff, Rosenzweig points out that, as homelessness increases in San Francisco and climate change exacerbates globally, businesses in their tall, fancy towers won’t be sustainable if society down below suffers. The argument of “shareholder” vs “stakeholder” business models highlights the opposing sides of what some consider a debate about CSR. Meanwhile, 10k companies around the world have taken the 1% pledge. The idea is a promise of pre-IPO equity for stock profits to fund a company’s social impact efforts.
And yet, even CSR efforts are flawed. The same stock “popping” accelerates inequality much more than the amount that 1% of profits can help. Perhaps these efforts are even letting the government off the hook by having philanthropy replace government obligations.
As college students accept jobs in industry, Rosenzweig shares three simple yet thoughtful points to help us stay grounded:
- Do no harm. Most people don’t intend to, but always check that the technology you’re building is bettering the world.
- If your company grows and becomes wildly successful, is that a world you want to live in?
- There is never a tech-only solution. It’s far too easy for us in the tech world to think we can engineer something that solves it all.
Questions to Consider
Here are some of the open-ended questions Rosenzweig posed to us, along with additional considerations we came up with:
- Who is responsible for social problems — businesses or government?
- How close do you want to be to the ground work, compared to how scaled do you want your impact to be?
- How do we get school districts to improve if they don’t make more money when students do better?
- At what stage should a company begin pursuing corporate social responsibility?
As young adults heavily involved in the privileged tech “bubble”, it is crucial that we keep these questions in mind and continue to challenge those around us to have these difficult conversations as well.
Big thank you to Adam Rosenzweig for coming in and sharing his experiences about CSR!
