Imagine, for a moment, that the Conservative Party is a business – a
listed company. It has not been performing well since its period of
greatness a couple of decades ago, when it dominated the market,
largely thanks to a brilliant leader.
A series of bad leadership choices and internal board wrangling have
brought it to the point where almost everyone thinks it is ripe for
break-up. But then, suddenly, a bright young spark emerges from the
management ranks and becomes CEO. He promises to make changes. Big
changes. The company’s market share rises rapidly and investors are
delighted.
Casting around for new ideas, he recalls a ground-breaking speech of
his legendary predecessor, who was a trained chemist, about global
warming. One striking phrase – about how mankind may now have started
an experiment with the planet itself – comes to mind. Surely something
could be done with that? Following a series of internal strategy
meetings, he declares the company’s embrace of corporate social
responsibility, with specific reference to climate change.
Staff can take time off for good works. CSR features prominently on the
index page of the company website. There’s even a pledge to make London
headquarters carbon neutral. But policies are needed. The CEO hires the
big names in the field – people with impeccable credentials like Sir
Bob Geldof, but lesser stars too – to advise on the commercial
implications for the business of global poverty, climate change and the
world trade round. It will take them a couple of years to come up with
something, so there is a pause.
From this point, things start to go awry. A series of embarrassing
revelations come to light. Several senior executives, who really should
know better, are found to be working for trade groups lobbying against
a pending parliamentary bill that actually encourages companies to be
more socially responsible. The resulting bad press leads to several of
the advisers he had hired to develop policy resigning in disgust.
Investors wonder aloud how much all this is costing.
The CEO’s reputation starts to sink. Having embraced CSR, he can’t
simply drop it altogether. So it gets quietly shelved. Observers point
out this is exactly what the two other organizations in this intensely
competitive market have done. They developed policies years ago, but
since then have done very little to put them into practice. OK, so one
has appointed a CSR director, but he’s really just a figurehead – and
anyway has loads of other responsibilities. So the CEO finds another
issue. There are plenty of ways to make your mark.
