Where do you sit on the CR Continuum?

Last week saw publication of an article of mine on Melcrum’s internal communications hub (a summary and the full text can both be found on the SAS website).

On top of expanding upon some of the ideas covered in previous posts on this blog, it also launches a new diagnostic tool on an unsuspecting public – the CR Continuum.

This is something I’ve developed during my time with SAS, and it aims to provide businesses with a simple, visual way of understanding where their strategy and approach to managing corporate responsibility positions them in the overall CR firmament.

The real value of the tool comes from understanding the different motivations and approaches that characterise each of the five levels.

The point here is not that everyone should be seeking to get to Level 4 or 5 necessarily. Rather it is just to realise that – based on the objectives of your business – there are certain things you need to be doing to occupy that space with any credibility.

Need to demonstrate to your customers, suppliers and other stakeholders that you are committed to conducting business responsibly and share their values? Fine, operating somewhere around Level 3 will probably suffice.

Just don’t think that this kind of approach will give you any meaningful claim to differentiation. There’s a lot of empty rhetoric out there about establishing leadership in CR, but not a lot of appreciation of what it actually takes to achieve it.