SHAPE Magazine 1 / 2013 - SCA

Good
Neighbor
Inc.
A growing number of companies see community relations
as the key to both good relations and good business.
Community relations, in this view, are seen not just as
philanthropy but as part of a business strategy that creates
value for both the company and the community.
text MATTIAS ANDERSSON illustrations ËLODIE
COMMUNITY
RELATIONS
“
BUSINESS STARTED LONG centuries before
the dawn of history, but business as we
now know it is new – new in its broadening
scope, new in its social signifi cance. Business
has not learned how to handle these
changes, nor does it recognize the magnitude of
its responsibilities for the future of civilization.”
So said Wallace Brett Donham, the dean of the
Harvard Business School, in a 1929 speech that
addressed the changing role of increasingly large
and powerful corporations in society.
It is hardly news that good relations and a good
reputation are good for business. Many powerful
people have realized the importance of giving back
to the world in which they operate, by providing
bread and circuses to the Roman populace or, in
the case of the automotive pioneer Henry Ford,
dances for his workers and their wives.
What is today called Corporate Social Responsibility,
or CSR, began in the 1920s and has followed
a fairly circuitous route. As recently as the early
2000s, companies faced deep public suspicion of
their professed high aims as they made well-meaning
but not always long-term eff orts ranging from
charity to initiatives to prevent climate change.
SCA SHAPE 1 2013 7