Responsible Business Guide: A Toolkit for Winning Companies

CSR ASSISTANCE PARAMETERS-3
What is available now?
Also relevant to the context would be to examine the varieties of CSR Consultants we often see
hustling business in an environment which lacks clear definitions, explicit statutory guidelines
or a defined professional training requirement for CSR practitioners:
· The SERVICE-PROVIDER – is a regular “Fee for Service” consultant who will quickly add
CSR to an existing portfolio of services and sell it to clients based on existing goodwill, but
often miss the finer points of CSR
· The DOOMSAYER – is someone who will create a negative or serious risk perception for
business managers to derive business without necessarily grounding advice on factual
data or reality
· The OPPORTUNIST – is a savvy market-driven operator who will jump from one “Flavor
of the Month” to another simply because there is an opportunity in the present environment.
Cleaner production one day, carbon footprint the next day!
· The SIDE-TRACKER – is someone who focuses on non-core issues that look like CSR, but
often reflect the consultant’s own skill-set, for instance a business writer offering to produce
a social report but focusing on praising charity donations
· The CONSULTANT – is someone who will argue both sides of an argument with equal
conviction, and as such simply give a company the appropriate “spiel”
· The ENABLER – is someone who, in our own words, “walks beside, neither pulling nor
pushing, nor getting in the way”, but generally co-thinking supportively to help a company
define its own CSR vision
· The PARTNER – is a rare breed of consultant, who becomes wedded to the cause of CSR
so strongly, that he or she shifts from being a mere consultant and becomes a campaigner
instead!
In this environment, it is clear that CSR managers require someone who can help develop,
implement and often take responsibility for innovating SITUATION-SPECIFIC SOLUTIONS that
enable corporate partners to effectively and affordably respond to demands of socially responsible
behaviour
“A CSR professional of tomorrow must be able and willing to become an enabler”