Progressing From Corporate Social Responsibility To Brand Integrity


Malcolm McIntosh

Introduction

The decade from 1995 to 2005 was significant for corporate social responsibility. 2005 was ten years since Shell’s annus horribilis and their debacle over the disposal of the Brent Spar oil rig in the North Sea and ten years since they were implicated in the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian human rights activist who was murdered by his government for protesting about the distribution of revenues from what was perceived to be Shell damaging extrcation of oil from the Ogoni region of Nigeria. This decade also saw the flowering of the Global Reporting Initiative, out of the CERES Principles, the development of SA8000, the birth of AccountAbility and AA1000S out of the Institute for Social and Ethical Accountability, and the first five years of the UN Global Compact. This chapter charts the development of some key ideas and initiatives in the CSR movement in the last decade or so and then suggests a new way forward for a movement that is looking for new directions.
Most pertinent to this is the ongoing debate concerning the links between business profitability and global social progress. While hile the business benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a topic much debated and written about it needs to be reiterated over and over again that business operates for the benefits of society, not vice versa. There can never solely be a business benefit to CSR, only ever a social and ecological benefit. If a minority gain net material wealth in the short term at the gross expense of society and the planet in the short, medium or long term what benefit is that? The only reason to argue the case for the business benefits of CSR is to make the case for business being more socially and ecologically responsible if we are to create a more just and equitable world that uses and shares resources for the benefit of this and future generations.

What, then, is the CSR agenda and what has it achieved over the last decade or so? This question is linked to a number of significant reports from reputable research organisations that argue the case for CSR and profitability. Next some thoughts are discussed on the link between capitalism and social progress. This is followed by an exploration of new territory which argues that the emphasis should move from corporate social responsibility to brand integrity. Indeed a link is made between the integrity of decision-makers and consumers to the integrity of corporations via the integrity of their brands.

While good progress has been made on a number of corporate responsibility initiatives over the last decade they have not been as successful as they might have been because we have failed to understand that in the modern global corporation we have created a being over which we less control than we would like to think. It is recognised that many of its agents (who work within its portals) have the best of intentions, but, because the corporation itself has a life of its own they have less control than is sometimes recognised. The current rules of incorporation tend to steer the organisation away from necessarily delivering social progress and protecting our planetary home. Here, then, in this article, is a prescription for the profitable, human-scale corporation that operates in tune with social progress and in harmony with planetary boundaries by connecting with all stakeholders through brand integrity.
Having established some of the conditions within which the CSR discourse is conducted the paper moves on to a new social responsibility agenda. It is argued that while new incorporation rules are an absolute necessity social responsibility lies with us all, not just the corporation. Here brand and integrity are linked. Brands are owned by us all. They are ubiquitous and more democratic than corporations. What can be said about brand integrity? How might we go about measuring the social and ecological footprint of brands (rather than just corporations.), as well as their financial performance? This requires a multi-disciplinary approach which draws on complexity and systems thinking as well as social network approaches. Is it possible to apply to such brands as the United Nations, the BBC and Oxfam the same ‘loyalty without reason’ that is applied to the billions of annual sales of Dove soap, Coke, and M&Ms?

Setting the scene

The corporate social responsibility agenda has been described as “a desire and a necessity to humanise the globalisation process; to build social and environmental pillars in the global temple of commerce.” (McIntosh et al., 2004; 13-26). John Ruggie, former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and now Director the Centre for Business and Government at Harvard University and since 2005 special advisor to the UN Secretary-General on CSR, has pointed out that "Business created the single global economic space; business can and must help sustain it. And corporate social responsibility offers one viable and vital approach." (Ruggie, 2003: 41) So is the CSR agenda attempting to put capitalism back in line with social progress? This begs the question that the current model of capitalism is currently out of line with social progress. Has the creation of global markets reached all of the world’s peoples? Should we be celebrating a marketised world to which everyone has access, where everyone has equal opportunities, where everyone can enjoy clean water and access to the internet and a choice of twenty fast food outlets in their neighbourhood?
The CSR movement has been resurgent over the last ten years and multi-stakeholder engagement, between business, government and civil society, has resulted in a significant number of global voluntary corporate citizenship initiatives. Non-governmental public action, or civil society activism, has been at the heart of the development of a number of significant global voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives. . The field of corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship has developed significantly (Andriof & McIntosh, 2001; Waddock, 2002). There are those who argue that voluntary mechanisms have replaced, or prevented regulatory initiatives and therefore set back real corporate responsibility. Examples of significant global voluntary corporate citizenship initiatives include ethical workplace management systems certification (SA8000), sustainability management systems assurance (AA1000S), learning platforms based on international conventions on human rights, labour standards, environmental protection and anti-corruption (UN Global Compact), and the standardisation of reporting on corporate financial, social and environmental reporting (Global Reporting Initiative). These have been referred to as four of the ‘Global Eight’ (McIntosh 2003: 86-123)
These particular initiatives have been fostered through ‘new social partnerships’ between business and civil society organisations in multi-stakeholder dialogues. (Zadek & Nelson, 2001). Two strands of research literature have emerged around concepts of partnership and stakeholding. Through multi-stakeholder engagement, often embodied in new social partnerships, the focus has been on sharing difference and celebrating diverse opinions while attempting to find consensus between different actors. In many cases this has led to radical reappraisals as participants have learnt to listen as well as talk (Wheeler & Sillanpaa, 1998; Andriof et al., 2002/ 2003; Gibbs et al., 1991; Tennyson & Wilde, 2000; Kunugi & Schweitz, 1999). So, has the world been learning to listen and talk? (McIntosh et al., 1998; McIntosh et al., 2003/2004; Leipziger, 2004; Cragg, 2003).
The global corporate responsibility movement operates in the context of an increasing expansion of trade, albeit substantially between a relatively small group of global, often supraterritorial corporations. Both the corporate world and civil society activists have been aided by dramatic changes in communications technology which have democratised information flows and empowered even the smallest community organisation. It is common to argue that the USA is the only superpower, but increasingly the corporate responsibility debate has to recognise growing differentiation between the US and Europe on social and market issues. Also, sitting quietly at every table in every board room, on every university campus, and in every manufacturing plant is the presence of China.
The literature on globalisation falls into three camps; the analytical (Scholte, 2000; Hardt & Negri, 2000; Giddens, 2001; Beck, 2000; Bauman, 1998); the positive (Mickelthwait & Wooldridge, 2000) and the apocalyptic (Ali, 2002; Stiglitz, 2002; Booth & Dunne, 2002; Gray, 2003; Chua, 2003). But while there is an implicit and explicit understanding that the modern world has come about through the expansion of trade, the development of technology and the growth of global corporations it is corporations that have increasingly been held to account for the social and environmental impacts of their financial performance (Korten, 1995, 1998; Balkan, 2004; Zadek et al., 1997).
Issues of continental territoriality are juxtaposed by a global clash of fundamentalisms between religious & political orthodoxy versus tolerance & conviviality, and by rampant consumer consumption versus efforts to establish sustainable capitalism that recognises the Earth’s carrying capacities and the delicate nature of human development. Also, the current model has not been wholly inclusive, such that the wealth disparity between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ worlds is increasing year on year. The way we see the world is changing as we face up to the environmental imperative. Wolfgang Sachs of the Wuppertal Institute has said: “Eventually, the world will no longer be divided by the ideologies of 'left' and 'right,' but by those who accept ecological limits and those who don't." (Sachs: 2005)

CSR and Profitability?

CSR is not a new subject for discussion, and certainly the discussion which links social responsibility and profitability has not arisen just in the last decade. It is possible to prove that there is a direct link, and there are now many sources that new enquirers can reference. For instance in 1998 we said, in Corporate Citizenship: “This book outlines the social responsibility issues facing businesses. The companies profiled (here) have recognized that having a social responsibility strategy has made them more competitive.” (McIntosh et al., 1998: xix-xxv). An award-winning study published in 2001 by Michael King, then with KPMG, in the Journal of Corporate Citizenship said that: “The study finds that companies can deliver across multiple objectives. Indeed, aggregate performance of ‘sustainable’ companies is better than their peers and relevant market indices over a five-year period.”. (King 2001: 99-125)
In more recent years SustainAbility and UNEP published Buried Treasure in which they identified ten reasons for believing that the links between sustainable development performance and business success will grow stronger. (Sustainability/UNEP, 2005) The Dow Jones Sustainability Index makes the same point: “Corporate sustainability leaders achieve long-term shareholder value by gearing their strategies and management to harness the market's potential for sustainability products and services while at the same time successfully reducing and avoiding sustainability costs and risks.” (DJSI, 2005). The World Economic Forum has conducted similar studies and found that: “The Business Case for Corporate Citizenship explains that good corporate citizenship can provide benefits . . . . . . . and identifies ways that increased corporate citizenship can improve business performance. Real-life examples of the consequences for companies that have invested in or ignored key aspects of corporate citizenship are also presented.” (WEF, 2005)). A more specific study conducted by Claude Fussler and colleagues from the World Business Council for Sustainable Business on the link between signatories to the UN Global Compact and profitability concluded in 2004: “It is a fact that if I had bought the 76 shares of the GCS76 in October 2001 instead of the shares of a larger group I would be 1.1% better off at the end of 2003. As a group, the Global Compact signatories created more value. The goals of sustainability, the challenges of social responsibility and leadership’s inspiration by principles higher than the sole profit motivation – they all foster business excellence.” (Fussler 2004: 276-288)
However accurate and convincing all these and other studies are at proving a direct link between corporate social responsibility and profitability, the research also indicates specific characteristics of companies that have been proactive on CSR. First, these companies tend to be in sectors that have become targets of protesting consumer, community or environmental activist groups. In the nineteen seventies and eighties this involved the chemical industry, in the nineties the extractive industries and perhaps now in the noughties pressure is particularly focussed on the pharmaceutical sector. Second, proactive CSR companies specifically tend to have inspired, values led senior management in the board room – leadership from the top. Thirdly, to engage in sophisticated and well-financed stakeholder engagement. In other words they tend to be more ‘intelligent’ by virtue of establishing methodologies for listening and responding to a wide range of stakeholder concerns. Fourthly, as a result of the above, these proactive CSR companies have become part of the ongoing dialogue about voluntary and regulatory CSR initiatives around the world. They are as active in the debate as trade unions and civil society groups. But the debate continues and a firm link is still to be made between CSR and the delivery of the UN’s Millennnium Goals.

Capitalism and social progress?

The promise of the CSR rhetoric is that it will civilise corporate behaviour so that there is an alignment between capitalism and social progress. While recognising that some companies were making great efforts in this direction UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also said when addressing global business leaders meeting in New York in July 2004 to discuss progress on the UN Global Compact: “Symbolism is good, but substance is even better.” (Annan, 2004)).
In September 2004 the World Bank issued a report on just this issue which said: “The growing integration of societies and economies has helped reduce poverty in many countries. Between 1990 and 2000 the number of people living on less than $1 a day declined by about 137 million. Although global integration is a powerful force in reducing poverty, more needs to be done . . . . 2 billion people are in danger of becoming marginal to the world economy.” (World Bank, 2004. So, some progress is being made perhaps because of new global corporate citizenship initiatives like the UN Global Compact which asks companies to: “embrace, support and enact, within their sphere of influence, a set of core values in the areas of human rights, labour standards, the environment, and anti-corruption.” (www.unglobalcompact.org).

Change Issues

But, is the CSR movement asking companies to lead social change on social and environmental issues? Recent research on behaviour change in the UK related to sustainable development published by the UK Government shows an alarming failure to educate people on these issues. Only one third of the UK population has heard of sustainable development but only 8% are able or willing to explain it. If companies are being called upon to embed, for instance, the ten principles of the UN Global Compact on human rights, labour standards and environmental protection in their workforce are we asking them to do what government has failed to do across wider society? (DEFRA UK, 2004,). Similar findings can be found across Europe.
So how is business progressing on these issues? According to the international Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA) in September 2004: “Businesses worldwide are failing to produce enough sustainability reports, while governments are doing little to encourage such reporting. There are still only 1,500 to 2,000 companies producing reports worldwide. The majority of companies still have to recognise the business case for reporting and starting to engage their stakeholders.” (ACCA, 2004).
Perhaps this is because the challenge of sustainable development, human rights and labour standards are not uppermost in the minds of CEOs? Also in September 2004 the US Conference Board reported that a global survey of CEOs showed that they had four challenges, none of which included the CSR agenda. They were: sustained growth; speed, flexibility, adaptability to change; customer loyalty, retention; and, stimulating innovation, creativity, and enabling entrepreneurship (Conference Board, 2004).
A clear differentiation occurs between those companies that are proactive on CSR and others. The proactive groups have tended, until this point, to be global and have similar characteristics, which were outlined earlier. The exception to this is the UN Global Compact signatory companies, 60% of whom now come from non-OECD countries and are not the usual supporters of CSR initiatives. But apart from the proactive group there are three other groups of corporate ‘citizens’: those from the informal and illegal sectors that actively avoid paying taxes, compliance and incorporation; the vast majority of the SME sector who try hard to comply with the law and establish good relations with their local customers; and then there is a group of discretionary companies that are in compliance with all aspects of the law but have also chosen to be proactive in one or more areas of CSR, such as the environment or human rights (McIntosh et al., 2004). These categories are not necessarily exclusive and there are some companies that have been radically proactive on CSR issues, such as Enron, Parmalat and Shell, who have subsequently been found wanting on issues of transparency and integrity in the board room.
Interestingly, while there is differentiation in the originating culture in which a corporation is based, when it comes to issues of integrity there may be no difference between one board room and another. As Roger Adams of ACCA has said: "Immediately after Enron, the widely held European view was that the US 'rules based' culture acted as an incentive to commit fraud rather than as a deterrent against it. We heard a great deal in the UK about the superiority of 'principles based approaches'. But ultimately, fraud pays no heed to the existence of either rules or principles." (Adams 2004)
However honest and upright board members of major corporations are, it may be that they serve false corporate masters that bend towards delivering profit at the expense of caring for communities and planet. It is not that these board members do not recognise that society and business is best run on a vision of value and values; it is that the former predicates and dominates discussion on the viability of the corporation. Commercial barrister Warren Evans and others have argued that this is because on a fateful day in October 1856 “artificial personality was born, and the foundation of modern corporations was laid down.” (Evans 2003) Why is it, he asks, that corporations have unlimited mortality and can expand to unlimited size when real personalities, you and I, cannot? Have we not created a monster? (Evans, 2003). Joel Balkan, author of the book and the film The Corporation, goes further and talks about “the psychopathic nature of modern business, in which the lunatics have taken over the asylum and have big plans for us all.” (Balkan, 2004: 1-3).
But the news from board rooms suggests that it is not the people in the board room that are psychopaths but that the business model tends towards psychopathology. Yve Newbold served on the boards of many significant UK. She reports that: “People are surprised when I tell them that in twenty years in the boardroom (nine at Hanson Plc as Company Secretary, seven at BT and three at Coutts Bank UK as a non executive director) not once do I recall a discussion on the moral or ethical implications of any decision made by those boards.” But she continues: “That is not to say either that the decisions taken during those years were unethical or that the people making them lacked an ethical frame of reference in deciding as they did. It was simply that the language of the boardroom was finance and the focus was primarily the interests of the shareholder.” (Newbold, 2003: 11-13)).
Boardroom discussions tend, because of the necessity to remain financially viable, to serve investors with a single bottom line, despite efforts to give equal worth to a ‘triple bottom line’. The company that lays waste an area of land or lays off its workforce can stay in business if it remains financially viable, assuming it is in compliance and has credit, customers, suppliers and some employees. But the reverse is not true.

Integrity & The Whole Picture

Economist Kenneth Galbraith said in 1978: “Nothing disguises the reality of economic life more than that there is a single theory of the firm... There is also confusion between the market and the corporation, they are not the same... they are all parts of the political economy” (Galbraith, 1978: 37). More recently, in 2004, Klaus Leisinger from the Novartis Foundation when writing of the links between business and human rights said that it was “a feature of modern society to differentiate into a variety of functionally specialized subsystems, such as economy, law, politics, religion, science, and education... The quality of cooperation of the different subsystems determines the degree of possible synergies and allows for the whole (society) being more than the sum of its parts (subsystems).” (Leisinger, 2004: 72-100).
So, let us introduce here the multidimensional concept of integrity. Integrity is an enormously useful reference point as it encapsulates the morality of individual decision-makers as well as the well-being of the corporate body. The Oxford English Dictionary says that integrity has three linked meanings: the quality of being honest and morally upright; the state of being whole or unified; and, soundness of construction. It is the soundness of construction both on the part of the individual and the corporation that is most interesting because in our society there is a tendency to reduce things to their component parts and to fail to see the whole or to contextualise situations.

The corporation has a life of its own. . .

The emphasis must be on seeing corporations as entities in their own right over which we do not have as much control as we would like to think. When viewed as a complex adaptive system, with bio-characteristics, the corporation can be seen to have a life of its own. We have given it life by virtue of incorporation law which created artificial personality. The problem of controlling such an organ is that its behaviour will necessarily be self-serving. As corporate governance expert Robert Monks wrote in 1998:
“The basic program of the corporations as self-seeking entities wars against the interests of human beings. Yet the living 'complexity' of corporations - their tendency towards multiplicity, spontaneity, accommodation, adaptability, transformation, and metamorphosis – links corporations to us humans . . . for we too are complex adaptive systems"(Monks 1998: 190)
Many will recognise that surviving corporations are dynamic, seemingly chaotic, innovative, opportunistic and transitory. In the field of CSR these corporations have a range of complex non-corporate relationships involving diverse values within various social networks where the key dynamic is trust and love as social glue and where people and environment have worth. From this comes a non-deterministic view of the corporation where there is no clear view of the future. Multi-stakeholder engagement can be viewed as a form of complex behaviour where dialogue is a form of organisation, or an organising principle, in itself. Doreen Massey has suggested that instead of thinking of organisations (and I would suggest brands) as places it would be more helpful to think of them as ideas or ‘as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings’ (Massey 1999).
For those wishing to hold corporations accountable there are significant issues in complex modelling for sustainability. First is the problem of data collection when the boundaries of organisations are amorphous, changeable and connected to all other notional boundaries. Second, is the issue of inherent uncertainty, paradox and surprise
derived from uncertain science, or the public’s lack of understanding and trust of science, and the interface with the intangible values that derive from consulting with diverse stakeholder groups. Society has also decided that there is an imperative for social development and environmental sustainability as iterated in international public policy.
So, the first goal is to recognise corporations as self organising systems. The second goal is recognition of public policy objectives on economic, social & environmental challenges. And, the third goal is coordinating the interface between corporations as self-organising systems and public policy objectives for sustainable business. This is a significant challenge to the current way of seeing and doing things both in the everyday world of business and in the current CSR discourse.

The New Business & Responsibility Agenda?

To summarise: we need human-scale organisations, that have at their heart planetary imperatives; that are servant leaders (where the corporation serves society rather than vice versa); to marry value and values; to put integrity and trust, as described earlier, at the heart of the decision-making process. This means that instrumentally there needs to be a greater emphasis on accountability and assurance; a rewriting of the rules of incorporation; but first there must be an emphasis on learning and education in business and across society as a whole. As Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen says: ‘to build a country first build a school” (Sen 2004). The same applies to our global corporations.
The sustainable human-scale corporation is founded on sustainable conditions: low ecological footprint, enhanced social equity, and extended sense of futurity. Sustainable incorporation therefore involves long-term life and appropriate size (rather than immortality and unlimited size), and a balance of power between (and accountability to) a range of stakeholders.
We must be aware that currently we fail to see the corporation in the whole which means that very often one hand of the corporation takes away what the other promises. As President Lula of Brazil said at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit in New York on 24 June 2004: “Business must refrain itself from taking away by its lobbying activities what it offers through corporate responsibility and philanthropy” (Lula 2004).

Brand Integrity

Where transgressions of human rights, labour standards and environmental protection has been detected corporations have been targeted as easily identifiable culpable parties in the supply chain from producers, often in developing countries, to consumers, often in the developed countries. While the primary focus has been on corporations, there has been less focus on product supply chains or on brands (Klein, 2000; Hertz, 2001). It may be that all stakeholders need to take ownership of these issues by acknowledging that brands are ‘owned’ by all stakeholders. Consumers and corporations, as well as producers, suppliers, newsrooms, research students and governments are culpable in failing to deliver publicly agreed social and environmental goals.
Brands are a part of everyday life. Brands are existential; they are here and everywhere. Brands are the way we live; the way we identify ourselves. They are amorphous and belong to all of us and no one. Brands that have a direct interface with consumers are more valuable than the corporations that nominally own them. The world’s most valued brands are Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE, Intel, Disney, McDonald’s, Nokia, Toyota, and Marlboro (Interbrand, 2004; Wallop, 2004). The vast majority of the world, whether rich or poor, comes in to contact with one of more of these brands on a daily basis, or, is regularly impacted by their use.
We need to paint a rich picture of the social and ecological impact of brands. This involves looking at global supply chains; global trade issues; the interface between government, corporations and NGOs; and the ecological footprint of brands. Viewing the debate from the perspective of brands paints a new picture of a complex network of relationships between ideas, interest groups and products.
In any one day the average person will come into contact with some 1500 brands and when they go to the supermarket (in a developed economy) they will be confronted with up to 50,000 (Stark, 2004). They create loyalty to brands through the establishment of 'Superbrands' or 'Lovemarks'. The Director of Unilever's Marketing Academy Thom Braun: “Values are at the heart of branding . . . Brand values should not just be 'attachments' to a product or service, but rather the driving force for what the brand can dare to become” (Thom 2004) The boss of Saatchi and Saatchi Kevin Roberts prefers 'lovemarks'. He says: “trustmarks come after brands; lovemarks come after trustmarks... Think about how you (business) make the most money. You make it when loyal users, use your product all the time. That's where the money is. So having a long-term relationship is better than having a trusting relationship” (Roberts 2004: 69)
Seduction is everything in marketing (Baudrillard, 1979; Barthes, 1957). Blind tests show that consumers prefer the taste of Pepsi to Coke, but people buy Coke by preference. Brand marketing theory and practice is intimately connected with identity, lifestyle, freedom and security (Stark, 2004). In Corporate Religion Jesper Kunde says that: “the highest position a brand can reach is that of Brand Religion for the target group” (Kunde 2000: 3) Roland Barthes writing in 1956 on the launch of the new Citroen Pallas DS saloon car said: “Cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as purely magical objects” (Barthes, 1957: 88). Charles Handy has written in similarly religious terms of modern corporations needing to be cathedrals (Handy, 2000).
Corporations are the nominal owners of brands, but greater control is exercised by consumers and other stakeholders. Corporations realise their mistakes when they corrupt their own brands as in the case of Coke's change over recipe in the 1990’s. Similarly Monsanto became a dirty word in Europe in the 1990's through the company's mishandling of sensitivities regarding the Genetically Modified Organism food issue.
A new approach to the subject of corporate social responsibility is needed which moves the emphasis from the corporation to society as a whole, but not by putting the responsibilities in another place but in all places. The way to do this is to examine those things that now impact on and implicate all of us every day: global brands. This does not relieve the corporation of its responsibilities to increase total stakeholder value, which includes providing financial value to the shareholder, but it shifts the focus of the debate from the organisational and sectoral setting to the delivery of goods, services and dreams. Central to this is a new understanding of non-governmental public action as evidenced through activism, consumer choice, passive resistance, and stakeholder engagement.
The corporation is but one part of the delivery of goods and services that society uses. Accusing corporations of abnegating their responsibilities towards the communities in which they operate and towards the planet is too easy. It is an example of the way in which issues are broken down into their component parts; to look for a mechanical fix to a disaggregated problem. Looking at the whole may be more difficult to handle, but may in the end help produce more practical and useful solutions. This approach crosses national boundaries; it reaches into our most intimate moments; it follows brands from cradle to death; from raw material to disposal; from design concept to consumption; from corporations to cathedrals.

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Brand Integrity

The most highly valued consumer brands are worth more than the corporations that own them. Coke, McDonald’s, Mercedes, Microsoft are some of the most well recognised global brands but there are also other more mundane brands which can be found in most homes around the world – Dove soap and Colgate toothpaste for example.
Theory and practice on corporate responsibility has tended to focus on the responsibility of corporations. Brands are more difficult to account for, more amorphous in their ownership. As Kevin Roberts from Saatchi and Saatchi says the best brands enjoy ‘loyalty beyond reason’(Roberts 2004: 57) Global supply chain management, economies of scale, distribution, logistics and brand management are at the heart of the most profitable retail corporations. The supply chain for Unilever’s Dove soap stretches from poor palm oil farmers to consumers globally – rich and poor.
Much has been written about the ecological footprint of cities, industrial sites and products but none on brands per se (Rogers, 2004). Taking Unilever’s Dove soap as an example we can begin to build up a rich picture of complex relations between stakeholders, the raw materials, and the use and disposal of the product via manufacture, processing, packaging, marketing, retailing, and international trade and governance issues. Unilever sources the raw materials here and there, sells everywhere, manufactures in some places and not in others. Much of this depends on international trade regulations. In 2000 Unilever was one of the first companies to associate itself with the UN Global Compact. Principle 1 of the Compact states: “Business are asked to support and respect the protection of international human rights within their sphere of influence”. Principle 2 states: “Businesses are asked to make sure their own corporations are not complicit in human rights abuses” (www.globalcompact.org) The questions that arise are: what is the sphere of influence of a business, and how might we better understand the limits to accountability and responsibility? At what point do responsibilities become societal rather than corporate, and at what point does responsibility lie with the company and at what point with the individual and the government? Does knowing human rights abuses are committed in a territory in which a company has operations, or even sales, imply complicity with those abuses? (Leisinger, 2004; Mendes, 2004).
The burgeoning interest in multidisciplinary approaches and complexity theory helps link the disparate aspects of this research focus on brands. An holistic approach to the economic, psychological, management, ecological and governance aspects of global brands is needed to make progress in each of these separate areas. The field of corporate responsibility has become mired in the atomisation of indicators for corporate performance on social and environmental impacts. Complexity theory helps us see brands as complex adaptive systems, that may have a life of their own. Brands have diffuse ownership and multiple reputations. A product such as Dove soap has a multiplicity of lives but key essential 'meanings' that plug into our most basic social, emotional and spiritual needs – hygiene, smell, seduction, price, packaging – love, peace & happiness. (McIntosh, 2003; Gergen, 1991; Monks, 1998; Cilliers, 1998). The ubiquity of brands across global socio-economic and socio-ecological groups has been at the forefront of the development of the global economy from Dove soap to Toyota cars to Coke.
Just as interesting is the analysis of global social networking where it is possible and common for individuals to connect around an idea or a brand and disperse as quickly as they congregate. Indeed the congregation may never be physical, but electronic. Thomas Rheingold calls these groups ‘flash mobs’ – a ‘new form of social interaction’ (Rheingold, 2004). They have also been called ‘liquid relationships’. The web of life has come alive and been significantly democratised by the technology of communication (Castells, 2001).
This is the future of non-governmental public action, encountered through virtual ideas groupings such as Al Qaeda and Amnesty International, but also through the collective purchasing choices of consumers world-wide. What Osama bin Laden understands about the world is similar to what Kevin Roberts from Saatchi & Saatchi and Unilever’s marketing director know about seduction, brainwashing, cooption and manipulation..
Pro-poor groups and the corporate responsibility movement need to study these new phenomena, and in particular the disaggregation of societies, where, through the establishment of virtual communities, many people in the developed world are choosing to physically live alone. The current research seems to show that there are some common features across the developing and developed world which support the idea that brand integrity is going to become a much more prominent issue. Particularly in the US, but also elsewhere, a meaningful life is defined as a spiritual life. This is part of people trying to make sense of an increasingly cluttered and complex world. Today self-reliance has been defined by technology. What some refer to as the ‘attention economy’ means that it is possible to access vast amounts of information, to contact people instantly, and remain constantly in touch.
The themes which seem dominant, and which relate to global brands (Coke, Dove, Toyota etc) and global groupings (Al Qaeda, Amnesty International, The Olympics), are: designs and concepts which reach across humanity and transcend other human concerns, such as local politics and family relationships; values and spirituality in life; living the simple life; finding balance between work and play.
For corporations and other brand holders, such as the UN, the BBC and the Olympic Games the implications are clear. The public in the shape of consumers, activists, employees and others have a great awareness of the values that a particular brand or corporate entity embodies. They are increasingly aware of all aspects of products from sourcing to manufacturing to use to disposal.
Now that we have global technological communications literacy in the developed world non-governmental public action in all forms will hold all established actors (government, corporations and respected civil society groups) to account. John Elkington and Julia Hailes published The Green Consumer Guide in 1989 and it sold a million copies in the UK alone (Elkington and Hailes 1989). A similar book, by Alice Tepper Marlin, a year later, sold a million copies in the US. This desire for consumer information was matched by other publications from the Consumers Association, and Ethical Consumer. New Consumer’s Changing Corporate Values continued the drive for changing corporate behaviour through the empowerment of consumers – a real form of non-governmental public action (Adams et al 1991). Now the public have access to vast amounts of information. But, while the availability of products with organic, fair-trade and ethical trade labelling has increased significantly all over the world the ability of consumers to understand, digest and, most important, believe in this labelling shows signs of having reached a plateau.
By painting rich pictures of the impact of certain brandsit is possible to make the connection between the emerging new literature on global communications connectivity and social networking and brand integrity. How can both these labels, the old and the new, build brand integrity and increase their sales to publics who purchase on the basis of value and values in an information rich world?
If the hypothesis is correct that brand recognition is about ‘loyalty beyond reason’ and that public policy is increasingly formulated on the basis of human rights, labour standards, environmental protection and liberalised markets then a possible future is that consumers globally will look both at the Dove label, and the symbol of the bird of peace with an olive branch in its beak, alongside some form of labelling that confirms that none of the globally agreed principles of corporate citizenship and sustainability have been transgressed in its production.
In similar vein, by way of conclusion and taking the project forward, it is necessary to look at some of the more successful globally recognised social and eco labelling (FSC, MSC, Soil Association) and speculate on the possibility of future global brands that uphold the sort of principles enshrined in the UN’s Global Compact – such as the Olympic Games, the BBC, the UN, and Oxfam?
How about: ‘UN – just do it!’

Dr Malcolm McIntosh is a writer, commentator and educator on corporate responsibility and sustainability. He is a Special Advisor to the UN Global Compact and Visiting Professor at the Universities of Bath, Nottingham, and Stellenbosch (RSA) ). He was Founding Editor of the Journal of Corporate Citizenship and is a former Director of the Corporate Citizenship Unit at Warwick Business School. He has published numerous books and articles on corporate citizenship and other topics. He can be contacted via www.malcolmmcintosh.org

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