Ethics by Design: Strategic Thinking and Planning for Exemplary Performance, Responsible Results, and Societal Accountability

The Social Contract 25

of a company based on its social responsiveness, or

lack thereof.”

44

As Grajew states it, this is “the advantage of doing the right

things.”

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When you and your organization do the right things,

you put the horse before the cart and get your organization

moving in a strong direction. And people both inside and out-

side your organization want to be a part of your momentum—

they like being a part of your organization, and they feel good

about the work they are doing. These benefits are well-docu-

mented in much of the human resources literature.

46

Employ-

ees stay longer, are more productive, are more innovative, and

express higher satisfaction with their jobs and companies.

This also gives your organization a long-term, strategic

advantage. People will want to bring you their business or vote

to allocate funds to your organization. As Oakley-Browne

states, “If we add value to society in the long term, we will gain

customer loyalty and stay in business for the long term.”

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Every company depends on people, and when people are

treated well they respond positively. Grajew states, “It’s an

opportunity to have talents in your company, to have people

engaged and committed, to have support from the community,

support from consumers—in short, all the competitive advan-

tages for a business.”

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Your Deliverables: Measuring Societal

Outcomes of Your Organization

As with any well-developed contract, it is critical to state just

what the final deliverables will be, and to have clear indicators

against which your organization can determine whether that

contract has been fulfilled. In other words, it is critical to articu-

late the measurable outcomes that will result from your outputs,

and then collect that data (get the facts).

Earlier, I defined social responsibility as a way of gearing

your organization towards delivering desirable societal

outcomes in a manner recognizing that what you do, pro-

duce and deliver has an impact on society. Social responsi-

bility has so much more potential as a strategic course of action

26 Ethics by Design

than as a marketing tagline. While the tagline feels nice right

now, and makes for some great commercials and heart-warm-

ing reports, those don’t lead to long-term viability and strategic

opportunities that strengthen your organization’s contract with

society. For example, do you do business with global partners

who treat their employees humanely, thus increasing self-suffi-

ciency and decreasing poverty or discrimination? Or do your

global partners have safe business practices and quality check

standards (e.g., no lead paint on toys)? Does your school

graduate students who recycle a lot but illegally download

copyrighted music and photos?

The real value of a socially responsible organization comes

from how social responsibility is defined in measurable (real)

terms and integrated into strategic planning (for any type of

organization). By identifying specific, desired societal outcomes

for which your organization is responsible, you outline your

contractual obligations with society. These are the ways in

which your organization makes a difference in society—the

ways in which stakeholders (not stockholders) are relying on

you to reap the benefits of letting you do your business.

Dale Brethower states, “If you’re not adding value to

society, you’re subtracting it.”

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Bottom line is that your organi-

zation impacts society—now it’s time to plan for what you want

that impact to be. Does what you do add up to the whole in a

desirable way?

One aspect of social responsibility that has gained a lot of

attention and support in recent decades is environmental impact

and sustainability. That is certainly one of many socially-

significant measures for which an organization can plan and

get the facts, but there are others.

In his book Mega Planning, Kaufman outlines 13 measures

of social responsibility that can be tracked over time. Those

measures have been developed with organizations of varying

size, including many names you would recognize, across dif-

ferent cultures and contexts. The result has been a culturally-

independent definition of social responsibility that, when tested,

has shown very high levels of statistical validity and reliability.

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He has termed this collection of societally-referenced results an

“Ideal Vision.”