CSR ™

Lafayette, Indiana: The 23. In March of this year, the state of Indiana introduced a law "Restoring Religious Freedom." The law itself is not new – the corresponding federal version was already established under President Bill Clinton in 1993. What is new now, however, is that the law also covers business – for example, a flower shop for religious reasons may refuse to sell flowers to a same-sex couple. That companies can also be seen as religious comes from a judgment in 2014 in the so-called "Hoby lobby"case," in which the Hobby Lobby chain, owned by the Christian family Green, was denied the right to pay for pills to employees (a claim that arose as a result of Barack Obama's health reform, where part of corporate health care is to provide contraceptives to the staff). What no one – least of all Indiana Governor Mike Pence – had expected was the unanimous response to the "Religious Freedom Act" in 2015. Because not only was the LGBT lobby demonstrating – several organizations and businesses threatened to hold both conferences and business to other states in protest. The company Angie's List decided to stop the expansion of its Indiana premises. Computerforce Salesforce canceled all corporate events. The data companies EMC and Cloudera withdrew the sponsorship of a technology conference. Apple executives, Salesforce, Yelp reviewer and mobile payment company Square openly criticized the law and quickly received support from other business executives. When the state of Arkansas the following week also introduced a similar law, retail giant Walmart went out and asked the governor to stop the law. Governor Asa Hutchington immediately went into reverse, sending the bill back for modification. Walmart is the United States' largest private employer and is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Generational. In Indiana, Governor Pense eventually had to "fix" the law to prevent discrimination. The fact that companies have been so strongly mobilized against social injustice is something new. "Business rather tends to oppose progressive views," says assistant economics professor Christine Rosen at Berkeley University. At Harvard University, however, management professor David B. Yoffie believes that times are changing. According to his new book Strategy Rules For example, previous generation business leaders – including Bill Gates at Microsoft, Andy Grove at Intel and Steve Jobs at Apple – focused on building companies rather than on social issues, at least while still playing an active role. "The corporate directors of today are much more committed," he says, explaining that it is partly due to the progress and size of companies such as Apple and Saleforce, and partly because it is more socially accepted – and also expected – by the so-called generation Y , ie those born in the 1980s and later. Fighting for LGBT rights is also quite uncontroversial today – American public opinion has fluctuated sharply, and around 60 percent of the population now supports same-sex marriage. Companies such as Microsoft have sponsored campaigns to change the marriage laws in their respective states, and last year Apple's CEO Tim Cook came out as gay. To the cynical, the company's sudden pathos can thus appear as a way to strengthen a progressive and liberal image. As a group, LGBT is also strong in purchasing power – seven percent of Americans consider themselves to belong to this group, and their combined purchasing power went up to 830 billion (2013), according to the PR agency Witeck Communications. If family and friends of LGBT people can also be included in the group, they make up as much as 60 percent of the population. But this is not just about discrimination, according to Susan McPherson, who works with corporate social responsibility counseling. She points to the increased demand for transparency and profiling the emergence of social media has led to, as companies can now have a more direct and visible contact with customers than before. "The smartest companies have benefited from it," she says, adding that companies today are increasingly acting on their own on social issues, instead of doing as they used to – entering into partnerships with NGOs to profile themselves. Examples of this are the computer chip company Intel's campaign Girl Rising, where the purpose is to support girls' education (which in the long run is also good for Intel products), Unilever's campaign Real Women (via the soap brand Dove) which criticizes beauty ideals, or Walmart's newly launched efforts against famine. Lifestyle. David Gianetto, who has just published the book Big Social Mobile, believes that today's young people under the age of 35 are the first generation of "social consumers", who shop and consume according to their own ideals. "People from my own generation, who are now over 45, are not willing to spend extra money – we only buy an environmentally friendly product if it costs the same," says Gianetto. He mentions a study by the consulting company Watermark (2014), * which shows that companies with a focus on what consumers want, had 78 percent higher share gains than the average, and 80 percentage points higher than companies that did not care about consumers' preferences. Today's young people under the age of 35 are the first generation of "social consumers". "The value of companies taking their social responsibility has become noticeable," says Gianetto, who believes that companies in the future will have to act as lifestyle brands: "It does not matter what you sell – it is what you believe that comes to mind. to define who you are. You will be transparent, and that in itself will give you consumer loyalty, "he says. And technology helps along the way. There are already mobile apps like "Buycott" for the socially conscious – an app that can scan barcodes and provide information about whether an item, for example, is genetically modified, or produced by a company you do not want to support. Sistek is a freelance journalist. hanna.sistek@gmail.com * The Watermark consulting 2014 customer experience ROI study