Both crowdsourcing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are fashionable these days. Here is their definition:
- “Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”
Somehow dubious video from the creator of the name ‘crowdsourcing’
- “Corporate Social Responsibility is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Essentially, CSR is the deliberate inclusion of public interest into corporate decision-making, and the honouring of a triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit.”
CSR could be the way for big corporations to find a soul again after the economical black hole of the last months, and the revelation of their poor records on ethics.
- Corporate social responsibility is vital for business survival
- The Oxymoron of ‘Business Ethics’ Proves Its Worth
- Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Simply Good Business?
Crowdsourcing relies on the principle that good business happens when the customer is listened. In fact, so much listened that he takes an active part in the company’s activity.
My argument is that those two trends go in two opposite directions on ethics. CSR is based on the assumption that corporations play a leading role in ethics, that they are the motor of new ethical practices. A corporate has a social responsibility which might be linked or not to the priorities of its customers. It is the responsibility of the management to drive an ethical business, not of the customers.
On the other hand, crowdsourcing could be seen as the last step to empty corporations of their substance. A corporation should be focused on its customers, so much focused it could maybe not have any other goals, any vision than to satisfy the needs of the market. The ethics of a corporation would then strictly be the ethics of its customers, nothing more, nothing less.
How much are those two trends concealable? Who should be responsible for business ethics, the customers or the management?
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