Gun Owners and Corporate Social Responsibility.

April 2, 7:44 AMLA Gun Rights ExaminerJohn Longenecker

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The slogan was, What is good for GM is good for the country. It means that for corporate giants who lead through their partners and right down to the donut shops flower shops who are the blood and sinew of the country, what is good for American business is good for the nation. It also means that what is Bad for American Business is bad for the interests of the American people. A new predatory instinct is stalking Business, and it will disrupt the entire ecology of the world. Talk about climate change, stalkers of American Business are already taking down some of the herd.

Corporate Social Responsibility around the globe has been a resentful intrusion. It is a device to coerce Business into leftist thought. It uses issues such as Green or accountability or other issues to compel Business to alter their entire corporate outlook and philosophy, and even turns the concept of corporate giving on its head.

CSR often coerces Business into changing the way it does business in relation to employees, customers, and the concept of general sustainability. Where it used to be about where the plastic would be in a hundred years, the CSR movement is much more intrusive such that the new question is where will the company be in ten years. The obligation of meeting a payroll is always uppermost in the minds of business owners without the need for any intrusive dictates from liberals who never had to meet such a payroll. The error comes in the form of expecting business to be there for them for life, as if that were the definition of responsibility. Forget the idea of Independence from an employer as personal responsibility. The end result is that CSR has been a shakedown. This is part of the stalking of today.

Over the last decade, European CSR has taken inventory of itself and wondered aloud why it isn't succeeding. Succeeding at what: changing Business? Accountability of CSR programs themselves have been slim at best, and has little to show for nearly thirty years of promising to impose conscience on corporations. I can tell you why it hasn't succeeded and how to make it succeed. In America, that is. That's another subject.

CSR in America is different. It has appeared in various forms of ‘responsibility' but in America misses the mark. Themes such as Made In America mean nothing. What customers are looking for is different. One Insurance company is promoting ‘responsibility' in their thematic television ads about what to do with grandpa. I've seen the ad which has the family keeping grandpa at home instead of acting, well.... responsibly. The script succumbs to the gutless feel-good composition that permeates policy that is anything but responsible. In terms of insurance companies, for instance, responsibility would not reflect how policyowners might be responsible, but how the company is, and the ads would be much more along the lines of the good faith covenant of an insurance company, in an industry known for ignoring pay-or-deny deadlines or for outright fiscal mismanagement. Addressing this in a self-policing endeavor would be light years ahead of impossible compassion and feel-good actions which have succeeded only in postponing the inevitable and at great expense -- the consistent danger feel-good generally brings.

I've been following CSR for a decade, and there are tons of ways American Business can learn how to live in a hostile political environment, and may even combat effectively some of the unrealistic and dangerous political traps now set out just for them. Just a thought.

Business has gone online, Business has shown where it derives its resources. Business has platformed itself. Business has blogged, Business has opened foundations and charities, and Business has tried to reveal its face as friendly and interested. Some really, really are, but who believes them? Still, something is missing, and rougher waters lie ahead.

One thing Business is doing as a genuine act of concern for community is in lifting bans on handguns. Where the concern for safety had been to ban all evil, it has amounted yet again to the feel-good, do-exactly-the-wrong-thing approach in lumping customers and employees in with the evil that Business would like to stop at the door. Who can tell from the outside whether it was apprehension of liability or just plain ignorance? Customers have gotten killed by being disarmed, and all customers and employees have been defamed on the assumption that it is they who will eventually murder patrons. Banning the bans now finally entertains the question of why no one ever stopped the killers in time. Take it from a gun owner: banning the bans is one of the more superior CSR approaches for real customers. Not only will safety grow, but so will corporate integrity.

CRS has rudely and tactlessly been portrayed as an avenue for Public Relations benefits. But now, the mere routine of doing business is for Business not only to operate in a competitive environment, it is now doing business in a hostile one. Intelligent CSR planning and a deft execution of the CSR plan is no longer a matter of Image, it is now a matter of survival.

Because what is good for American Business is good for the country.

More to come.
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John welcomes comments on this subject. He can be contacted at John-at-GoodForTheCountry.com