Corporate Social Responsibility skin-deep?

‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) is becoming a prominent part of the business of business.

CSR refers to how leading companies seek to burnish their corporate reputations by endorsing social and political issues including gender equality, gay marriage, and ethnic diversity.

Indigenous affairs makes an interesting case study of how deep the commitment to genuine social responsibility actually is — does CSR often amount to backing invariably fashionable causes while ducking the really hard issues?

Many major companies have implemented affirmative action policies to boost the number of Indigenous employees on staff.

Hiring a ‘diverse’ workforce will be of some benefit to the burgeoning Indigenous middle class — who the statistics nevertheless show are generally doing as well in health, housing, employment, education, and other social outcomes as non-Indigenous peers — including the increasing numbers of people who have only recently discovered their ancestry and identified as Indigenous.

But how much Indigenous disadvantage will these well-intentioned staffing practices really overcome?

Consider the fact that 6% of Indigenous children (approximately 15,000 children) have had to be removed from their families due to abuse and neglect, and currently live in state care. This figure is even more shocking given that only 100,000 or so of the 670,000 Indigenous Australians live in the rural and remote communities with the worst social problems.

I believe, based on the findings of my research, that we will never ‘close the gap’ unless more Indigenous children are rescued from squalor and are adopted (on a non-discriminatory basis) by either an Indigenous or non-Indigenous family.

Indigenous adoption is, of course, a taboo subject in the wake of the apology for the Stolen Generations. Therefore, speaking out on the subject of Indigenous child welfare entails not only advocating for otherwise advocate-less children, but also involves copping flak for supporting ill-deservedly unpopular issues and causes. In my opinion, this kind of unfashionable advocacy is thus an act of profound social responsibility.

But I wonder if corporate Australia would agree, and would wish to run the reputational risk of associating their brands with as important but contentious an issue as Indigenous adoption?

If these doubts are fair, then a fair judge might conclude that the corporate commitment to social responsibility is somewhat skin-deep.