Could Cameron really have a hit with 'The Chocolate Orange'?

In its day, the seminal 1971 Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange came to symbolise the debate about media portrayal of violence. Could the recent UK political debate concerning chocolate oranges similarly crystallise discussion on the role of business in society?

The Conservative leader David Cameron started the ball rolling, with his attack on WH Smith for pushing chocolate oranges as impulse purchases at their check-outs. His comments about what business could, should and might sell aggressively to customers have provoked vigorous responses from several different groups.

First, he has clearly angered the fundamentalists. On the right, these are those who think that the business of business is business, and that talk of actively engaging stakeholders, who might affect or be affected by future business performance, is dangerous claptrap.

Happily, a recent survey by strategic management consultants McKinsey, amongst CEOs and other business leaders in 116 countries, found only 16% agree with the old Chicago School economist Milton Friedman’s line that large corporations should focus solely on providing the highest possible returns to investors while obeying all laws and regulations.

Instead, 84% of CEOs surveyed by McKinsey believe that businesses ‘have to generate high returns to investors but balance with contributions to the broader public good’. In other words, that means doing responsible business.

Meanwhile, fundamentalists on the left think notions of corporate responsibility are just an attempt by business to avoid further regulation.

They too are mistaken. The responsible business debate is not about regulation or corporate responsibility. For most pragmatists the debate is about the balance between the two, and the incentives which drive real change.

Then there are those who think you can ‘pick and choose’ on CR and just do those bits which are convenient. That may mean some charitable donations or environmental projects. Such folk still see CR as a series of initiatives. They treat it as a bolt-on to business operations, rather than to be built-in to business purpose and strategy. They reinforce the critics of business who dismiss all commitments to CR as being ‘PR-driven’, by which is meant superficial and/or inauthentic.

Yet CR surely means minimising the negative environmental and social impacts and maximising the positive of all that a business does. This includes how it treats customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, neighbours. How a company markets and sells is certainly a legitimate topic for public debate.

The Chocolate Orange debate has also touched another group — thoughtful business leaders who believe in CR, but fear that unrealistic expectations and unreasonable obligations to solve societal problems are being put on business alone.

Such leaders are clear that businesses must have strong, ethical values — a North Star — which have to be identified, articulated and lived. That includes having recruitment, training, appraisal, and reward systems which reinforce the values.

They also rightly recognise that business has a role in tackling (say) the misuse of its products and services — binge drinking, problem gambling, kids able to download porn from the internet on new mobile phones — but that others have responsibilities too.That particularly includes individuals’ own responsibilities. Todd Stitzer — CEO of Cadbury Schweppes — summed up this position well, in a recent speech and subsequent article. Stitzer emphasised the absurdity of putting all the blame for obesity on the food industry whilst ignoring ‘the not inconsequential issue that we have become a largely sedentary society’.

A series of one-to-one interviews with corporate CEOs conducted by the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College suggests that the question of how business engages with the rest of society is concerning far-seeing business leaders.

This is a point confirmed in the McKinsey Survey and by our own Business in the Community experience. Business does have a role in tackling global issues like obesity or water shortages or climate changes. But this is alongside governments and individuals and civil society. This will require new mindsets, new skills and new institutions.

The business world has changed so dramatically in recent years with liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation and technological breakthroughs that debate about these respective roles and responsibilities has lagged.

There are insufficient platforms for dialogue, where intelligent debate on these issues can occur between business, politicians, and civil society. The new Tomorrow’s Global Company Inquiry supported by BP, KPMG and others is one attempt to address this.

How politicians should try to influence business behaviour is part of all of this. Which brings us back to David Cameron and The Chocolate Orange remarks.

Business rightly complains of over-regulation and over-zealous enforcement of the letter of the law. Yet the alternative requires more corporate self-regulation: ‘the more business voluntarily adopts responsible business practices, the more compelling the case for a lighter touch on regulatory inspection and enforcement,’ Cameron has argued.

In a democracy, political parties are one expression of popular concerns and values. If politicians are to be discouraged from what business often sees as meddling and over-regulating, then there have to be other tools available to them to express these concerns and values.

These tools include naming and faming — and sometimes naming and shaming — and working out which incentives for change work, and when. Each of us are then free, as consumers, voters, employees, and owners to respond with our cash, votes and engagement.

David Grayson writes, speaks and advises on responsible business and global trends. He is a director of Business in the Community. www.davidgrayson.net