The following is an excerpt from Lisa Prior’s chapter in Emerging Trends and Issues in Management Consulting.
Corporate responsibility. Corporate goodwill. Global citizenship. These three interrelated business topics will increasingly shape the role of human resources (HR) and organizational development (OD) consulting in the decades to come. Are today’s organizations prepared to internalize these values and issues as part of their strategic focus and in their day-to-day operations? Is human resources prepared to step into a leadership role that would help organizations respond to these issues? What changes must we, as a profession, make to take an active and strategic place at the business table? And, most importantly, how do we implement these strategic issues to build a responsible company from the inside out?
The first decade of the 21st century is witnessing a revolution as corporate responsibility is becoming central to the role of business and vital to its success. External stakeholders’ demands for transparent, responsible corporate behavior are closely intertwined with the new realities of goodwill and globalization. As responsible companies are increasingly differentiating themselves from their competition to meet these demands, they are attracting and retaining the best business partners and employees.
The implications of this change are significant for HR and OD professionals, who are charged with the management and development of one of the corporation’s most vital assets — its people.
The demand for a broader HR role in redefining the connections between business and society requires a new mindset and new set of competencies for the HR profession. The corporate responsibility movement, the increasing importance of company goodwill, and the impact of globalization have increasingly required companies to include stakeholders that are outside of the traditional borders of the corporation.
A new paradigm shift is taking place, one that requires organizations to identify strategies that leverage “inside” competencies and assets to the benefit of needs and concerns of key stakeholder groups “outside” of the organization. This chapter explores the meaning of corporate responsibility and corporate goodwill, how these concepts contribute to financial success inside the organization, and the changing relationship between inside business practices and the larger society. We offer three steps to facilitate attempts to build the responsible company from the inside out:
- Identifying the key strategic and operational intersections between the organization and the outside world;
- Integrating corporate responsibility into HR practices; and
- Embracing a new set of competencies for HR professionals.
To continue reading Lisa’s work, along with other writing on management consulting, see Emerging Trends and Issues in Management Consulting.