Business-Led Corporate Responsibility Coalitions: Learning from the Example of Business In The Community in the UK

Abstract

Interest in Corporate Responsibility (CR) is growing around the world. CR can be defined as businesses seeking to minimise their negative environmental and social impacts and maximise their positive environmental and social impacts within an ethical decision-making framework. A variety of factors drive society's increased expectations of business. One factor has been the creation in many countries of business-led coalitions promoting CR. These coalitions can play roles including agenda-setter, broker between companies and causes, and standards-setter. The coalitions are part of civil society and an emerging civil economy, whilst also being business-led and aligned to business concerns and capacities. They are helping to change business behaviour and influencing ideas about the purpose of business and how business interacts with other parts of society. Business in the Community (BITC) in the UK is the largest and one of the oldest of these CR coalitions, established in 1982. It built on the work of pre-existing groups such as the Action Resource Centre and the Community of St Helens Trust. BITC has so far gone through three major phases. During Phase I in the 1980s, it predominantly championed business support for local enterprise agencies as a way of business helping to regenerate local economies depressed by corporate closures. A major activity was to encourage small business development and re-skilling. Phase II during the 1990s involved BITC promoting a wider agenda of corporate community involvement. The focus was on helping businesses better organise their involvement. Phase III has seen BITC embrace corporate responsibility - or as the organisation now prefers to call it: ""responsible business."" The business driver has shifted more to competitive advantage for individual companies and the pressures of sustainability as a business challenge. Throughout, BITC has encouraged companies to get involved individually and to work together through collective business action.