As I’ve not had luck extending my CSR networks at St. John’s, I decided to take some initiative to form my own networks. Using my thesis as leverage (and being truthful, since my paper is not yet published and I still have the ability to express their comments), I decided to write to various companies in the hopes that 1) I might learn some more info that is not necessarily expressed in the literature; and, 2) Generate corporate network contacts in hopes that, by May graduation, one of these companies might find me valuable enough to offer me a position in the field.
The result has been quite interesting. A couple of companies (Intel, Ford, Timberland) said they would be happy to speak to me. One company (Citi, Nike) didn’t have time to talk, but answered my e-mail questions–which was an option I gave. A few more companies (3M, Dell, and Gap) said they did not have the time and bandwidth to respond. Two companies (Gap and General Mills) responded to the effect that the information was either “confidential” or “proprietary.”
Perhaps I haven’t yet learned enough out of my internship, but based on what I do know, it doesn’t seem to me that large cap corporations would not have the time nor bandwidth to answer my questions (or at least speak with me). In the age of high power IT and Blackberrys that someone would have the availability to communicate, even if briefly. People don’t write long messages on their Blackberrys (and don’t like reading them either), but when they sit at their desks, they can take a couple more minutes to generate an e-mail. Read their response as: we’ve got no interest in participating.
But it is the responses by Gap and General Mills that have me most puzzled. Part of corporate social responsibility involves the transparency of corporations. To me, a company puts itself in the complete wrong CSR frame of reference when it’s being asked questions of CSR and chooses to excuse itself by effectively stating it’s not my business as a private individual. While I understand that corporations are private entities and do have the right to decline, it seems that responding that their answers are confidential is worse than not responding at all.
I still have several more of these companies to hear back from (or perhaps, not hear from at all). But it will be interesting to see which companies give excuses and what excuses they’re giving. I wrote to them as a “multi-hatted” stakeholder (individual/career prospecter/csr advocate/academic). It is curious to see, in practice, how stakeholders are engaging with someone who is writing on stakeholder engagement. These companies may be large caps, but through my networking, I’m finding out just who the winners and the losers are in corporate transparency and accountability.
