Is Governance the Poor Relative of CSR?

Having published two articles related to governance issues – on the Minder initiative, in Switzerland – I noticed that they had not had much success. Not even in terms of comments, or visits! Poorly written articles, or too technical or too specific, too Swiss, there are many possible reasons!

However, this observation led me to ask myself a more general question: what is the role of governance in social responsibility? We often talk about the three pillars of sustainable development: economic, environmental and social. Sometimes we add some ethics. But what about governance as such?

I looked for a response element in the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. It is interesting that we find governance issues in the 4th part of the "Strategy and profile". Not in the managerial approach or even in the performance indicators, where on the contrary are found the economic, environmental and social pillars. In this section on governance, organizations must inform upon salaries, qualifications and expertise of the Board, or any problems related to "double hat" or conflicts of interest.

All this is not very sexy… It is technical, procedural; it is not convincing for a company to highlight its good governance. If that same business speaks of environmental or social aspects, it can show how it saves the planet and takes children out of factories, with beautiful pictures for support. While showing that the processes were put in place by the board of directors (or similar) to avoid conflicts of interest, you’ll only find photos of men too rich and too old...

I asked in the title of this article, if governance was the poor relative of CSR. Poor relative, I think not. The not very pretty cousin who sits alone at family reunions, yes. I nevertheless believe that we can make governance more interesting, and it can play a more important role in CSR, any ideas?

Translated and Edited in English by Christina Andreou.