The Conference Board of Canada is the matchmaker in a sensible marriage of two closely related concepts -- corporate responsibility and social media.

A Conference Board event called CSR and Social Media is taking place in Toronto on May 13th. (I am the conference chair, but this is not about shilling for it. But do come.) I wanted to explain why I think a discussion of these two conjoint ideas just makes sense, and in any case the post will likely metamorphose into my introductory remarks.

Three ideas make the marriage of corporate responsibility and the social web work:

• A readiness to identify, work with and listen to stakeholders should be at the core of corporate social responsibility strategies within organizations if they are to be influential, believed and trusted. Organizations which leave stakeholders out of their responsibility planning, actions and reporting are missing the most important program "element" . . . people who care about, can affect or can be affected by their actions.

• The social web exists because people are, well, social. They will choose social exchange platforms in which they are listened to, have the possibility to question and observe, and have the potential to contribute. People become stakeholders of the conversations or dialogues (they're different these two, but that's for another more philosophical day) in which they participate.

• The harmony of CSR and the social web around what I guess you could call 'people dependency' opens up interesting and worthy new ways to gather information and opinion about CSR performance (point of view mapping, open performance data rooms and online co-development of evaluation models) as well as to report on -- and evaluate -- progress on achieving targets and goals through quarterly online reporting on performance indicators which are open for comment (see Timberland).

There. . . I have set my expectations for what I hope at least some of the speakers will address. If they don't, I get 15 minutes at the end of the conference to make my case anyway.

I had coffee yesterday morning with David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World and other books, who will soon be launching a news platform to get stories out about solutions to environmental, economic and social problems at dowser.org (still in beta although launching soon).

The emphasis here is on solutions . . . what is being done to fix things. David believes too much energy (and media attention) is spent on complaining about what's wrong and not enough on profiling successful social change programs. When live, 'dowser' will help right the balance by providing news stories about positive illustrations of social entrepreneurship and innovation. It will, as a note on the beta site says, "(T)ell stories about people who are creatively attacking social problems and show how achievable it is to make an impact."

Apparently indefatigable, sometime in the next couple of weeks David will also be releasing another book co-authored with Susan Davies called Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know published by Oxford University Press. Part of the book focuses on a theme we talked about over espresso (me) and croissant (David), the need for "journalists who are both good storytellers and familiar with the challenge of social problem solving."

I haven't read David's books yet. But this call for more forward-looking storytelling is likely to be the toughest proposition on the social entrepreneurship agenda. The goal of dowser.org is a refreshed narrative archetype: I'll be cheering for David and dowser.org.

Companies have an ambivalent relationship with corporate social responsibility. To the extent that CSR involves commitment to compliance, environmental targets, strategic philanthropy, annual reporting and some level of stakeholder engagement, it is comfortable or at least acceptable as a risk mitigation strategy.

However, most CSR programs are starved of what Canadian Business For Social Responsibility (CBSR) calls the truly 'transformational', what I like to think of as the broader promises for accountable behaviour, transparency, community-building and dialogue (the "art of thinking together" - William Issacs). This is not to say this is for every company either easy or even desirable. Some industries and service sectors, whose products simply use up non-renewable resources, will never achieve anything even close to social assent.

Here's one idea though for companies who want to do a little more than the routine CSR hygiene activities: Explore the possibility that people may want to talk with you about what you are doing. The most productive way of doing that today is through social media. Although the risk-benefit ratio is a little higher than, say, hand-picking a stakeholder advisory panel to advise on your CSR report, the upside of creating or, better, joining social media platforms -- in knowledge-gained and friends made -- is worth it.

Some recent writings that throw a little light on what's possible:

• At 'Reimaging CSR', Jessica Stannard-Friel provides a summary of recent discussion about the part that a social media strategy can play in ratcheting up the impact of CSR in organizations. Ms Stannard-Friel herself is an observant commenter on CSR trends.
• An article in Fast Company looks at how an American bank is using crowdsourcing to select the beneficiaries of its strategic philanthropy program.
• Melissa Rowley at Mashable gives three good reasons for using social media as part of a company's CSR program . . . "getting to know your constituents", "influencing customers as citizens", and "getting your good work out there".

Anyone who has followed my posts on apologies will know how important I feel they are as a way to manage reputation in a crisis. (Forgive the self-reference, but two of the most recent posts can be found here and here.)

A colleague in my firm's Seattle office, Drew Arnold, sent me an article from the Oregon Business Journal referencing a June 2009 discussion paper called 'The Power of Apology' from the University of Nottingham's Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics.

Here is the paper's abstract:

After an unsatisfactory purchase, many firms are quick to apologize to customers. It is, however, not clear why they should do that. As the apology is costless, it should be regarded as cheap talk and thus ignored by the customer. In this paper, we test in a controlled field experiment whether apologizing influences customers' subsequent behaviour. We find that apologizing yields much better outcomes for the firm than offering monetary compensation."

Based on a study of customers using eBay in Germany, the study found among other results:

1. "Customers who receive an apology instead of a monetary compensation are more than twice as likely to withdraw a (negative) evaluation."
2. "When money is offered, a higher purchase price makes it less likely that a customer withdraws his (negative) evaluation. An apology works independent of the level of the purchase price."

Why then can't we assume that the propensity to consider legal action when harm has been caused by an accidental event, even if negligence is involved, just might be mitigated by a genuine (and the key here is the word 'genuine') apology?

One of the more tangible of intangible assets is a company's corporate responsibility (CR) program. Since I consult with a number of companies and organizations on these programs, I try to stay current on new ideas and points of view.

I was in the middle of writing about the sites and blogs I use to try to stay current when a colleague pointed out I had been scooped by Chris Jarvis at Fast Company in a post on the top ten sites which encourage conversation about social media and CSR

There are some overlaps between my list and his (Just Means and Taking It Global) but here are a couple more smart websites and blogs tagged in my RSS reader. I also follow a few Twitter 'friends' who direct me to useful CR and sustainability studies and reports.

Here are some of the most valuable . . . to me at least:

• ApeSphere. . . subtitled 'primates for progress' (also available on Twitter)
• Force for Good . . . Tomorrow's Company blog platform
• Triple Pundit . . . an eclectic mix of information and opinions on CR
• Principled Profit . . . on business ethics  
• ResponsAbility . . . H&K's blog on which this post will be syndicated
• Twitter: Greenscroll
• Twitter: UNGCCritics
• Twitter: EnviroGraffiti
• Twitter: CSRTrendWatch
• Twitter: Greenbiztweets 
• Twitter: EthicalInstitute

Please post a comment if you have others to recommend.