With Katherine Richardson: “CSR is dead – long live CSR!”

Katherine Richardson, biology professor, Head of Sustainable Science Centre at University of Copenhagen has now been working closely to the CBS Sustainability Platform for several months. Just a few days after the ending of her acclaimed teaching on Planetary Boundaries in the COSI course on System Thinking, a new article pops up on the web presenting her interesting view on CSR.

She advocates a renewal of CSR from the use to the being of it: the whole human existence is shifting towards sustainability and reconstructed relationship to nature. This change has, accordingly, killed CSR as it used to be, moving companies from the “feel-good” to “do-good” world. Pushing them tomorrow towards the holistic “be-good”.

The biggest challenge relies on allocation of resources, with the food sector first in line of sight. This is requiring unheard and unseen transdisciplinarity and new forms of partnerships. Besides, new tools need to be discovered or built to walk the talk, starting in the academic world.

 Katherine underlines the COSI initiative as a best first move in triggering the shift of mindset and infrastructures required to draw new collaborations, to have the CSR Phoenix reborn.