Crowd Sourcing Influences Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives: Identification of Critical Issues the Biggest Benefit

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has demonstrated that it is not simply public relations window dressing. Many executives believe it helps cement relationships with critical constituencies and influences internal decision-making and resource allocation as well as external perceptions.

WeberShandwick has released a new study expanding on that theme, demonstrating that crowd-sourcing is a valuable source of intelligence in corporate issue-prioritization.

Leslie Gaines-Ross and Mashable have the story:


"Weber Shandwick released new research Wednesday, suggesting that “the crowd” knows a thing or two when it comes to corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The study, conducted last October by the PR firm‘s Social Impact speciality group in partnership with KRC Research, interviewed 216 executives from Fortune 200 companies involved with philanthropic or community outreach to determine the value of crowdsourcing and social media to CSR.

While only 44% of the executives said they had used crowdsourcing to generate ideas and spur decision making, 95% of those reported that it had been valuable to their organization’s CSR programming. Crowdsourcing helped create new perspectives, new energy, build audience relationships and find new clients, the report claimed.

Social media reversed that ratio with 72% saying they had used a social media service in regards to CSR, but only 59% believed that it had a positive impact on their communications with consumers. Facebook (67%) was seen as the most valuable social network while Twitter (46%) and Foursquare (44%) lagged behind blogs (60%) and LinkedIn (58%) in terms of perceived value.

In an earlier report from the same sample set, Social Impact and KCR Research reported that these executives valued CSR most for its impact on critical issues rather than more business-oriented motivations like customer loyalty. This is encouraging as CSR becomes increasingly important for major companies. Corporate social responsibility is a nebulous term that variably refers to the way businesses try to help and give back to the community and public well-being. CSR goals and expectations change from business to business, making it difficult to measure just how “socially responsible” a business is without internal documents.

These studies point to promising results, with top executives viewing non-profits as ideal partners because they make CSR investments more effective and provide a critical foundation and infrastructure.

Read below for the full report along with lots of graphs breaking down the core results by effectiveness. What do you think of CSR as a concept, are these results a step in the right direction?

The report has a +/- 6.8 percentage point margin of error at the 95% confidence level.