A manifesto for CSR with excellent ideas (4-star Amazon Review)

By Angus Jenkinson, 28 June 2011

(Cambridgeshire, England)

CSR 2.0 is more of a manifesto than a manual, but what it does it does excellently. It is packed with case studies and examples and trawls wide and deep through current and recent practice to explore practice, possibilities, ideas and vision for what CSR should (now) and could be (as we move forward). I defy the reader not to be appalled by the evidence of failure and risk and excited by the amazing things being done in the world. 

Visser has credentials from mainstream and CSR consultancy and academic research and is deeply informed. That means that for anyone wanting to understand and be inspired by the current phenomena and ideas, he makes an excellent guide. He 1) analyses the ills of the world and why action and change are needed as well as 2) plotting out some themes for how this needs to happen - creativity, scalability, responsiveness, glocality, circularity. These two sections, approximately equal in length, constitute the bulk of the book and serve as seedbanks of ideas and a manifesto to act. 

The last section is rather cursory and feels tacked on, pointing to some change models, methodologies and ideas and presumably hoping that the reader wanting to act will go read about or study them directly. And his suggestions are good approaches that deserve attention. I was glad to see David Gleicher's Formula for Change, for example. Perhaps the book would have benefited from building change method in from the start, although it would have made a chunky book even bigger? How and where do the Gleicher or the Scharmer principles show up in practice? The `monster matrix', which is his master model for change, is also flawed. First, in the Intention space it names two iconic figures (Newton and Descartes) whose thinking is widely seen now as totally counter to the principles of human system change (and this by figures he quotes) and the example he gives of Rachel Carson (not Caron, a proofing error!) and her book Silent Spring also shows the limitations of the thinking. He quotes her as the expert in the Cartesian mode but actually although her data and analysis was patiently plotted the impact of her work was devastating, paradigmatic, and revolutionary (another of his boxes). He also leaves our minimalist interventions and nudge as factors for change. 

If a manual is not what it is, the manifesto is welcome and needed and should be read by every manager, leader, activist, interested person and social entrepreneur.