External relations: Re-engaging the company with the community in which it operates
Once the corporation has repaired the fractured relationships that exist within its ranks, it must then find ways to re-engage with a community and marketplace that is increasingly sceptical of corporate window-dressing and publicity relations exercises.
External relations, re-engaging the community with the community in which it operates
Once the corporation has repaired the fractured relationships that exist within its ranks, it must then find ways to re-engage with a community and marketplace that is increasingly sceptical of corporate window-dressing and publicity relations exercises.1 It is one thing for a company to promote its sponsorship, schemes, and environmental strategies as part of ‘social responsibility’ programmes - and another to have the community see that move as an authentic attempt at relevant social reconciliation. Actions taken primarily for public relations reasons will eventually be caught out by a suspicious public - for a company wishing to be seen to be doing the right and good thing, it must not only do right but do it for the right reasons (Bansal & Roth, 2000). The keyword here, again, is authenticity which involves recognising that corporate actions impact the community practices in which they operate (Taylor, 1992a).
For example, an external company auditor might look at the social and environmental policies that a company has in place and justify its success in purely quantifiable terms (Carroll, 1979, 1999; Neu, Warsame, & Pedwell, 1998). Many company statements emphasise, for example, how many trees were planted over what area in what time frame and at what dollar cost to the company. This is then viewed as a measure of the company’s role as a ‘good corporate citizen’. The problem is that many of the things that would make a genuinely good corporate citizen are not necessarily quantifiable so crudely. This is where civil society as defined by Taylor’s first definition in Chapter 5 of this book is found to be lacking. If we remain locked into one way of viewing the community' and the company’s place in it, then other ways of thinking probably will not even enter managerial consciousness. For corporate change to have any chance of engaging the community in which it operates, it must do three things: (a) see the true measure of its environment; (b) understand that environment; and (c) take authentically motivated actions which are productive, in terms seen as productive by that community.
A traditional positivist accountability and accountability strategy, informed by scientific principles stretching back to the Enlightenment, probably won’t be able to see the difference because it struggles to recognise alternative frames of reference. It’s like the riddle as to the sound of one hand clapping: how do you learn to ‘see’ a community and the factors that shape culture and value? One positivist response that dominates accountability theory is to generate more procedures and policies and continue to analyse the results in terms of numbers. The proposal of this chapter is that the enlightened manager positioning a company for the years ahead must build up a richer picture and interpret their activities in the light of the communities in which they operate.
With regard to the process of accountability, this thinking points towards an ideal of authenticity which is defined as autonomy within context, but the context is not an instrumental one. Authenticity is not something which may be weighed or traded (Taylor, 1992a). It is about people’s being-in-the-world and is something different from economic notions of choosing how to maximise the options which confront us.
This awareness has the potential to repair damaged reputations and relationships through a subtle language where communication involves hearing the point of view of the other (Taylor, 199If). This approach involves the spontaneous, everyday metaphors we use which express our deeper motives and values. While scholars from a variety of theoretical perspectives have long studied the causes and benefits of maintaining positive relationships, it is in the art of interpretation that makes rationally visible the implicit features of usually unnoticed methods that people use to get around in the world.
Interpreters have referred to these abilities as everyday coping skills which usually go unnoticed in our explanations of behaviour (Dreyfus & Taylor, 2015; Shorter, 2005). Through the provision of better interpretations, one corporate response is to articulate that meaning and value can be considered from a holistic approach to epistemology. This is achieved where people have not only abilities to express thoughts through language but possess pre-conceptual and innate skills that allow us to get about in the world (Taylor, 1992b, 2002b, 2003a).
