Broken Windows thinking was introduced in criminology in the early 1980s. Its basic tenet is that if there’s one broken window in an abandoned building and it is not fixed, sooner rather than later other windows will get broken too. If the window is fixed immediately, the likelihood of having more windows smashed is much smaller. In criminology terms: one petty crime leads to another one and eventually more serious crime, once the ‘window’ to committing crime is open. The entire operations of the NY police are based upon the broken window theory, or so I’m told.

Could the same theory ten be applied to CSR? Once the organisation starts developing CSR strategy it eventually transcends itself into everything that’s being done. The answer is yes and no.

There still seem to be differing views on what CSR is about. A while ago I attended a seminar where it was predicted that CSR will be dead in a few years. Fine, if you see CSR as Jack and Suzy Welsh describe it in BusinessWeek: being nice, giving away cash and doing a bit of community things. All extracted from ‘real business’ with no consideration on how you make your money, which in all its simplicity is a very adequate summary of CSR. Doesn’t this type of CSR imply that being profitable is possible only through externalising all but direct production costs? In which case words such as profitable, sustainable and long-term should not be in the same sentence.

The broken window theory, however, seems to apply to M&S. Their five-pillar Plan A has grown far beyond a ‘nice thing’ (Fair Partner, Climate Change, Waste, Sustainable raw materials and Health) . They don’t even talk about CSR anymore, it’s all about sustainable business. It’s strategic, it’s innovative and it’s working. And no doubt profitable, too.

Maybe concepts such as success and profitability need to be redefined?

In any case, it is time that we raise the bar of the CSR game. It should be the only viable business model, but it requires that businesses accept their accountability and see what their holistic impact is.
I’d like to leave you with a thought that Jean-Philippe Bouchaud puts forward when writing about the economics: In the physical sciences researchers are cautious about axioms. “If empirical observation is incompatible with a model, the model must be trashed or amended, even if it is conceptually beautiful or mathematically convenient”.

Unlike with the economics, we have a good deal of empirical data on how CSR works well, but not yet ‘conceptually beautiful’ models or something that could be proved to be the new silver bullet. They are emerging, though. And they are emerging rapidly.

What about broken windows? Well, they are needed as a part of the evolution.