Curating Corporate Social Responsibility. The MoMA brought to Berlin by Deutsche Bank seen as marketing strategy

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a multisided, even chameleonic concept concerning stakeholders as well as shareholders. In this paper (unlike many ethical papers) CSR is presented as a marketing strategy (Liebl, 2002) to increase and optimize reputation, brand identity and stakeholder-communication. CSR communicates values and identity of a corporation to improve the perception of stakeholders, clients, consumers or last but not least employees. As an example to illustrate CSR in terms of cultural sponsoring the 2004 exhibition of the ‘Museum of Modern Art’ (MoMA) in Berlin, sponsored by ‘Deutsche Bank’ will be chosen because the ‘Deutsche Bank’ as an international investment bank as well as a local bank for private customers participates in the global competition of financial markets and serves as a local bank for local companies and private customers. This paper is the elaboration of a talk presented at the EBEN Research Conference 2007, Finance and Society in Ethical Perspective, Bergamo, June 21-23. Peter Seele Curating Corporate Social Responsibility. The MoMA brought to Berlin by Deutsche Bank seen as marketing strategy Impresa Progetto – Rivista on line del DITEA, n. 2, 2007 __________________________________________________________________ 2 The paper juxtaposes the two strategies and asks whether they are congruent and consistent. To construct this juxtaposition it is helpful to confront the moral CSR point of view with the marketing strategy point of view. 1. Departure Point: The Cry for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) For business ethics there is nothing as valuable as a corporate scandal. One can say that business ethics is a result of corporate scandals. Enron for example, just to name the most eminent one which is always quoted when business ethics is on air. By now, the phenomena known as climate-change substitutes scandals more and more. The more scandals and catastrophes, the louder the cry for values, integrity, responsibility or regulation. Here CSR is a concept to give attention to different aspects of being responsible. Corporations begun to understand that the perception of themselves is of major importance for the acceptance of the corporation and its products and services. And even more important: Their identity is perceived much better, when the corporation acts responsible for society and environment. Social Responsibility – besides its function in a society with responsible citizens – became part of the marketing strategy and marketing experts begun to write about ‘how to make profit with common goods’ (Liebl, 2002). One parameter of crucial importance here is the region in terms of nation-state (and its jurisdiction and taxation), clusters and cities or just as geographical entity. There are good reasons to assume that in today’s global world, the home base of the company increases importance in terms of quality of life for high qualified labour force as well as for suppliers or customers if they are present at the specific location for different reasons. Even if companies are acting in global networks they depend on an efficient region with qualified labour, reliable infrastructure and a prospering economic environment. It is to be observed that even companies that are not engaged in the region in economic terms often sponsor regional development strategies or local sports and culture activities. This local/regional engagement proves the image of “homeless capitalism” wrong. Institutional economy and systematic studies on locational behaviour of companies show that relocation is not standard because the transaction costs in material as well as in socio-cultural respect are often underestimated. Regional networking of large companies, like Nokia, has been studied. Innovation is a very important motive for such behaviour: qualified labour, specialized suppliers as well a research and development companies are important for innovation when available in the neighborhood. And hence, this combination of different cultures by diversity management promises synergies. In particular, large companies present themselves culturally due to their ambitious architecture: The skylines of financial districts in the leading world cities are most visible. Peter Seele Curating Corporate Social Responsibility. The MoMA brought to Berlin by Deutsche Bank seen as marketing strategy Impresa Progetto – Rivista on line del DITEA, n. 2, 2007 __________________________________________________________________ 3 2. Corporations and their responsibility for their social and cultural environment The ethical approach proposed by business ethisists to regional and cultural embeddedness is rooted in cultural studies and philosophy. The discussion on corporate ethics (CE) focuses around the argument that an intact corporate culture is the pre-condition for the development of CE. Corporate culture is to be understood as the values, norms, and patterns of orientation that contribute to the employees' identification with their company (Corporate Identity) and the implementation of corporate moral standards (Noll, 2002). On the whole, CE is based on concepts of moral values and ethical beliefs that are, for the most part, being followed for their own sake, thus forming the basis for an independent corporate responsibility. Procedures of implementing and auditioning ethical standards have been developed for the realization of CE, which are presently discussed as ‘EthikManagementSystem’ (Wieland/Grüninger, 2000), ‘Value-BasedResponsibility’ (Brink/Puell, 2002), or the ‘Concept of Corporate Responsibility’ (Enderle, 2004). The essential point here is that corporate responsibility is to be realized on multiple levels on the basis of economic, social, and ecological objectives on the one hand, and social accountability, corporate selfengagement, and external legal constraints on the other. To illustrate practical participations in social responsibility some of the core concepts will be introduced here briefly. 2.1. Corporate Social Responsibility Especially after the Enron and the Mobilcom cases voices became stronger to regulate corporations in a more strict way embed values and norms in to business practice. One of the most important concepts is the idea of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) implying not only to comply with legislation but also with all their stakeholders (Matten, 2007). Particularly consumers have become increasingly sensitive to the CSR performance of the companies from which they buy their goods and services. These trends have contributed to the pressure on companies to operate in an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable way (Caroll, 1991). To actually deal with the interest of the stakeholders, it is important to install an auditing and reporting system. Several standards (AA1000, SA8000, ISO 14000, Global Compact just to name a few), have been introduced but the dilemma here is, that no standard is obligatory or has a legislative basis. Peter Seele Curating Corporate Social Responsibility. The MoMA brought to Berlin by Deutsche Bank seen as marketing strategy Impresa Progetto – Rivista on line del DITEA, n. 2, 2007 __________________________________________________________________ 4 2.2. Corporate Citizenship Corporate Citizenship is a label to describe the entity of a corporation as a member of the society that also has obligations and responsibilities (Breger, 2006). Social cooperation and social responsibility are terms very close to corporate citizenship and it is not always clear how to differentiate them in detail. The core question behind the term is: What responsibilities do corporations have? And who in the corporation is responsible? 2.3. Corporate Cultural Affairs Corporate Cultural Affairs are arrangements for a corporation to take up responsibility in society. Cultural affairs here means to sponsor and participate in the cultural life of a society (Benthin/Vandenhende, 2003). CCA are not to be mixed up with philanthropy because CCA do have a return on investment because they also work as a marketing tool for the communication strategy of the cooproration. The case of MoMA illustrates very well the interdependence between volunteering and pay off. 2.4. Social Activity as communication and marketing It is a widely underrepresented finding that social activity of corporations is not for purely altruistic, philanthropic reasons. Some corporations have foundations that serve a public interest but if the activity is financed from the running budget it by and large comes from the marketing budget. Social activity has to be seen from the corporations point of view as a tool for representing the corporation outside as it is done by classical advertisement. The paper presented here will take up the moral challenge of how to do good marketing and do something good for society, which is the ‘riverbed’ of business operations. Peter Seele Curating Corporate Social Responsibility. The MoMA brought to Berlin by Deutsche Bank seen as marketing strategy Impresa Progetto – Rivista on line del DITEA, n. 2, 2007 __________________________________________________________________ 5 3. The Case: The Deutsche Bank sponsoring the MoMA in Berlin 3.1. The Deutsche Bank To understand the Deutsche Bank it is important to differentiate in two operational fields of the bank, that compete under the common roof of the brand Deutsche Bank. 3.1. 1. Global level: corporate and investment banking On the one hand there is the corporate and investment bank, that operates globally and that has its base in London and is lead by Anush Jain, an Indian born investment banker. Jain often is quoted with the intention to ‘Degermanize the Deutsche Bank’. This quote illustrates very well the need for the bank to operate on a global level and to remove the traditional, local entanglements. In economic terms the investment banking part is much more grave than the German based local part for private clients