Over the last decade or so, companies have been increasingly embracing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as it has, in many cases, become more strategically and financially attractive. While some firms have implemented associated initiatives by pushing them from the top down, others have empowered the rank and file to conceive of and carry out such activities, such as greening their departments, business processes, or supply chains. If your company is interested in greater employee engagement in CSR, you may find the following research of interest.

Wanting to build a stronger partnership between business and society in the late 2000s, the European Commission created and funded a three-year study examining the gaps in perceptions of social responsibility among companies and their stakeholders. Known as RESPONSE: Understanding and Responding to Social Demands on Corporate Responsibility, this study was headed by INSEAD in conjunction with a consortium of business schools, including Copenhagen Business School, Bocconi University (Italy), and the Leon Kozminski Academy (Poland), as well as Impact, an Austrian training company. In addition to identifying these gaps, the project studied corporate social responsibility at the level of the individual managers’ behavior and assessed the relative effectiveness of diverse training interventions on the development of social consciousness in managers.

Using randomized matched-pair samples with control and placebo groups, researchers tested various interventions in 93 managers at four companies. These included discussions and case studies about CSR, meditation, and yoga. Those participating in the meditation group attended two 45-minute weekly meditation sessions held at the office over a six-week period and were asked to meditate daily during the program. There was no discussion of CSR amongst this group.

The researchers found, somewhat unexpectedly, that traditional executive-education methods such as discussion and case analyses were ineffective in nurturing socially responsible behavior. However, the meditation training got results, significantly impacting both the probability of acting in a socially responsible way and the factors that influence the probability of behaving that way. After taking the meditation course, managers had shifted their perspective from seeing their responsibility as one of “avoiding harm” to proactively “doing good.” Their decision-making criteria also significantly shifted from being “broadly self-interest minded” (looking at just economic profit, reputation, etc.) to emotional (e.g., demonstrating compassion) and ethical (not breaching the social contract) considerations. This particular study did not follow up with managers to see what actions they actually took post-training, and I would love to see someone perform this sort of research, but I still find these results fascinating and think if your company is serious about CSR, you ought to take note.