Ivy Sea Founder Jamie Walters and Ivy Sea allies are idea-catalysts, thought-partners, and wise guides, helping you navigate from clear-vision to skillful communication and inspired action in this New Paradigm.

In the past decade or more, the concept of social responsibility has been adopted by many organizations, to the point where it means many things.

In the simplest sense, it means that you are responsible not just for doing what you feel like doing, but for ensuring that your actions are responsible to The Web, the whole community, whether local or global. This definition assumes that your goal is to have a positive effect, rather than a harmful and self-serving one, on the greater community.

Social responsibility has also become an important concept in the public-relations campaigns of medium-sized and large corporations. The concept and phrase "corporate social responsibility" has become a marketing pillar that often refers less to the whole of the organization’s actions, but more to a department, a campaign, a program of efforts or charitable donations. We hear much about the 'triple bottom line' of 'people, profit, and planet'.

Such programs are often, though not always, synonymous with environmental efforts or causes. And, as might be expected, corporate appropriation of the concept has fanned controversy, from perspectives that "corporate social responsibility" is an oxymoron or 'green-washing', to the opinion held by some that it's not the job of for-profit corporations to be socially responsible ... that "the market" provides adequate policing.

According to Ethics in Action, a Vancouver, BC, organization whose awards program recognizes socially responsible corporations, "Socially responsible companies consider the full scope of their impact on communities and the environment when making decisions, balancing the needs of stakeholders with their need to make a profit."

Thus, the success and effect of a socially responsible company is measured according to its whole impact on all who are affected by or involved in its operations (a.k.a. stakeholders), not just by virtue of its size, revenues, profits, returns to financial investors, or social-responsibility campaign budgets.

In such a holistic definition, an organization — whether for-profit or non-profit — might be independently owned and operated in a community accountable manner. Such an organization might endeavor to provide right livelihood or meaningful employment to its members; strike a balance between pro bono and for-fee work; eschew the greed that compels one to acquire and horde more than one needs; and adhere to the principles of right action and "no harm" to all who might be affected by its operations. The organization might actively seek to foster relationships and collaborative partnerships with like-minded organizations and individuals within its community so that it is more likely to have the freedom to adopt and demonstrate such tenets of real social responsibility. It's guiding philosophy would be one of self-responsibility and mutual benefit.

Given the broad spectrum of potential definitions for social responsibility, perhaps it’s time for us to review the concept and create a renewed definition, or even a new phrase or term, so as to avoid assumptions and the ultimate rendering of the idea as just another example of meaningless corporate jargon that masks harmful activities and changes nothing for the better.

With this Resource Portal, we hope to generate ideas and dialogue toward just that end.