Unfortunately, touting a business as socially-consious does not seem to lessen the chance of scandal.

Some companies known for their commitment to social causes have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. A few are noted below:

Predictably, the media latches onto these stories and claims of hypocrisy fly. See, e.g., Here's The Joke Of A Sustainability Report That VW Put Out Last Year and Whole Foods Sales Sour After Price Scandal and BP's Hypocrisy Problems.

No business is perfect, so what should social businesses do to limit the impact of these scandals? First, before a scandal hits, I think social businesses need to be candid about the fact that they are not perfect. Second, after the scandal, the social business needs to take responsibility and take significant corrective action beyond what is legally required. 

Patagonia's founder does a really nice job of admitting the imperfection of his company and the struggles they face in his book The Responsible Company. Whole Foods supposedly offered somewhat above-market severance packages to laid off employees and took some corrective action in the price scandal, but I wonder if they went far enough, especially given the lofty praise for the company's social initiatives by the Whole Food's co-CEO in his book Conscious Capitalism. Whole Foods quickly admitted mistakes in the pricing scandal, but then lost points in my mind when they backtracked and claimed they were a victim of the media.

Even if social businesses take the appropriate steps, I think scandals probably hit them harder than the average business because social businesses have more customer goodwill at risk. I would love to see some empirical work on impact of scandal on social business as compared to those that do not market themselves as such; please pass any such studies my way. 

Given this post, Marcia Narine's post, and Joan Heminway's post, it is turning out to be a very pessimistic week at BLPB, but I am sure there will be good news to report in coming weeks.