Corporate Cultural Responsibilty means Corporate (Organizational) Cultural Responsibility. Corporate Cultural Responsibility is about the fact that a company or an organization assumes a responsibility to help promote the culture in a regional area – either in collaboration with a municipality, together with a cultural institution or directly with selected artists.
Where does Corporate Cultural Responsibility come from
Jesper Møller was a Project and Program Manager for the Wadden Sea Festival in 2010. Jesper here worked with companies, hotels and other commercial insitutions about sponsorships, funding etc. for the festival. www.vadehavsfestival.dk.
Jesper at Rømø on the start day of the Wadden Sea Festival September 2010
Jesper explaining the concept of CCR for a group of cultural workers in 2011.
After the festival had ended, Jesper developed the concept of Corporate Cultural Responsibility and presented the idea to the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies www,cifs.dk who were interested in the concept for an article in the Magazine SCENARIO: www.scenariomagazin.com.
Why Corporate Cultural Responsibility (CCR)?
Many larger companies and organizations have strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. Here a company would like to signal and support that it does not undermine working conditions and conditions in the world. Such a program is based on global goals for empowerment, stopping powerty, better working conditions etc..
CCR, on the other hand, looks to the problems, but from another angle. Here, the focus is that companies and organizations themselves have a responsibility to ensure that the growth layer and human resources have good conditions and conditions in the areas where the companies are located. With an ever-increasing depopulation in Denmark’s peripheral areas, but also within larger municipalities, this is a situation that is becoming increasingly current. Innovative and globally competing companies cannot exist without highly qualified, innovative and innovative employees. But in order for these to want to live in an area, there are three things we think must be present:
1. Good jobs
2. good childcare / school opportunities
3. an active leisure and cultural life.
With CCR, the company contributes to creating an active leisure and cultural life in an area and thus signals inside and outside that it is creative, innovative and innovative.
Benefits for the Company
Inside: By working strategically with CCR, the company has the opportunity to illuminate and develop its values towards its employees. This strengthens the common values, the common narrative, pride and common direction. It strengthens the cooperation and affiliation between the employees.
Externally: By working strategically with CCR, the company shows customers, competitors, stakeholders, the press, etc. that it actively takes part and responsibility for the area in which it is located by helping to create a good and interesting cultural life. It is a way to show that you have your finger on the pulse and that you dare break habit thinking and go new ways.
Various CCR projects and programs for the business / organization
When the company is part of a strategic CCR project, it is done either through collaboration with a municipality, a cultural institution or directly with an artist group. The company helps finance, develop, plan and take ownership of one or more projects and / or recurring events.
This gives many benefits to both parties. Recipients will typically be able to get more financial resources made available because giving their loved ones more about the project, following it over a long period of time, and it becomes their heartbeat in the company. The recipient also outsources some of the planning and execution work in the process and thus gets more role as project owner and sparring partner. Giver gets more benefits through a project that can strengthen the company both inside and outside. Inside, because the company’s employees get some common values, fix points and can lift anything other than the purely work-related together.
Products
– Recurring cultural manifestation (festival, municipal cultural prize, literature prize, etc.)
A recurring cultural manifestation is about putting an area on the map. People know several cities in Denmark for some of the larger cultural lighthouses they have: Holstebro theater, the design fair in Herning, Skanderborg Festival, Roskilde Festival, Horsens, the Wadden Sea Festival in the Wadden Sea area, Tønder Festival and much more. But besides a festival and the like, a company can also make its very own cultural prize which Fx Nykredit has done or the Bikuben’s literature prize. Finally, a company will be able to help create an annual cultural prize for an area or a municipality. It can be a film prize, a design prize, an art prize or the like – an opportunity for an artist from Denmark to receive a prize for which the area is responsible, and which the company is co-owner, sponsor and planning.
– Individual project
The company, together with a municipality, cultural institution or an artistic group, can set out to support a stand-alone project that fits the company’s profile. It can be a project that marks some issues that help to focus on the company’s strength with its products or services.
– Cultural innovation environments
Innovation environments are important hatchery platforms for new resources. Innovation is about thinking and not least creating new. Culture means to cultivate and develop. Culture, technology and new ideas are inextricably linked, and therefore it can be an interesting and rewarding idea for a company to help with.
Cooperation Opportunities
Municipality: Take ownership of a municipal cultural project in cooperation with the municipality’s cultural management.
Cultural institution: Participate in the development of a cultural institution in the area: financial support, PR, marketing
Artist group: Support an artist group in a specific project or with the development of the group’s work.
Processes and implementation: advice and collaboration through Garden / Møller
Lecture / workshop: How to use CCR as a branding and development of your PR strategy
Idea / Concept development: development of program for CCR for the company
Project consulting: cultural project planning, execution and evaluation
Branding and PR around the company’s CCR strategy: How to use your CCR strategy internally to your employees and externally to customers, stakeholders and competitors.
Opportunities for project owners (eg a municipality, a festival, etc.)
Develop four-five project cases, which are adapted to different types of companies (size, work, vision, working methods and positioning outside). The various cases are discussed in relation to potential companies, together with the possibilities, perspectives, challenges and approaches to the concept and to the individual projects. A contract is made for each agreement.
Strategic CCR is a new form of collaboration a larger company or organization can take to help the culture in an area. Strategic CCR ensures ownership, better opportunities for financing cultural projects and cultural development through new roads. Ultimately, the strategic CCR can give the company enhanced and more visible values internally and externally and help secure the settlement and new migrants to an area, which in turn helps to ensure the company’s continued need for highly qualified labor.