Recently, we've been in discussions on the topic of why bother measuring CSR and grass roots activities with host of leading thinkers in the sponsorship and marketing space. It's been fascinating as well as a lot of fun!

My colleague at Cambridge Judge Business School, Visiting Fellow Suren Sista and I paid a visit to Karen Earl -one of the biggest names in the global sponsorship industry -  to help us 'sense check' our CSR and sport sponsorship survey which is currently in draft form. Once complete, the survey will be sent out to individuals within London 2012 sponsors and those working for the biggest sponsors in football, rugby, cricket and athletics in the UK.

Karen's considered view - supported by a subsequent visit to another friend of ours, Sally Hancock at LloydsTSB - is that there needs to be a more robust approach to how decisions regarding CSR and grass roots activities are made within the context of sponsorship and how resources should be allocated to these activities.

In a separate conversation on the same subject, Peter Fisk felt that this was a big, important but also difficult issue to tackle! As someone who has made a significant contribution to current thinking in marketing in business, I was fascinated with what Peter had to say.

For Peter, there's a much bigger picture to consider. Organisations like those represented by Karen Earl at her agency Synergy or indeed LloydsTSB increasingly see themselves as having a greater purpose in society than simply to "maximise profits to shareholders." And of course this isn't a cosmetic exercise but rather about changing the reference points.

Whilst maximising returns to shareholders remains an important legal responsibility, shareholders themselves are increasingly aware that unless the business is playing a positive role in society then it's doomed to fail.

As evidence of this, Peter referred to examples in his excellent new book People, Planet, Profit where companies with a higher purpose than financial or competitive success achieved greater differentiation and higher returns through bigger thinking.

"But it takes investment, resources and maybe even a different business model. It means rethinking economic value creation and going beyond the 90s obsession with Economic Value Added (EVA) model as the total value pie created for all stakeholders. By increasing the value of the pie and cutting it up in a way that supports long-term mutual value creation, everyone benefit - it's a win-win," Peter says.

Measurement of CSR and grass roots activities should be subject to economic cashflow models which have additional drivers and deliverables to the old econometric models, according to Peter.

"Remember that what gets measured matters," said Peter. "If it becomes the the purpose of the business, then measurement really matters. If it becomes a larger proportion of investment, then we need to understand relative effectiveness in achieving bigger goals."

And with that I left the meeting with Peter with the sense that our project was running along the right lines.

Not that I needed to be convinced about this but that it's always nice to know what others think.

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