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Learning To Talk
Corporate Citizenship and the Development of the UN Global Compact

Edited by Malcolm McIntosh, Writer and teacher on corporate citizenship and sustainability, Visiting Professor and lecturer at the Universities of Bath, Nottingham, Bristol (UK), Waikato (NZ) and Stellenbosch (SA)
Sandra Waddock, Professor of Management, Center for Corporate Citizenship, Boston College USA, and General Editor, The Journal of Corporate Citizenship
and Georg Kell, Executive Director, Global Compact Office, United Nations, New York

with a Foreword by Kofi Annan

June 2004 | 234 x 151mm | Hardback | 432pp
ISBN 1 874719 75 6 | £40.00 US$75.00

Brief description

Table of contents

About the editors

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Foreword (40K PDF)
Introduction (99K PDF)

THE UN GLOBAL COMPACT complements other corporate citizenship initiatives by promoting dialogue on the relationship between business and society. At the same time it is the only truly global corporate citizenship initiative. It is not an auditable standard; indeed, it is not a standard or a code in the way that these are normally viewed. It is a set of nine principles through which business and the United Nations can work in partnership for global social development. For some businesses it is a simplified codification of their existing policies and management practices, but for many engagement represents a challenge and an opportunity to raise their game by aligning profitability with the common good.

As the only genuinely global corporate citizenship initiative, the Global Compact draws its moral authority from the UN Secretary-General and its moral and political legitimacy from the UN as the only global political body. It can be viewed as a series of nested networks involving the Secretary-General’s Office, the ILO, UNEP, UNHCHR, UNDP and UNIDO, business, NGOs and labour. It can variously be described as an international learning network, as a social network of people and organisations engaged in a global conversation, as a global public policy network, and as a multi-stakeholder dialogue. It is all of these things, but more than anything its greatest success has been in providing a convening platform for a growing global conversation about social development among a variety of actors.

However the Global Compact is viewed, it is time to reflect on the first tentative steps of an initiative born in the aftermath of the Cold War, in the ‘triumph of global economic liberalism’ and mass demonstrations against ‘globalisation’. In its first few years, the world has experienced 9/11 and the Iraq War, not forgetting the forty or so civil wars that are ongoing at this time. Whatever is written about the UN Global Compact or its success will be tentative. But there can be some serious reflection on its aims and origins; some telling of stories of engagement; and discussion on how this initiative has quickly become an important reference point in the dialogue on global and corporate governance.

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Contents

About the editors

	Malcolm McIntosh is a writer and teacher on corporate responsibility and sustainability and a Visiting Professor at the universities of Bath and Nottingham (UK) and Waikato (NZ). He also teaches at the universities of Stellenbosch (SA) and Bristol (UK). In 2003 he was appointed a Special Advisor to the UN Global Compact. He is Founding Editor of The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, Editor of Visions of Ethical Business 1998–2002 (FT Management/PricewaterhouseCoopers) and author and co-author of many books and articles on corporate citizenship. His latest book is Raising a Ladder to the Moon: The Complexities of Corporate Responsibility (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). He has recently co-edited a new book, Something to Believe In: Creating Trust and Hope in Organisations (Greenleaf Publishing, October 2003) with David Murphy and Rupesh Shah.
	Sandra Waddock is Professor of Management at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, USA, and Senior Research Fellow at Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship. She received her MBA (1979) and DBA (1985) from Boston University and has published extensively on corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship and inter-sector collaboration in journals such as The Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, Human Relations and Business and Society, among many others. Her book, Not by Schools Alone, was published by Praeger in 1995. Her 1997 paper with Sam Graves, entitled ‘Quality of Management and Quality of Stakeholder Relations: Are They Synonymous?’, in Business and Society, won the 1997 Moskowitz Prize. Her latest book is Leading Corporate Citizens: Vision, Values, Value Added (McGraw–Hill, 2002). She was Senior Fellow at the Ethics Resource Center in Washington, DC, from 2000–2002 and a founding faculty member of the Leadership for Change Program at Boston College. She is currently General Editor of The Journal of Corporate Citizenship.
	Georg Kell is the Executive Head of the Global Compact Office, overseeing a network that includes several hundred companies, international labour, non-governmental organisations and other civil-society groups. Mr Kell was one of the chief architects of the Global Compact initiative. Mr Kell has extensive experience in international trade and development issues. In 1990, he joined the New York office of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) where, from 1993–97, he served as office head, closely interacting with delegations and the UN General Assembly. Mr Kell began his career at the UN in 1987, spending three years in Geneva with UNCTAD. Prior to joining the United Nations, Mr Kell worked as a financial analyst in developing countries in Asia and Africa, appraising industrial projects for banks and multilateral institutions. Mr Kell holds advanced degrees in economics and engineering from the Technical University in Berlin. Following his postgraduate studies at the Fraunhofer Institute, he spent two years in Tanzania where he helped establish an industrial research institute.