Companies are not normally shy when it comes to telling the world how well they are doing. So why are Britain’s biggest companies so coy when it comes to talking about their record on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?
The first ever survey of how FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies are communicating CSR online shows that many companies have been slow to promote what they are doing in this increasingly important area.
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Allen White of the Global Reporting Initiative argues that the Guidelines are misunderstood by some critics.
A scan of corporate responsibility publications in recent months reveals many references to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the new Amsterdam-based institution whose mission is to make sustainability reporting as routine as financial reporting. This is welcome news for the hundreds of individuals worldwide from business, civil society, government, investors, labour and accountancy who worked for over two years to produce GRI’s 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.
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Corporations around the globe for the first time now face the prospect of uniform standards and expectations from religious groups, other concerned investors and advocacy groups on a comprehensive range of issues, including sweatshop labor, pollution control and access to affordable pharmaceuticals, including HIV/AIDS medications. Ten years in the making and released for the first time today, -Principles for Global Corporate Responsibility: Bench Marks for Measuring Business Performance” is the work of a diverse global coalition of religious organizations and advocacy groups.
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Many charities have been slow to adopt socially responsible investment, but pressure is growing, reports Simon Birch.
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The SIGMA Project is a collaborative project that has been working to develop practical guidelines for organisations to help them make a meaningful contribution to sustainable development.
A new consultation version of the SIGMA guidelines has just been published on their website.
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The WBCSD’s brand new publication, Cross-Cutting
Themes, zeroes in on six topics that are shaping the sustainability agenda
– Eco-Efficiency, Innovation & Technology, Corporate Social Responsibility,
Ecosystems, Sustainability & Markets, and Risk.
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On 13 May, MEPs voted on the report of Philip Bushill-Matthews on the Commission’s July 2002 Communication concerning Corporate Social Responsibility. In its resolution, the Parliament complains that “the Commission Communication was effectively written before the Parliament’s response to the Green Paper had been absorbed” and reiterates its determination to remain part of the discussion process.
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Leaders of the G8 group of countries* have abandoned plans to announce a `Charter of Principles for a Responsible Market Economy’, Friends of the Earth International revealed today. The news emerges as G8 Finance Ministers meet today in Deauville, France, in preparation for the G8 Summit of Heads of State in the French Alpine resort of Evian from 1-3 June 2003.
French President Jacques Chirac had prioritised `Corporate Social Responsibility’ as an issue at the G8, but the `Charter of Principles’ proposal has been abandoned, throwing the G8’s agenda into disarray. Since making a commitment to corporate accountability and responsibility at last year’s United Nations Earth Summit in Johannesburg, some G8 governments have pulled back from taking measures to halt bad corporate practices.
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If you make up the rules, you’ve got an excellent chance of winning the game.
That seems to be the logic behind a recent government initiative to study international standards on what is still unfamiliar territory for many businesses here — corporate social responsibility.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will set up a working group May 27 to study CSR standards, as the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization steps up efforts to create a new standard for gauging corporate social responsibility by around 2005.
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There has been a big push over the past year to get corporations to be more honest with shareholders, so far with only modest success. While companies now disclose more details about off-balance-sheet transactions and derivatives risk, annual reports still reveal a near-universal reluctance on the part of executives to come clean about their major screw-ups and miscalculations.
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Gather a trio of corporate social responsibility managers from Weyerhaeuser, Starbucks and Nike to sing the blues, and it could render a smooth refrain: The more you try, the more they cry …The more you do, the more they keep comin’ after you.
Corporations leading the local ethical-business charge remain prime targets of advocacy groups, who often say corporate efforts fall short. The movement may be organic cotton, free-trade coffee or old-growth forests. In CSR circles, applause is seldom far from a greenwashing charge. And the bigger you are, the louder it gets.
“We don’t respond to everything said about us,” said Cassie Phillips, vice president of sustainable forestry for Federal Way, Wash.-based Weyerhaeuser. “I don’t think anyone can.”
Lower-profile companies pursuing the triple bottom line don’t tend to draw the ire of advocacy groups. But whether a firm is worth $5 billion or $5 million, there are also stakeholders and customers to please. A green core vision must not diminish quarterly results, and no business strategy is complete without a communications plan. A public-relations blitz can raise eyebrows, but silence raises questions. A company is obliged to inform those who keep it going, but it must also strike a balance between too little detail and too much.
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Corporate social responsibility is a growth industry. Hundreds of big companies are now producing “sustainability” or “triple bottom line” reports. New standards, guidelines or indices on CSR appear almost weekly.
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