Social Standards: Measuring and Reporting Corporate Social Performance
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Volume 3 Number 2
Social Standards: Measuring and Reporting Corporate Social Performance Fernando Casado CanÄeque Global Risk Management Services of PricewaterhouseCoopers INTRODUCTION The relevance of sustainability in decision making has increased dramatically since its ®rst appearance through the World Commission on Environment and Development in the Bruntland Report (World Commission, 1987). `Satisfy our present needs without compromising the needs of future generations' is a de®nition we hear again and again in conferences, articles and books. But what exactly does it mean to be sustainable? And how can we prove that a corporation is being sustainable? Although few answers are forthcoming, organizations are becoming more precise every day in de®ning not only what is sustainable, but also what will lead to sustainability. Clear examples of unsustainable practices include:
Ð economic growth permitted in a way that does not take into account environmental concerns Ð environmental conservation which comes at the expense and sacri®ce of basic human needs Ð social programs that lack a responsible wealth-creating mechanism to support them. Elkington (1997) asks if the models of growth that evolved in the post-1945 period are the right, or sustainable, models for the 21st century. He mentions how the Commission of the European Communities spoke of the need to develop and adopt a `new model of development' in their White Paper on Growth. They speci®cally
foresaw a growing imbalance in the main factors of production Ð land, labor and capital. It is increasingly evident that both governments and companies are facing new challenges due to environmental threats and social stresses. Integrity and a holistic approach are key elements that sustainability proposes. The three pillars, economic growth, ecological balance, and social progress, have to be integrated in order to achieve the perspective required for ecient decision making. The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility that I focus on here is business's contribution to the third pillar of social progress (World Business Council, 1998). DEFINITIONS AND TERMS There are many de®nitions of corporate social responsibility and many applications of the concept. Dierent companies are opening ethical accounts, implementing social and ethical audits, creating social performance reports and ethical reports, and preparing social reviews. Although use of these terms vary from one another, they are all suciently similar to create confusion as we strive to develop a standardized methodology. This alone tells us that the issue we are dealing with probably requires a more ¯exible approach than other issues such as environment, health and safety or quality management. According to Henk van Luijk et al (1995), the implications of ethics are about a company's reputation for being fair and trustworthy. He argues that ethics is more
Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2000, pp. 145±163 # Henry Stewart Publications, 1363±3589
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Social Standards: Measuring and Repo
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