Archive for law
Did you know? A video from Development Crossing
more about "Did you know? A video from Developmen…", posted with vodpod
ICCSR 7TH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM – CALL FOR PAPERS
The Seventh Annual ICCSR Symposium is intended to discuss corporate innovation as it relates to poverty alleviation in local communities in developing countries.
We are interested in conceptual, theoretical or empirical papers that present new research insights, ideas on business models, strategies and stakeholder engagement processes that a) respond to factors contributing to poverty; and b) advance sustainable community development in developing countries.
We are inviting multidisciplinary papers which contribute knowledge on how companies are transforming value chain activities to benefit local communities. The papers can cover, but not limited to, the following areas:
• Corporations and community (and, or social) enterprise development
• Corporations and community asset-building
• Business approaches towards community empowerment and capacity building
• Social partnerships and Stakeholder engagement.
Authors interested in submitting a paper for presentation at the symposium should submit an abstract of 1,000 words to judy.muthuri@nottingham.ac.uk by Friday, 11th December 2009.
The ICCSR will also be preparing a special issue of Business & Society on this topic, to be edited by Prof. Jeremy Moon, Dr. Judy Muthuri and Dr Uwafiokun Idemudia. Papers presented at the symposium would be considered along with those responding to the journal’s own call for papers.
A more extensive outline is now available to download from www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/iccsr
International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR)
Nottingham University Business School
Jubilee Campus
Wollaton Road
Nottingham NG8 1BB
Tel: +44 (0) 115 846 6976
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Save the Date – International CSR-Conferences 2009 and 2010 in Beijing and Berlin
| 4th International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility September 22-24, 2010 Save the Date
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News from CSR International
The main events of CSR International in the next months!
JANUARY
Friday 9 January – Deadline for 10% Earlybird discount on CSR Master Class I on 23 or 24 January (Introduction to CSR Theory and Practice) – see www.csrinternational.org/csri_masterclass1.pdf for more details. Contact clemence@csrinternational.org for a registration form.
Friday 15 January – Deadline for the 2nd Call for Contributors to the World Guide to CSR – see www.csrinternational.org/csr_worldguide_call.pdf for more details. Please forward to whoever may be interested. Send your applications to write a CSR country/regional profile to clemence@csrinternational.org.
Friday 23 January – CSR Masterclass I: Introduction to CSR Theory and Practice – see www.csrinternational.org/csri_masterclass1.pdf for more details. Please forward to whoever may be interested. Contact clemence@csrinternational.org for a registration form.
Saturday 24 January – CSR Masterclass I: Introduction to CSR Theory and Practice (Repeat) – see www.csrinternational.org/csri_masterclass1.pdf for more details. Please forward to whoever may be interested. Contact clemence@csrinternational.org for a registration form.
FEBRUARY
Thursday 12 February – CSR International official LAUNCH PARTY! – London, 6-9 pm. More specific details to follow. Space is limited. Register your interest to attend with clemence@csrinternational.org.
Friday 13 February – Deadline for 10% Earlybird discount on CSR Master Class II on 27 or 28 February (International Perspectives on CSR) – see www.csrinternational.org/csri_masterclass2.pdf for more details. Please forward to whoever may be interested. Contact clemence@csrinternational.org for a registration form.
Friday 27 February – CSR Master Class II: International Perspectives on CSR – see www.csrinternational.org/csri_masterclass2.pdf for more details. Please forward to whoever may be interested. Contact clemence@csrinternational.org for a registration form.
Saturday 28 February – CSR Master Class II: International Perspectives on CSR (Repeat) – see www.csrinternational.org/csri_masterclass2.pdf for more details. Please forward to whoever may be interested. Contact clemence@csrinternational.org for a registration form.
MARCH
Thursday 12 March – CSR Networking Meeting (London) – 6-9 pm. More specific details to follow. Space is limited. Register your interest to attend with clemence@csrinternational.org.
Friday 13 March- Deadline for 10% Earlybird discount on CSR Master Class III on 27 or 28 March (International Perspectives on CSR) – see www.csrinternational.org/csri_masterclass3.pdf for more details. Please forward to whoever may be interested. Contact clemence@csrinternational.org for a registration form.
Friday 27 March- CSR Master Class III: Creating Change Through CSR – see www.csrinternational.org/csri_masterclass3.pdf for more details. Please forward to whoever may be interested. Contact clemence@csrinternational.org for a registration form.
Saturday 28 March- CSR Master Class III: Creating Change Through CSR (Repeat) – see www.csrinternational.org/csri_masterclass3.pdf for more details. Please forward to whoever may be interested. Contact clemence@csrinternational.org for a registration form.
Time for legal reforms?
The European Coalition for Corporate Justice has published a report “Fair Law: Legal Proposals to Improve Corporate Accountability for Environmental and Human Rights Abuses” in which it makes several proposals for regulatory reforms in the European Union designed to improve the accountability of MNE’s.
The European Coalition for Corporate Justice has prepared this study in response to the European Parliaments’s resolution on Corporate Social Responsibility. The European Parliament addressed the issue of MNEs accountability and emphasized that there is a need for more reforms.
Three main areas of reform are analysed:
- enhancing direct liability of parent companies.
The company law principles of limited liability and legal personality allow an MNE, parent company, to receive the profits of its subsidiary. On the basis of the same principles the MNE cannot be held liable for the environmental and human rights consequences of the subsidiary’s operations. The European Coalition for Corporate Justice considers that the best solution would be suspend the effects of the doctrine of separate legal personality and to allocate responsibility for environmental and human rights violations to the company which controls the entity that violated the standards.
- establishing a parental company duty of care.
Under existing European laws, the parent company’s duty of care with regard to the subsidiary’s operations is limited to “specific situations where the parent is directly involved in the operations or is in fact driving the affiliate’s decisions.” The European Coalition for Corporate Justice considers that the parent company’s duty of care should be extended in order to cover all situations where the parent could significantly influence the adverse impacts on human rights and on the environment of the operations of the legal persons with which it has business relationships.
- establishing mandatory social and environmental reporting.
The European Coalition for Corporate Justice considers that voluntary reporting has several limitations and that the following information should be disclosed by the MNE’s: the enterprise structure and its sphere of responsibility; the risks of human rights and environmental abuses within the MNE’s operations or the operation within its sphere of responsibility and the measures adopted to prevent such abuses; data on direct and indirect environmental and social impacts of the MNE’s operations in the preceding reporting period according to a specified and standardised set of performance indicators.
SEC’s search for better disclosure
In June, SEC’s Chairman Christopher Cox lauched the “21st Century Disclosure Initiative.” The Initiative goal is to review the existing disclosure system, its objectives and to try to propose measures in order to improve the disclosure system with modern technology and practices.
The SEC asked for public comment and the deadline for submitting them was October, 22.
Ceres has published the letter that fourteen of the nation’s largest institutional investors have sent to SEC in which they urge the Securities Exchange Commission to consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues as “a key element of the 21st Century Disclosure Initiative”.
The investors consider that the SEC should include “consistent and comparable” standards for disclosure of climate risk information in its disclosure system. Climate risk information is increasingly used in order to make investment decisions but most of the data is to be found in corporate voluntary reports. The information provided by corporation in these reports is not considered sufficient by investors in order to assess corporation’s financial viability.
The investors consider that environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues should find their place in the SEC disclosure system. At the moment this type of information can be found in corporate responsibility reports. The investors propose that the GRI should serve as an example for a new disclosure system.
It has to be said that this debate is not at all new in the countries of the European Union. Actually, regulations regarding disclosure of non-financial information have been adopted at both European level and national level. The U.S. investors use the examples of France, U.K. and Sweden in order to justify the need for a reform of the SEC disclosure system.
Actually, it will be interesting to see how far the SEC will go in its reform. By the end of 2008, the Initiative will produce a report that will present the modernized disclosure system.
The Green Jobs initiative
The Green Jobs Initiative is a joint initiative by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Employers Organization (IOE) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which has been launched to assess, analyze and promote the creation of decent jobs as a consequence of the needed environmental policies. The initiative aime to help governments, employers and trade unions to promote environmentally sustainable jobs and development.
Work under the Green Jobs Initiative so far has focused on collecting evidence and different examples of green jobs creation, resulting in a major comprehensive study, Green Jobs: Towards Decent work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World, on the impact of an emerging green economy on the world of work.
UNEP, ILO, IOE and ITUC are planning a second phase of the Green Jobs Initiative. The project will move from information gathering and analysis in the green jobs report to assistance in policy formulation and implementation through active macro-economic and sectoral assessment of potential green jobs creation.
