December 8, 2009
· Filed under news · Tagged european union, reporting, reuters, uaces
The UACES-Thomson Reuters ‘Reporting Europe’ Prize 2010 honours excellence in reporting on the European Union in the English-speaking media during 2009.
The Prize, which is worth £500, is awarded annually to an individual journalist for a single piece of work, or a series of pieces, which are judged to be of outstanding quality.
Any English-language print, radio, television or blog entry by a single author will be accepted. Where the material nominated is under 1000 words, a series of related pieces should be submitted.
The winner of the Prize will be announced at an Awards Ceremony at the Thomson Reuters building in Canary Wharf, London on 28 April 2010.
The deadline for nominations is 8 February 2010.
May 12, 2009
· Filed under research · Tagged globe award, reporting, research, sustainability
The Globe Forum has published the Nominees for the 2009 Globe Award for Sustainability Research. Globe Award’s Sustainability Research Award is given to original research which successfully contributes to increased knowledge on sustainability.
The 2009 Nominees are:
1.Bengt Sture Ershag, Scandinavian Enviro Systems AB for an Innovation called Carbonizing by Forced Convection, a technology that thermally breaks down any organic material in a controllable environmental friendly closed system.
2. Dr. Candice Stevens, Sustainable Development Advisor at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for research focusing on “governance practices for sustainable development, identifying good practices in National Sustainable Development Strategies and approaches for Institutionalising Sustainable Development.”
3.Lisbeth Segerlund, Stockholm University, Dept. of Economic History, Section of International Relations for research focusing on the development of corporate social responsibility understood as a new international norm and how this norm has become an issue on the international agenda.”
4. Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) for developing a light source which runs on locally produced fuel, is environmentally friendly and produces bright light equivalent to that from a 100 W electric bulb.
5. PhD Susanne Arvidsson, School of Economics and Management, Lund for a research project focusing on “how companies work with Environmental, Social and Ethical responsibility and corporate Governance issues, how they communicate their achievements to stakeholders and how these issues can be worked more efficiently on.”
The Nominees for the Sustainability Innovation Award and Sustainability Reporting Award can be found here.
April 25, 2009
· Filed under news · Tagged amsterdam declaration on transparency and reporting, ESG, G20, global reporting initiative, reporting
The Board of the Global Reporting Initiative has issued the Amsterdam Declaration on Transparency and Reporting.
The Board calls on government to design policies requiring companies to address publicly environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.
According to GRI’s Board, the governments should:
- introduce policies requiring companies to report on ESG factors or publicly explain why they have not done so.
- require ESG reporting by public bodies – in particular: state owned companies, government pension funds and public investment agencies.
- integrate sustainability reporting within the emerging global financial regulatory framework being developed by leaders of the G20.
November 7, 2008
· Filed under law · Tagged accountability, corporate, directors, duties, justice, liability, multinationals, reporting
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.
October 29, 2008
· Filed under news · Tagged capital, corporate governance, investors, KPMG, law, news, reporting, stakeholders, survey
KPMG has published on October, 27 its International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting. The 2008 survey was conducted in 22 countries and with more than 2200 businesses around the world. The sample has included the Global Fortune (G250) and the 100 largest companies by revenue (N100) in 22 countries.
One of the most significant findings of the 2008 Survey is that nearly 80% of the largest 250 companies in the world have issued reports. In 2005, the percentage was only 50%. Another important finding is that ethical considerations and innovation emerge as the most important drivers for reporting.
I will focus on the findings regarding the role of stakeholders in the reporting process.
Nearly two-thirds of the G250 companies engage with their stakeholders in a structured way, up to 33 percent in 2005. According to the Survey, only 42% of the N100 companies engage in a structured dialogue with the stakeholders. 65% percent of the G250 companies disclose details of who their stakeholders are and how they are engaged while less than 50% of the N100 companies provide this kind of information.
The stakeholders are involved in the definition of the corporate responsibility strategy only in 37%of the G250 companies and in 20% of the N100 companies. Only 25% of the G250 companies and 14% of the N100 companies declare that they use stakeholder feedback for reporting purposes.
The most used channels and methods for engaging with stakeholders are round tables, questionnaires, web-based feedback. Ironically, the established forums for stakeholder communications are the least utilized for corporate responsibility issues: annual general meetings, analyst presentations, direct interactions with customers.
According to KPMG, “this could be an indication that corporate responsibility is not fully integrated as a priority in a company’s main operations. It may also be a reflection, especially in the G250 population of a lack of attention paid to environmental risks and opportunities by investors and other providers of capital.”
October 24, 2008
· Filed under news, research · Tagged csr, GRI, law, mechanisms, policy, reporting
I have read a couple of days ago a recent article, “Is CSR failing?” by Wayne Visser posted on CSRinternational.
He is a CSR supporter but he emphasizes that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has failed to reduce social “bads” like poverty, human rights abuses or environmental degradation and argues that CSR needs to evolve exactly like the Internet from 1.0 to 2.0. CSR 2.0 has to achieve three objectives: connectivity, scaleability, responsiveness.
David Henderson, admits that corporations should behave responsibly but does not agree with the concept of CSR that is used now. Basically, he thinks that the justification provided for CSR actions is not correct and that CSR is not going to make the world a better place but it will bring it more harm.
So, ironically, CSR supporters and critics agree. Of course, there are plenty of nuances in the CSR debate, but I think that it is obvious that CSR has not helped much in reducing “social bads” like environmental degradation or human rights abuses. Actually, some commentators think that it was an utopy to expect that.
The question is how to achieve objectives like connectivity, scaleability or responsiveness. Through which mechanisms. How to enhace the complementarity between CSR instruments and legal mechanisms. Moreover, it is about designing coherent policy frameworks.
In the last weeks, many have asked themselves if the recent financial crisis has a negative impact on CSR activities. In a recent report, the GRI considers that the financial crisis should be seen as a driver for policy-making based on sustainable development principles. In this process, sustainability reporting, says the GRI,
“is a tool that can help to achieve this goal as it facilitates transparency and accountability, enables like-for-like comparison between organizations’ sustainability performance, and through the process of gathering data and information, it creates optimal conditions for new sustainability systems to be established within organizations. “
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