The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility

Wayne Visser, Dirk Matten, Manfred Pohl, Nick Tolhurst

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470971390
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Business allgemein

CSR has now moved beyond the stage of specialist or niche subject to become an integral part of global business and society. This timely edition is destined to become the definitive guide to CSR, Sustainability, Business Ethics and the organizations and standards in the field.

The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility is a unique publication and is the culmination of over a hundred of the world's leading thinkers, opinion formers, academic and business people providing an easy-to-use guide to CSR: from general concepts such as sustainability, stakeholder management, business ethics and human rights to more specific topics such as carbon trading, microfinance, biodiversity, the Base of the Pyramid model and globalisation. In addition to definitions of the most important terms across the wide range of CSR associated topics, this book also covers all the most important codes and guidelines, such as the Equator Principles, the UN Global Compact and ISO standards, as well as providing background on organizations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and Transparency International and profiles of CSR in particular industries and regions.

This paperback edition includes all the latest developments in CSR as well as incorporating new sections on boardroom pay, the sub-prime market and the financial crisis.

Praise for the first edition:

"A complete reference guide...offers an invaluable combination of lessons learned and best practice for the future...provides first–hand insights" ( Forum CSR International, October 2008)

"This is a timely and innovative contribution to the field of Corporate Social Responsibility"( Retail & Leisure International, February 2008)

"...a handy reference to have on the shelf behind your desk..." ( Ethical Performance, February 2008) "You will not find a wider display of today's key global players and their action programs than here." ( CSR–News.net, May 2008)

"The book contains a great deal of detailed research." ( Supply Management, May 2008)

THE A TO Z

3 Rs

→ Recycling, Waste management

AA 1000 SERIES OF STANDARDS ON ACCOUNTABILITY

→ Accountability

www.accountability21.net

The AA 1000 Series are principles-based standards offering a non-proprietary, open-source series of standards applicable to all organisations, covering the full range of an organisation’s → sustainability performance and → reporting. The AA 1000 Series is comprised of:

• AA 1000 Purpose and Principles

• AA 1000 Framework for Integration

• AA 1000 Assurance Standard

• AA 1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard

In 1999 the London-based AccountAbility published the first document in the series, the AA 1000 Framework. This included sections on purpose and principles, framework for integration, → assurance and → stakeholder engagement. After its publication the decision was made to publish revisions of these sections as individual standards. These four standards now make up the AA 1000 Series. As each standard in the Series is published, it replaces the information in the original Framework on that topic. When all four standards have been developed, the Framework will be withdrawn.

AA 1000 Framework - the AA 1000 Framework was developed to help organisations build their → social responsibility and → accountability through high quality accounting, → auditing and reporting. It is driven by inclusivity and requires organisations to integrate stakeholder engagement processes into their core management activities.

The Framework provides guidance on how to establish a systematic stakeholder engagement process that generates the indicators, targets, and reporting systems needed to ensure greater → transparency, effective responsiveness to → stakeholders and improved overall organisational performance.

AA 1000 Assurance Standard (AA 1000AS) - following an extensive international consultation process and drawing on the practical experience and perspectives of the business, public and civil society sectors, the AA 1000AS was launched in 2003. It is the first assurance standard that covers the full range of an organisation’s sustainability performance. It has been designed to complement the → Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and other standardised approaches.

The standard addresses the need for an approach that effectively deals with the qualitative as well as quantitative data that reflects sustainability performance together with the systems and competencies that underpin reported data and organisational performance.

The AA 1000AS is based on assessment of reports against three principles:

• Materiality - does the sustainability report provide an account covering all the areas of performance that stakeholders need to judge the organisation ’s sustainability performance?

• Completeness - is the information complete and accurate enough to assess and understand the organisation’s performance in all these areas?

• Responsiveness - has the organisation responded coherently and consistently to stakeholders’ concerns and interests?

In addition to the above principles, AA 1000AS covers the essential elements of a public assurance statement, and the independence, impartiality and competency requirements for assurance providers.

AA 1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard (AA 1000SES) - the stakeholder engagement standard, launched in 2003 as an exposure draft, is a generally applicable framework for improving the quality of the design, implementation, assessment, communication and assurance of stakeholder engagement. It is based on the same three principles as AA 1000AS.

The AA 1000SES is applicable to the full range of engagements, including functional (e.g. customer care), issue-based (e.g. → human rights), and organisation-wide engagements (e.g. reporting and assurance).

The AA 1000SES is designed for all those initiating, participating in, observing, assessing, assuring or otherwise communicating about stakeholder engagement. It aims to enable, among other things:

• Organisations to design and implement stakeholder engagement in accordance with clear principles and criteria and inform stakeholders of their approach.

• Stakeholders to identify, assess and comment on the quality of an engagement using clear principles and associated criteria.

• Assurance practitioners to assess and comment on the quality of stakeholder engagement, both in its own right and as a means of assessing an organisation ’s determination of what is material, how it manages and understands material issues, and how it responds to stakeholder expectations.

The AA 1000SES complements AA 1000AS, and is also intended to complement other standards in which stakeholder engagement is an important element, such as those covering reporting, assurance and governance, as well as issue-specific standards on, for example, → labour issues, human rights and → corruption (e.g. Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, → ISO standards, → SA 8000, IAASB standards and → ISEAL member standards).

AA 1000PP Purpose and Principles - this standard addresses the need for a systematic, legitimate approach to accountability and the role for standards. It explains Account-Ability’s principles-based approach and defines the principles of inclusivity, materiality, completeness and responsiveness as they apply to the Series as a whole.

AA 1000FI Framework for Integration - this standard addresses the need for organisations to integrate their non-financial accountability practices into their core management processes. It provides guidance on systems and processes and links the AA 1000 Series to other key standards.

Maria Sillanpää

ACCESS TO MEDICINE INDEX

→ Health and safety, Pharmaceutical sector

www.atmindex.org

Preventable and treatable diseases such as → HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis continue to claim millions of lives every year. About two billion people cannot afford the drugs or vaccines that they need. Hundreds of millions are afflicted with neglected diseases for which no affordable remedies have been developed or for which treatments fail to reach patients.

According to World Health Organisation estimates, improving access to medicines could save 10 million lives each year. Governments, → non-governmental organisations and the private sector all have to play a part.

The Access to Medicine Index highlights one part of the solution: the efforts of the world’s largest → pharmaceutical companies to help solve this global crisis. The Index also encourages companies, as well as all other stakeholders, to do even more.

The Access to Medicine Index serves three major goals:

• Supply investors, governments, academics, non-governmental organisations and the general public with independent, impartial and reliable information on individual pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to improve global access to medicines;

• Provide pharmaceutical companies themselves with a transparent means by which to assess, monitor and improve their own performance and their public and investment profiles.

• Provide a platform on which all → stakeholders can continuously discuss best practices and lessons learned in the area of global access to medicines.

The Access to Medicine Index is created and maintained by the Access to Medicine Foundation, which is based in Haarlem, The Netherlands.

ACCOUNTABILITY

→ AA 1000 Series of Standards on Accountability

Accountability is a concept in ethics with several meanings, often used synonymously with such concepts as answerability, responsibility, liability and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving. AccountAbility has defined the term as having three dimensions: first, ‘compliance’, which implies the compliance with rules, norms, regulations etc. agreed or applicable between the agent to whom certain responsibilities or power have been assigned; second, → ‘transparency’, which implies account-giving by the agent to the applicable principal(s); and third, ‘responsiveness’, which implies the agent’s willingness and ability to respond to legitimate expectations and rights of the principal(s).

As an aspect of governance, accountability, or its lack, has, especially during the last two decades, risen to be one of the central debating points in the political, civil society and corporate arenas.

Concerning corporations, the classic text exploring accountability was written by A. Bearle and G. Means in 1933. Their article ‘Traditional Theory and the New Concept of the Corporation’ is one of the first explorations of corporations as a dominant institution of our modern world and how the depersonalisation of corporate ownership and the emergence of professional management should affect our thinking and practices on who is accountable to whom, on what and how. Bearle and Means, as well as many others who followed suit, were deeply concerned about how the emerging powerful corporate machines of their day could be controlled as societal players - in essence they saw accountability as a tool for civilising power, whether political or corporate. Their thinking has fundamentally influenced our notions, codes and laws concerning → corporate governance. However, now these prevailing notions of corporate governance and the related accountabilities they assign to corporate directors as stewards of their shareholders’ capital interests are seen as seriously wanting in the eyes of many - especially in the eyes of those wishing to revitalise our democratic processes, those advocating → sustainable development and those calling for increased → corporate social responsibility.

Focusing mostly on the attack on traditional notions of accountability by corporate social responsibility and sustainable development advocates, we can outline two interrelated arguments why new definitions, or innovations, of accountability are needed.

First, the power and influence of today’s business is such that it appears increasingly challenging to hold large corporates to account even on their currently defined legal and fiduciary responsibilities. Witness the recent spectacular corporate governance scandals from the Enrons in the US, to the Parlamats in → Europe and Hyundais of Korea, among many others, and the repulsion felt internationally (especially by those pension fund members that many of these scandals have left with an impoverished old age) following the realisation that very few corporate officials have been held to account for blatant failures in basic compliance or stewardship responsibilities.

→ Globalisation has tremendously amplified corporate power - shrinking the state and making the global corporation arguably the most powerful of our modern institutions (according to the World Bank, 95 of the world’s 150 largest economic entities are corporations) and increasing its sway in public policy and law making. Businesses now have a profound impact on elected governments, but are accountable, beyond being obliged to comply with the laws of the countries in which they operate, only to their shareholders. This, according to critics, is intolerable and has been one of the key causes leading to the birth of the corporate social responsibility movement holding big business to account in the courts of public opinion, seeking to put pressure and shame on those perceived not to behave according to agreed norms of lawfulness or basic tenets of governance and accountability.

The second concern about the current state of accountability goes beyond the one discussed above in that its advocates don ’t see the solution lying in ‘ more compliance’ with existing rules, but call for a reinvention and renegotiation of existing accountability boundaries. This faction sees our world full of accountability gaps - issues of global, national and local challenges and concern that no one appears to be responsible for and therefore no one can be held to account for their proper management or otherwise. Some of the arguments here are based on the familiar notion of → ‘externalities’ - the inability of the market system to account for vast areas of corporate impact...