Corporate Responsibility Reported by 80% of Largest Companies
A recent article in the Moscow Times report 80% of the world’s largest companies now publish an annual report on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR; CR). In the wake of this news we find that the believability of these reports is less than perfect with the public viewing internally created reports as biased. The CSR 2.0 response to that is to recommend that such reports reveal the good, bad, and ugly truth, a definite trend towards transparency. Here are some “best practice” areas the experts now recommend for coverage in future reports on corporate citizenship:
- Principles for defining stakeholders, channels of engagement, feedback analysis;
- Criticism from key stakeholders and the company’s actions in response to that criticism; well-founded and honest presentation of company performance, including both positive and negative results;
- Ways of working with local communities;
- Relationship between corporate social responsibility and the company’s business strategy, integration of the social responsibility strategy in the company’s activities;
- Reporting boundaries as well as boundaries of the company’s activities;
- Both direct and indirect description of the company’s impact on society through the projects implemented;
- The company’s plans and objectives for future periods;
- External report assurance.
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