A month ago Coca-Cola announced plans to spend as much as $5m a year on HIV/ Aids treatment of its African bottlers’ employees. Nonetheless, last week Coke faced a day of global protests for not doing enough to combat the pandemic in Africa.
HIV/Aids is not the only issue over which activists are targeting companies that break no laws but stand accused of falling short of broader social norms and standards.
Too many companies are failing to grasp the extent to which they are at the receiving end of a sharp increase in social expectations about the role of corporations in society. This is no longer just about philanthropy or even ethics. Rather, it concerns the fact that companies increasingly are held accountable not only to shareholders but also to employees and suppliers and to society at large. And the last of these has seen the most radical shift.
Some of the reasons for this shift are well known. But there is also a less considered one: the corporate sector has become trapped by its own success. We live in a world of proliferating "problems without passports" and there is no government at the global level that can respond to them. Our international institutions, meanwhile, are too weak to fill the gap.
Yet the corporate world has demonstrable global reach and capacity. It can make and act on decisions far faster than governments or agencies. And parts of it - particularly such brand-sensitive companies as Coca-Cola - are vulnerable to external pressure. Society, therefore, has come to demand help from the corporate sector in coping with adversity.
How should business leaders react? To begin with, corporate social and environmental reporting must become standard operating procedures. Corporations are social actors. Yet, according to a recent survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, only one in five companies that have adopted codes of conduct shares compliance information with the public. Far fewer participate in third-party auditing of their social and environmental performance or employ third-party reporting systems.
Companies that dismiss the importance of corporate social responsibility will remain under attack and on the defensive. By contrast, companies that do make a serious effort to integrate these concerns become better equipped to absorb the effects of missteps or critical attacks.
This contrast suggests that analysts need to start paying attention to how companies manage CSR as one element of risk assessment. The investing public is entitled to know what a company is doing to manage these risks, because they can affect stock values and have even led to corporate bankruptcies.
Better inventories of good practice and criteria for benchmarking performance are also required. The media often sensationalise corporate mis-behaviour or repeat activists’ accusations. But even diligent journalists will not find many thorough and objective sources of information against which to compare a company’s practices. Researchers need to get more involved in producing this information.
Last, companies are discovering that the more effort they make, the more is asked of them. Ultimately, their only viable exit strategy is contributing to public sector capacity-building where it is lacking. This implies supporting a more balanced system of global rulemaking. It also involves working with international agencies and governments in poor countries, enabling those countries to improve their provision of the social services that are now being pushed on to companies.作者: xiaocisan 时间: 2009-11-24 19:47
Very good作者: 魅鴈★香蕉 时间: 2009-11-27 17:04
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\___________/ |________| \_______/ |_________|作者: 孤傲如风 时间: 2009-11-28 12:20
难得一见的好贴。。。 楼猪的文章简直是惊天地。。。泣鬼神。。。 图文并茂。。。嬉笑怒骂。。。 指点系词。。。激扬文字。。。 带给我们的仅仅是视觉上的感受吗。。。 大错特错。。。 楼猪的文章带给我们的是心灵深处的震撼。。。作者: 丰城都市论坛 时间: 2009-11-29 00:05
鼓励一写，帖子非常好作者: 丰城都市论坛 时间: 2009-11-29 00:12
鼓励一写，帖子非常好作者: 丰城都市论坛 时间: 2009-11-29 00:17
鼓励一写，帖子非常好作者: 丰城都市论坛 时间: 2009-11-29 00:21
鼓励一写，帖子非常好作者: 魅鴈★香蕉 时间: 2009-11-29 10:55
我也不说什么话了,先顶个吧!无语!!!!!