Living Corporate Citizenship: Strategic Routes to Socially Responsible Business

323 Pages·2003·1.43 MB·English

by  Malcolm McIntosh

Praise for Living Corporate Citizenship
“Living Corporate Citizenship provides a useful roadmap for com-
panies that are moving along the path towards greater corporate
responsibility. Through lively case studies, the book illustrates just how
managers can successfully lead their companies into living up to the
nine principles of the Global compact and provides a helpful analysis
of the aray of responsibility initiatives that emerged in recent years.”
Sandra Waddock
Professor of Management, Carroll School of Management,
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Corporate Citizenship,
Boston College
“The UN Global Compact is an enormously important corporate
citizenship initiative with participation from business, the UN, labour
organizations and NGOs. For those people who are interested in
how the Global Compact has evolved in its first few years this well
researched book is a crucial source of information and learning.”
David Bell
Head of People, Pearson Group
Member of Advisory Group to the UN Secretary General on the
Global Compact
“In essence, Living Corporate Citizenship explores the relationship
between globalization and corporate citizenship and provides a useful
guide to the UN Global Compact and other key international initia-
tives. For anyone trying to understand the corporate social responsi-
bility and corporate citizenship agendas, this book offers useful case
studies, thoughtful reflection and sound guidance.”
Dr Vernon Jennings
Vice President Ethics and Social Responsibility,
Stakeholder Relations, Novo Nordisk A/S
“This is must reading for anyone wishing to keep up with the rapidly
changing, and increasingly important, challenges of corporate citizen-
ship.”
John Gerard Ruggie
Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University
“This book illuminates the emerging convergence of the debate on and
practice of global corporate citizenship. This is a must read for every-
body dealing with this important subject.”
Georg Kell
Senior Advisor to the UN Secretary-General
“Finally we have a book on corporate citizenship that is neither spin
nor a punt for the ‘the one right way’. Steeped in rich experience and
scholarship, this level headed but passionately written piece of work
may well mark the coming of age of the corporate citizenship move-
ment. This is also an indispensable handbook for business leaders in
the developing world who struggle to comprehend the complexities of
corporate responses to the multiple global crises that so threaten the
environments within which business operates. Either read this book,
or remain bewildered by the meaningless babble that dominates dis-
cussion about this crucial subject.”
Professor Mark Swilling
Sustainability Institute, University of Stellenbosch
Living
Corporate
Citizenship
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Living
Corporate
Citizenship
Strategic routes to socially
responsible business
M C I N T O S H , T H O M A S , L E I P Z I G E R
A N D C O L E M A N
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First published in Great Britain in 2003
© McIntosh, Thomas, Leipziger and Coleman 2003
The right of Malcolm McIntosh, Ruth Thomas, Deborah Leipziger and Gill Coleman
to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 0 273 65433 0
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Contents
Foreword xi
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction xiv
1 Living corporate citizenship 1
Voluntary codes and auditable standards 4
Cross-sector social partnerships 5
Business and poverty, war and conflict 7
The UN Global Compact 9
2 Refining the debate: corporate social responsibility and
corporate citizenship 13
The social-democratic context 16
Social responsibilities 17
The mutuality of corporate social responsibilities 18
3 The boundaries of corporate citizenship 23
Initiatives in the corporate citizenship movement 29
Business for wealth creation 32
The four categories of corporate citizens 33
4 Developing corporate citizenship competence and working
with NGOs 39
Introduction 41
Developing corporate citizenship 42
Perspectives on corporate citizenship 46
Institutionalizing corporate citizenship 50
Operationalizing corporate citizenship 53
Developing performance indicators 59
.... vii ....
CONTENTS
Non-governmental organizations 62
Providing context 67
Mapping NGOs 71
The role of NGOs 74
The scope of NGOs 79
A future framework 84
5 Linkages, convergence and change 85
Corporate citizenship and the Global Eight 90
Codes of conduct 90
Different types of codes 93
Developing themes for the future 96
The Global Eight 98
Principles and standards 99
ILO Conventions on core labour standards 100
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises 101
ISO 14000 Series 104
The Global Reporting Initiative 106
The Global Sullivan Principles 109
Social Accountability 8000 110
AccountAbility 1000S 111
The Global Compact 113
Connecting the codes 116
Initiatives that integrate 121
Areas for future development 122
Conclusion 123
6 What is the UN Global Compact? 125
Why a Global Compact? 127
The Global Compact: origins 130
The Global Compact: objectives 132
Summary 135
Principles and practice 135
The origin of the human rights principles 135
.... ....
viii
CONTENTS
What does the Universal Declaration say? 136
Engaging 138
The origin of the labour standard principles 146
Engaging 147
The origin of the environment principles 161
Engaging 164
The Global Compact: learning, dialogue, partnership
and outreach 180
The relationship of the Global Compact to other corporate
citizenship work 184
Summary 187
Useful information 188
7 Learning from company engagement with the
Global Compact 195
Introduction 197
The Global Compact: a different approach to change 198
Analysis of company submissions to the UN Global Compact
(2000–2001) 200
Patterns and themes within and across all the cases 202
Across-case factors and general patterns/themes 203
Signatories and endorsements by companies to
global initiatives 209
8 The future 219
Appendix 1 Examples of learning from nine selected
submissions 227
Appendix 2 Recommended reading 282
Appendix 3 Contacts 283
Index 289
.... ....
ix