Month of March, 2008

A Special Issue from EABIS and Durham Business School Guest Editors: Geoff Moore and Laura Spence

The 2006 Special Issue of the Corporate Governance Journal ‘Corporate Responsibility and Competitiveness’ draws on the material presented at the EABIS 4th Annual Colloquium on “Corporate Responsibility & Competitiveness: Developing Human Capital for Sustainable Growth” which was held in December 2005 hosted by the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland.Contributors at this special edition include top names from Europe and around the world including Peter Senge – Professor at MIT; Simon Zadek – CEO at Accountability; Maria Rodrigues – Chief Economic Advisor to the EU Lisbon Agenda; and Gavin Neath, Chair – Unilever UK

CSR Europe has built this unique collection of CSR best practice examples based upon interaction with its member companies and national partner organisations in preparation for the European MarketPlace events since 2005. The database contains over 600 CSR solutions.

This book, produced by a unique team of business experts and UN agencies, is designed to fill a critical void - between the support of more than 1,000 organisations for the globally recognised Principles of the United Nations Global Compact and the need for this support to be translated into the day-to-day running of business to create value and improve performance.

For the first time, leading industrialists are arguing that not only is sustainable development good for business, the solving of environmental and social problems is essential for future growth.

The most comprehensive review ever carried out on the economics of climate change. The Review was commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (UK) in July 2006. It has been carried out by Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the Government Economic Service and former World Bank Chief Economist. The first half of the Review focuses on the impacts and risks arising from uncontrolled climate change, and on the costs and opportunities associated with action to tackle it. A sound understanding of the economics of risk is critical here.

This Report sets out the actions that Commissioners believe should be taken by Government, business and others to drive investment and innovation in environmental markets in the UK, and in so doing seize the substantial opportunities for wealth and job creation.

Chief executives have increasingly incorporated environmental, social, and governance issues into core strategies, McKinsey research shows. These CEOs are responding to increasing pressure from employees and consumers, but some also see opportunities to gain a competitive advantage and address global problems. CEOs view globalization as the key development reshaping the contract between business and society. They identify talent constraints, poor public governance, and climate change as the issues most critical for their companies to address.

This special report from the Economist lead to a debate on the relevance of CSR among the specialists. It took a sceptical view on what has blossomed as an idea over the past ten years or so, if not as a coherent practical programme.

Corporate social responsibility, once a do-gooding sideshow, is now seen as mainstream. But as yet too few companies are doing it well. A second special report on CSR from the Economist.

In the article, authors propose a new way to look at the relationship between business and society that does not treat corporate success and social welfare as a zero-sum game. They authors introduce a framework companies can use to identify all of the effects, both positive and negative, they have on society; determine which ones to address; and suggest effective ways to do so.

“The ADVANCE Guide to Sustainable Value Calculations” is a guide to carry out Sustainable Value assessments. This handbook gives a short introduction into the Sustainable Value-approach and guides through the five steps it takes to calculate Sustainable Value. The guide is a result of the ADVANCE project funded by the EU LIFE Environment Programme involving several European partners.

The survey "Sustainable Value in Automobile Production. An analysis of the sustainability performance of automobile manufacturers worldwide" is the first of its kind to assess the sustainability performance of 16 major automobile manufacturers worldwide using the Sustainable Value approach. It gives an overview of the methodology of the Sustainable Value approach as well as detailed information on its application in the assessment of automobile manufacturers.

The market for goods and services at the bottom of the pyramid is enormous and under utilized. Prahalad shows that the 18 largest emerging countries have 680 million households with an annual income of about $6,000 or less per household. Those numbers translate into a huge, untapped market of approximately $1.7 billion - waiting to be recognized and served.

Three decades into the environmental revolution, many companies in the industrialized nations have recognized that they can reduce pollution and increase profits at the same time. But beyond corporate "greening" lies the enormous challenge--and opportunity--to develop a sustainable global economy, one that the planet is capable of supporting indefinitely.

Despite decades of unprecedented growth and the expansion of capitalism into most of the world, prosperity has only spread to a fraction of the earth's population, while pollution and environmental degradation have encircled the globe.

This report provides information about the policy instruments used across the European Union. It uses three main categories:
policies that promote the uptake of CSR, policies that
seek to ensure the transparency of CSR instruments and
practices, and initiatives in other public policies that
have a positive impact on CSR. This compendium is based on information received rom the EU Member State representatives of the High-evel Group on Corporate Social Responsibility and
other sources.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has become the world’s leading independent resource on the subject of business and human rights.  The website is updated hourly with news and reports about companies’ human rights impacts worldwide – positive and negative. The Resource Centre seeks responses from companies to allegations of misconduct: thus ensuring that coverage is balanced and encouraging companies to address concerns raised by civil society.