Ethical Corporation’s 8th annual Responsible Business Summit

Event Ethical Corporation’s 8th annual Responsible Business Summit
Date 11-12 May
Venue London, UK
Organizer Ethical Corporation

In his opening remarks, Ethical Corporation founder and MD Tobias Webb outlined the objectives of this 8th annual summit: to raise awareness of corporate responsibility (CR) and to share best practices. The content and tone of the two-day summit certainly suggested corporate responsibility is top of the collective public mind and has taken on greater significance given the recent erosion of public trust and confidence in business, so powerfully illustrated in Edelman’s 2009 Trust Barometer.

What was also apparent is that the field of CR still has a long way to go before we have a consistent understanding of what we mean by it, and how we can measure the non-financial performance of a company and compare it to another. The proliferation of language to describe practitioners (CR, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, ethical, triple bottom line) is symptomatic of companies’ differing mandates, ranging from developing and implementing the corporation’s community investment or its environmental policy to integrating and embedding responsible and ethical practices across the entire organization and down its supply chain. Some practitioners might be considered and indeed see themselves as agents of change from within; a few see themselves as internal NGOs; still others seem to be almost part of marketing and brand teams.

At the opening plenary, which posed the question ‘Can responsible business save the reputation of capitalism?’ Timberland  CEO Jeff Swartz remarked how CR conferences had evolved from a gathering of ‘sweaty activists’ to mainstream events attended by a wide variety of corporate representatives, including CEOs, academics, consultants and NGO leaders.

Much of this evolution, and indeed the existence of CR reporting at all, is largely thanks to relentless pressure on business to operate more responsibly and transparently from environmental, human rights and other NGOs and advocacy groups. Exposing corporations’ misleading claims and evidence of ‘greenwashing’ has also been an effective tactic. Indeed, many of the most probing and provocative questions at the conference came from NGOs and social enterprises, such as WWF, Apropo Global and Liftshare, while corporate representatives talked of partnerships with Friends of the Earth, the Nature Conservancy and others as having had a significant impact on their activities.

It was a tangible reminder that the funding of advocacy organizations and NGOs to act as both watchdogs and partners in helping business develop more responsible business practices represents an effective investment and should continue to be an important focus for the donor community.

It is widely accepted that CR reports are not read by mass audiences. While that may continue to concern corporations that produce them, several speakers and participants described a valuable by-product of the reporting process being the discipline and rigour it imposes on the corporation and its executives in thinking about the material issues, setting meaningful goals and targets, holding themselves accountable to achieving these and being transparent about shortcomings.

Almost all corporate leaders, including IKEA’s Anders Dahlvig and Eurostar’s Richard Brown, agreed that the days of corporations questioning the importance of sustainability/CR are truly over and that the focus is currently on the how, and how quickly. Many speakers admitted that the downturn had affected budgets but most saw the upside of this being a move away from less important projects and greater focus on the material CR issues. The downturn will undoubtedly separate what Tomorrow’s Company refers to as the ‘compliance’ CSR from the ‘conviction’ CSR.

Many argued that CR strategies encompass reductions in energy usage, corporate travel, resource wastage etc so imply cost savings anyway. There was much talk of the importance of CR not being a separate strategy but rather embedded in the business. Almost all speakers forecast a long road ahead and wished their corporations had focused attention on CR sooner.

The summit attracted some 300 participants but, given the growing dominance of China on the global stage, Mark Spelman from Accenture lamented the absence of any speakers representing the Chinese perspective. Spelman focused on the constants that endure despite the current uncertainty, including the continued growth of megacities and the competition for resources. He predicted water scarcity as the next big focus in the near term.

The summit did not conclude with a summing-up plenary session and I would hope that Ethical Corporation redresses this for future events. Corporate responsibility was described by more than one speaker as being a journey, and a long and painful one at that. It would have been constructive after this two-day leg of the journey to regroup, review key themes, issues and challenges that emerged, revisit the current CR route map and debate future pathways for the road ahead.

Georgie Shields is a corporate responsibility consultant and freelance writer based in London. Until 2008 she served as vice president, philanthropy at American Express and secretary of the American Express Foundation. Email georgie_shields@yahoo.com

For more information
www.ethicalcorp.com