The Global Compact Network: An Historic Experiment in Learning and Action

Corporate Social Responsibility Applied for Rural Development: An Empirical Analysis of Firms from the American Continent

“…The concept of CSR implies different aims for different groups, while for one group it represents protecting the environment and society, to others it is all about paying greater attention to the interests of consumers and employees. In order to determine a firm's very own aim and scope, various authors [1,4,8,11,25,[41][42][43] recommend that managers-before getting involved in CSR strategies and rural development-should answer the following questions: (i) Who are the company's stakeholders? ; (ii) What are their stakes?…”

“…Then empirical data from 100 firms from a variety of industries, sizes, and countries is analyzed to determine the type of companies who are involved in rural development and the kind of activities they deploy. For this analysis firms were selected from the list of supporting companies of the United Nations Global Compact, which is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to align their operations and strategies with 10 globally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption [10,25,26]. The UN Global Compact is a non-compulsory initiative, in which its supporting members deliberately decide to participate and to report their performance through a periodical report known as Communication on Progress "CoP" [10].…”

“…Every supporting firm is accountable for the reported information and the reliability depends on their integrity. Although no specific assessment is performed by UN officers, companies have external observers (customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders) which evaluate its accuracy [25][26][27].…”

Opportunities and Problems of Standardized Ethics Initiatives – a Stakeholder Theory Perspective

“…On the macro-level, standards act as macro contracts and provide norm catalogs that define what organizations are responsible for. The Global Compact, for instance, defines 10 principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment, and anti-corruption to which organizations should adhere (Kell, 2005;Kell and Levin, 2003;United Nations, 2006;Williams, 2004 Figure 1. A framework to analyze standardized ethics initiatives (adopted and modified from Gilbert, 2003).…”

“…Since the implementation of standards usually goes handin-hand with a significant investment in time and money, offering a mere description of these initiatives is not enough: there needs to be a profound examination of the opportunities and problems they create in order to help managers make better decisions about the standard best suited to their firm. Second, those institutions that release standards (e.g., the United Nations) often express dissatisfaction with a lack of input from academics and practitioners regarding the meaningful extension of the initiatives, which is necessary to build trust in a time of growing cynicism from a range of stakeholders (Kell and Levin, 2003;Leipziger, 2003). Third, most standardsetting bodies are not very self-reflective and thus tend to obscure the problems associated with their standards.…”