Encouraging companies to integrate corporate responsibility throughout
their operations rather than confining it to a single department is the
most common preoccupation of national CSR networks throughout Europe,
says a study of the main groups.
Statistics on 23 organizations such as Britain’s Business in the
Community, Poland’s Responsible Business Forum and Spain’s Club de
Excelencia en Sostenibilidad, show that all but two see such
‘mainstreaming’ as a principal theme.
Other priority areas are skills and competence-building in CSR, cited
by 20 organizations as a main theme, and communicating the benefits of
CSR to various audiences, also listed by 20. Much lower down the order
are topics such as the political aspects of CSR (12) and supply chain
management (11).
The main ways in which the organizations promote these different
aspects of their work are awareness-raising events and conferences,
publications, and the internet. By contrast, political networking is
used by less than half as a main tool to spread their message. The
figures cover the 23 ‘national partner organizations’ of CSR Europe, a
Brussels-based business alliance on corporate responsibility. These
organizations comprise most of the larger national bodies in Europe
committed to the promotion of CSR or SRI or both.
Business in the Community is the biggest of the 23 with 780 corporate
and civil society members, four times as many as any of the other
European national organizations. The next largest is Forética, in
Spain, with 165 members, followed by Entreprendre pour la Cité, in
France, with 134.
Most members of the organizations are multinational companies,
accounting for at least 50 per cent in the majority of cases.
Exceptions are the Hellenic Network for CSR, in Greece, where fewer
than one in five members are multinational companies, and the Green
Business Network Norway, (one in four). Small and medium-sized
enterprises have a stronger presence in some networks than others, such
as Austria’s fast-growing respACT organization and Italy’s Impronta
Etica.
Ariane Molderez, director of research at Business & Society
Belgium, said that she suspected many networks regard mainstreaming as
more important than winning new members. ‘We think it is essential …
that CSR is first put into practice inside the company and does not
become a bunch of external actions and programmes, while companies
would, I believe, rather start with separate programmes and move to
mainstreaming after some years of experience.’
The main target audiences for the national bodies’ activities and
lobbying are the corporate sector, non-governmental organizations,
academic institutions and national politicians. Relatively few
concentrate on the European Commission and Parliament, consultancies or
local politicians.
