There are almost 150 separate types of activity that can be filed under
the heading of corporate responsibility, according to the first
systematic categorization of the field.
A Catalogue of CSR activities put together by the UK-based Ashridge
Centre for Business and Society groups 147 ‘practical CSR
activities’ into seven main areas and divides them into 32 classes. The
seven main areas are: stakeholder engagement, supply chain, leadership,
marketplace, workforce, environment and community. Each category is
subdivided into further classes, so that, for example, mapping
stakeholders and producing non-financial reports are defined as two
classes of stakeholder engagement.
Acbas was commissioned to carry out the work by the Danish Commerce and
Companies Agency, which wanted to find out ‘how extensive the CSR field
actually is’. It used the Danish market as the basis for the
categorization.
Ashridge says the catalogue had been produced to help organizations
identify gaps in their CSR activity, and for non-specialists to get a
clearer idea of what CSR is. ‘Despite all the talk, many people simply
do not know what it means,’ said Acbas senior researcher Leon Olsen.
However, he warned the field is hard to pin down due to the wide range
of its subject matter, and the catalogue cannot therefore be considered
a full description of all forms of CSR.
