Next Generation Corporate Citizenship - Report

This report, “Moving to Next Generation Corporate Citizenship” examines how companies are progressing along the developmental stages of corporate citizenship, both from the outside in and the inside out. The authors look at the development of corporate citizenship in companies as they face a new operating environment where the public’s regard for business is low but its expectations are high regarding the role of business in addressing society’s problems.

Key findings

• Leading-edge firms make the link between business and society in their strategies, plans, and value chains from sourcing through to products and services.
• The essence of their methods: 1) look outside- in to define the issues that are “material” to the firm and to society and 2) consider, from the inside out, how to address them authentically and distinctly.
• Gathering intelligence on social, political, cultural, and environmental issues that bear on the business was once the realm of public affairs departments. Now the scanning and calibration of this kind of information is the work of top executives, board members, and operating managers.
• The reasons for their sharpened focus on the many issues at the intersection of business and society are twofold: These issues pose potential risks and portend significant opportunities.
• Increasingly, what drives social innovation is shared leadership whereby top executives work in partnership with multiple stakeholders and leaders at every level of the organization step up to the challenge.
• Interestingly, a study of several companies advancing their citizenship agendas found that middle managers could be the catalysts for change.
• European firms are far more likely than American ones to issue social and environmental reports and to have them verified by external auditors.
• Firms like Dow Chemical, IBM, Interface Carpets, and Wal-Mart, have made the link between social/environmental issues and their business in their strategies, plans, and supply chain through to products and services.
• The strategic intent in these firms is not simply to go about business responsibly and sustainably, it is to make a responsible and sustainable business out of addressing the world’s social and environmental needs.
• Some see a sixth stage of corporate citizenship developing, whereby firms respond to global social, political-economic, and environmental threats and opportunities by establishing “extra-organizational” forms, such as partnerships with other businesses, governments, and civil society.
• This phase raises questions about the “business of business” in different kinds of socio-economies and invites a new line of inquiry into the respective roles of private enterprise and the public sector in the next stage of corporate citizenship.

Author(s)

Center for Corporate Citizenship Germany

Source / further information

Click here to download a PDF of the full report.