Corporate Citizenship as a Consultancy Specializing in Helping Corporate Clients - Coursework Example

Corporate Citizenship 1. Introduction Corporate Citizenship is a consultancy specializing helping corporate clients in their sustainability needs. Established in 1997, the company had helped various clients around the world including Financial Times, Cadbury, Ford Motor, and other multinational corporations. Their services include sustainability reporting, strategy development, assurance, research & futures, engagement, impact measurement, and other services designed to meet the needs of global businesses. The following sections analysed the processes used in three of these services namely reporting, research & futures, and impact measurement. Using the Diagram 1 & 2, the process used in sustainability reporting is identified (Section 2) along with its strengths and weaknesses (Section 3). Section 4 discusses the process used for “Research & Future” service with reference to the volunteering case study conducted in the City of London last 2010 while Section 5 examines the process and tools used for measuring the social and environmental impact of G4S. 2. The Process used by “Corporate Citizenship” in Reporting In order to show their approach in publishing corporate responsibility clearly, the organization developed a “seven stage reporting cycle” based on the premise that communicating with stakeholders is the most efficient means to develop a corporate sustainability report. For instance, in this seven stage reporting cycle as shown in Diagram 1 below, the audience who would read the report and the kind of information they need to see is first identified before any reporting objective can be established. This is done through collaborative research as what they did in the City of London Volunteering Research (see discussion in the following section) in the education sector where 16 different businesses were studied before they can establish the importance of employee volunteering in business. The structure and themes of the report is again dependent on the audience requirements and established objectives while the content is developed from the result of the collaborative research. Similarly, the writing and design of the sustainability report is based on both audience preferences and client’s requirements. The draft report will then go through a joint review by the client and the organization. The extent of editing is dependent on the result of evaluation of the reviewing body. The final report will be delivered to the client and may be refined further if required. The sustainability reporting approach may be further explained by analysing Diagram 2 where the final report is based on different inputs such as research and futures, impact measurement, stakeholder management, environmental services, and others. In this diagram, business review is first conducted followed by examination of the client’s existing sustainability strategy and position. The impact on business strategy is partly derived from this information along with the result of impact measurement, data from research, stakeholder analysis and engagement, and environmental concerns. Note that the purpose of this diagram is to help clients address their sustainability issues and therefore almost everything concerning the company is included such as community interaction and partnerships, consumer relation, economic impact, communications and brand strategy. The Corporate Citizenships’ reporting process as explained in their website is based on three key beliefs. First, a sustainability report must contain all issues concerning the company’s environmental initiatives, sustainability, products and performance so both internal and external stakeholders can study the facts. Second, it essential that the report must be in the form understandable to all people thus not so technical and in the level of knowledge and needs of different audiences. Third, since an effective report contains all the issues concerning the company and understandable by almost all audiences then the reporting approach must be customised to different audiences and contains essential information for delivery. Examining the flow of Diagram 2, one would notice the different facet of sustainability reflecting these three beliefs. These include activities as strategic development, engagement reporting, assurance, and integration of sustainability and brand management where cause related marketing, consumer relations, communication and behavioural change are the most important factors in the development of brand strategy. This is not only because the company has to maintain its performance but need to protect its reputation against environmental issues resulting from its operation. Similarly, results of collaborative research, CSR Audit, impact measurement, and evaluation of environmental services are facts essential to the effectiveness of the final sustainability report since most audience expect realistic presentation of performance and environmental impact. Based on experience and knowledge of CSR reporting, this type of report is somewhat innovative since most business organizations are seldom interested in exposing their weakness and presenting the true nature of their business. For instance, China is one of the fastest growing economies in the world but despite deteriorating environmental condition, CSR reporting of this type is almost non-existent. In fact, stand alone social reports was only adopted in 2003 and most foreign companies doing business in China such as Ford and Shell were reported publishing their reports based on GRI or Global Reporting Initiative and Global Impact Guidelines (Belal, 2008, p.131). These guidelines, the GRI in particular is complex and allowing business organizations to define their own report content following a reporting framework that is too general and consist of only three process steps – identification, prioritization, and validation (GRI, 2012, Technical Protocol). 3. Weakness and Strengths of the Process Corporate Citizenship’s “seven stage reporting cycle” is somewhat strong as far as collaboration is concern. However, there still some concern how their client would react on exposing the real issues regarding their environmental impact. For instance, the content development stage in this seven stage reporting cycle is collaboration between Corporate Citizenship and their client who can influence the content in a manner favourable to the company. Most probably, the review and editorial stage would be under the same manoeuvring if Corporate Citizenship will lend itself into some inconsistencies. However, review of Corporate Citizenship’s statement about its role in helping organizations attain sustainability; they made clear that they would abandon any project if the client were not willing to address its environmental and societal impact (Corporate Citizenship, 2012, “What we do”). This is probably true particularly when the client’s existing sustainability plans, strategy, and position as shown in Diagram 2 care little about the environment. However, assuming the Corporate Citizenship is working with a responsible client and firm in its role, as a sustainability consultant who can help businesses develop sustainability strategies that can address social and environmental challenges then its reporting approach may be helpful. For instance, without any manoeuvring on the part of the client, the final report will be realistic enough for its intended audience particularly those that are directly affected by the company’s operation. The content and development, review and editorial, and engagement and refinement stage are the most influential of all aspects of the reporting cycle. This is because these stages reflect the beneficial collaboration between a business organisation who want to face the social and environmental challenges of its operation and a sustainability consultant who claim impartiality but “pro-business” (Corporate Citizenship, 2012, “What we believe”). Note that this seven stage reporting cycle was built to simplify the reporting process and enhance communication between the client and audiences interested in corporate sustainability (Corporate Citizenship, 2012, “Reporting”) rather than ensuring reliability of the report. For instance, the three key beliefs attest to Corporate Citizenship’s desire to focus on simplicity by customizing the content of each report based on the level of knowledge and needs of various audiences. By analysis, if an effective sustainability report is one facilitating the flow of information about issues, initiatives, products and performance (Corporate Citizenship, 2012, “Reporting”) then why it has to be limited on the capacity and needs of a certain audience? Let us assume that during Stage 3 – “Content Development”, a comprehensive report was developed and went to the fourth stage for writing and design, does this mean that such report will be edited in the fifth stage so that a certain audience with limited technical understanding can understand it? If this is so then the seven stage reporting cycle is clearly not a process built for reliability but an information simplification system that is vulnerable to misconception and distortion of truth. Reflecting on personal experience, most business organizations particularly the smaller ones cheat about the quality of their goods. This is being done while dumping scraps and chemicals in our water system, profit on the expense of their poorly paid labour, and wasting our resources insensitively. For instance, the popular Starbucks in 2008 was caught wasting millions of gallons of water just because they want to prevent accumulation of germs inside their taps (Griffin, 2010, p.144). Certainly, leaving taps running all day is a shocking behaviour particularly when you are aware of drought hitting some part of Africa. If Starbucks is one of the clients of Corporate Citizenship is it very likely that such reporting process, editable at a later stage and customized to a particular non-technical audience, can be use to conceal Starbucks appalling policy and justify the practice. For instance, Starbucks publicly claim that their companywide policy of running constant stream of cold water is a practice complying to U.S. and international health standards (ibid, 144). Collaboration between client and Corporate Citizenship may further affect the content of the report created through the seven stage reporting cycle particularly when measuring the company’s impact and environmental footprint (see Diagram 2). If the seven stage reporting cycle allows the client their own assessment and values, the report will likely contain inconsistencies because they are typically limited to emissions and energy use data from their facilities. What about environmental outputs like water or the impact of customer usage and disposal? Reflecting on own experience, the societal and environmental impact of business organizations does not stop when the product left their facilities since distribution, use, and disposal do have some intolerable consequences. For instance, Levis, a U.S. jeans company used to measure their environmental impact based on inputs such as those associated with jean production, and processes associated with growing and harvesting cotton. However, when they learned of LCA or Life Cycle Assessment, they began to consider measuring both inputs, outputs, and include activities such as distribution of the products, customer usage, and final disposal. Here, the organization discovers the large environmental impact of cleaning their jeans with water and laundry detergents. Consequently, in order to fulfil its environmental responsibility and reduce their environmental footprint, the organization launched an educational program to make their customer aware of the harmful effects of cleaning their jeans with detergents and recommended effective methods for cleaning their product (DaSilva, 2012, p.1). The point here is the fact that business organizations are different from each other and those that may involve in content development and editorial of the seven stage reporting life cycle may have a different agenda or may try to avoid the financial consequences of acknowledging the environmental consequences of their distribution activities and product usage. Although, Corporate Citizenship made it clear that they will abandon projects with clients hesitating to address their societal and environmental impact, they are not perfect either and may succumb to corporate pressure particularly when their organization survival is concern. In my personal opinion, critical stages like content development and editing should be independent of the client and perform solely by Corporate Citizenship (see discussion on Section 4) or with the help of other independent auditing body. This will ensure the completeness and reliability of the sustainability report. 4. The Process of Research and Futures 4.1 City of London Case Study on the benefits of employee volunteering Primarily, the functions of Corporate Citizenship’s “Research & Futures” service are to find credible information and recommend innovative response to their client. In particular, as in the case of City of London Volunteering Research, Corporate Citizenship was tasked to conduct a study on the benefits of employee volunteering to organizations belonging in the education sector. This was done by studying 546 employee volunteers from different businesses across London, qualitative and quantitative data gathering, and evaluation. Details of the research contained in the final report suggest that Corporate Citizenship made an examination of the skills and competencies of employees, investigated the financial value of competency development, and developed an evaluation tool that can be use to assess competency development in the future (Corporate Citizenship, 2010, p.6). In other words, the process involves both survey (data gathering and analysis) and assessment tool development. The first stage in the process of identifying the business of benefits of employee volunteering was evidence gathering of the skills and competencies of employees followed by assessment of the financial value of competency development. The third stage is development of competency matrix consisting of skills that can developed through volunteering. Evidence gathering include development of research questions and recruitment of different organizations across London such as Aviva, HSBC, Investec, Credit Suisse, and others. However, the most important process in the “Research & Futures” service is the assessment process where development of main competency framework and evaluation tool is included. The competency matrix was created in collaboration with the CSR and HR practitioners of the sixteen participating companies based in London along with expert opinion such as representatives from professional bodies dealing with human resources and those in the voluntary sectors (Corporate Citizenship, 2010, p.9). On the other hand, the evaluation tool was developed using ideas from previous project jointly conducted by Corporate Citizenship and leading London benchmarking group in 2009. Specifically, key ideas adopted from the project include consideration of the competencies developed through volunteering, the impact of this competency development in business, and individual behavioural changes such as increased self-confidence, motivation, and pride in the company (Corporate Citizenship, 2010, p.9). The resulting evaluation tool is a long list of skills developed through specific volunteering activities such as team working, communication, problem solving, leadership, and other important skills (see Appendix E of the City of London case study). The list is intended to measure levels of skills developed by employees while doing volunteer work from “no difference” to “significant development”. The process used in conducting the “Research & Future” service in my experience is somewhat laudable. Not only that it is indeed relatively independent of client’s influence but done in collaboration with different experts in the field of human resources and sixteen real-life companies. It is undeniably a “ground-breaking study” in the sense that it has uncovered the value of employee volunteering that will encourage employers to engage in employee competency development and address critical business issues with the new assessment tool in the future. The result of this research is important since seldom one would find a company genuinely interested in the development of their employees. In fact, majority of them in my experience are only interested in public relations and management of external business affairs associated with increased profitability. The “Research & Futures” service is in general very useful for organizations committed to ethical practices and willing to contribute to the improvement of their workforce quality of life and the community they served. 4.2 The Measurement of Impact a. Benchmarking Strategy and Mapping Impacts for G4S The Corporate Citizenship’s benchmarking strategy for measuring impact in their G4S project was made possible by their previous working experience with SABMiller. Specifically, this is the inclusion of detailed assessment of economic value in a sustainability report (Corporate Citizenship, 2012, “Impact Measurement”. In G4S, Corporate Citizenship developed corporate responsibility using combined comprehensive gap analysis and benchmarking exercise. Primarily, these include analysis of peers and competitors, internal engagement, and study relevant issues. Since G4S is a leading security firm and a corporation responsible to 110 territories across the world, the analysis include local economic impact that G4S may have contributed to Chile, India, and South Africa. Note that these include both direct and indirect economic impacts and social responsibilities (Corporate Citizenship, 2012, G4S). There is no detailed explanation available for this project but considering Corporate Citizenship’s previous activities related to benchmarking and mapping, they likely mapped job multipliers along with tax contributions, supply chains, and impacts of foreign exchange. However, since Corporate Citizenship claim flexibility and completeness of their work, then benchmarking and mapping activities may have been customised for G4S particularly on key material issues. Note that Corporate Citizenship had already worked in collaboration with leading benchmarking group in London when they did the volunteering project for the education sector (see Section 4, paragraph 4). Examination of Diagram 2 suggest that impact measurement is limited to economic impact, SROI, and LBG thus the inclusion of supply chains in the project is for mapping. The need to address key material issues may have encourage Corporate Citizenship to conduct stakeholder analysis as part of impact measurement to ensure that G4S understand the difference they make to other people’s lives. In fact, the model used for measuring impact not only includes environmental and economic impacts but stakeholder concern (Corporate Citizenship, 2012, “Impact Measurement”). 5. Conclusion/ Summary Corporate Citizenship developed a seven stage reporting cycle for its sustainability reporting. It starts with identification of the audience and development of objectives for the report. Analysis of Diagram 1 & 2 shows that collaboration with client is key to this sustainability reporting process, which in some part is not helpful particularly in stages where independence from client will be more realistic in terms of true performance and environmental impact reporting. Although the process is somewhat innovative, it lacks consideration on the possible negative effects of collaborative reporting particularly when exposing the weakness and real nature of the business. The content development stage in particular must be free from client’s manipulation and should be done solely by Corporate Citizenship (as what they did in the City of London project) because it is critical to the reliability of the report. By analysis, the seven stage reporting is merely a simplified reporting process and aside from being selective in its audience, it was designed for collaborative working rather than reliability and credibility. In contrast, the process used in “Research & Future” and “Impact Measurement” services are laudable in the sense that they were done scientifically with inputs coming from actual evidence gathering and experts in the field. The evaluation tools developed through the process is undoubtedly valuable while the result of both City of London and G4S project is very helpful in encouraging workforce development and learning the direct and indirect impacts of global businesses respectively. 6. References Belal A.R, (2008), Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in Developing Countries: The Case of Bangladesh, Ashgate Publishing, United States Corporate Citizenship, (2010), Volunteering- The Business Case: The benefits of corporate volunteering programmes in education, available online at http://www.corporate-citizenship.com/wp-content/uploads / Volunteering_The_business_case.pdf Corporate Citizenship, (2012), Sustainability, simplified, available online at http://www.corporate-citizenship.com DaSilva N, (2012), Measuring Corporate Environmental Footprint, PE International, available online at http://www.busmanagement.com/article/Measuring-corporate-environmental footprint/ GRI, (2012), Technical Protocol, Global Reporting Initiative, available online at https://www.globalreporting.org/reporting/guidelines-online /TechnicalProtocol/ Pages/ default.aspx Griffin R, (2010), Management, Cengage Learning, United States Read More