On January 6, 2006, the Global Reporting Initiative ("GRI") issued a proposed revision to its G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and invited interested parties to provide comments by March 31, 2006. See http://www.grig3.org/pdf/g3guidelines.pdf. These Guidelines are designed to provide companies with a framework for charting corporate economic growth targets against longer-term social, economic, and environmental impacts of corporate activities. Largely tracking the United Nations Global Compact principles on human rights, labor standards, environment, and anti-corruption, (see www.unglobalcompact.org), the Guidelines set forth a methodology for monitoring and reporting on these key indicators and provide a road map reporting template. Although similar to Social Accountability International’s SA8000 standard in theme and focus, the Guidelines are broader in scope yet lack the SA8000’s independent verification and grounding to internally referenced international conventions.
While there are various standards and approaches in these and other corporate social responsibility guidelines, it is clear that there is a continual blending between the traditional corporate compliance and ethics competences, and burgeoning corporate social responsibility initiatives. In some ways, this blending is an effort to apply accepted domestic legal norms to international contexts. Specifically, the aim of some of these initiatives requires the abolition of child and compulsory labor, rejection of employment discrimination, and acceptance of collective bargaining in all jurisdictions in which a company is active. Likewise, these standards embrace anticorruption activities that are largely co-extensive with well-known Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and OECD anticorruption standards.
However, these standards are also utilizing corporate compliance methodologies and taking them a step beyond legal compliance. Beyond, strict adherence to legal norms, these standards are encompassing (sometimes considered) aspirational goals which can bolster a company’s standing in the international corporate community and add to the bottom line. While some companies have utilized these tools defensively as damage control, others have begun using them to stay ahead of the competition. Thus, while the general motivation of companies adopting such standards is not uniformly precise, it is clear that there is a perceived utility to corporate social responsibility initiatives. Building on its deep experience in traditional corporate compliance and ethics methodologies, Reed Smith can assist clients in identifying how these evolving corporate social responsibility tools may be utilized to add value to your company’s financial performance.
This article is presented for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice.
