The UK government is firmly committed to CSR, supporting initiatives that are now being used by businesses to tackle their social and environmental impacts across the globe.
A leading American management specialist said at a recent CSR conference that the global centre of gravity for CSR had moved to London. In his assessment of the recent past, the most creative ideas and developed thinking are now coming from the UK and being exported around the world.
There are many individuals and organisations here in the UK who have contributed to this positive assessment. For our part, the government has shown its commitment to CSR and we have supported a number of initiatives that are now being used by businesses to tackle their social and environmental impacts across the globe. For the UK, CSR goes far beyond the corporate philanthropy which epitomised the past. It involves how a company governs itself, how it fulfils its mission, the values it has, how it engages with its stakeholders, and how it reports its activities. In today’s highly competitive marketplace, business responsibility and its relationship to the world in which it operates is increasingly important.
It is in this context that the DTI pioneered a contribution to the CSR skills agenda, through the development of its CSR Academy. As managers across the business have to take into account a wide range of factors – social and environmental as well as financial – in their decision-making, so the competencies and skills that they require to operate in this changing business environment have changed. The DTI developed the first CSR Competency Framework to help companies integrate CSR into decision-making and operations.
Through a strategic alliance with the British Standards Institute, the framework is now available outside the UK. The framework was launched in Korea in November and further launches are expected in Japan, China and the USA in 2006. The successful UK master classes will shortly be run in Seoul, rolling out to other cities next year. Companies are looking for practical assistance to bridge the divide between awareness and action, enabling them to build CSR into day-to-day operations. A UK product initially, the CSR Competency Framework is becoming a global tool for achieving this.
But it is not just in the area of CSR skills for managers that the UK is playing its part. During the UK presidency of the EU, we held a conference in collaboration with the European Commission: Investing in the future: CSR and the finance sector. This focused on the role of the finance sector in driving CSR and the opportunities and challenges faced by mainstream financial institutions in becoming more actively engaged in the sustainability agenda.
The conference followed the example of earlier presidencies and was a successful occasion bringing together around 400 EU and non-EU delegates from business, civil society and government. The discussions helped to raise awareness as well as identifying options for action.
In March we published a strategic framework setting out our objectives and priorities for CSR at international level. Among our commitments in this framework is to continue to work with existing agencies and initiatives to promote the OECD Guidelines for Multinational enterprises and support the work of the ILO as well as the UN Global Compact. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is a good example of our approach, bringing together the oil, gas and mining industries, governments and civil society groups to ensure the wealth generated by the extractive industries benefits the wider community.
The challenges we face are tough. To meet our international goal of a better quality of life we need the contribution of business. We can help by creating the right policy environment to stimulate best practice, and I am pleased to see that some of the initiatives we have pioneered in the UK to achieve this are now being exported around the globe.
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