There is a growing realisation that the current upward trend in levels of disclosure of social, ethical and environmental performance by corporations and other organisations is not being accompanied by simultaneous greater levels of public trust. Low levels of confidence in the information communicated in public reporting is probably undermining the impetus for this disclosure. This article suggests that this credibility gap can be narrowed through the use of third party independent assurance. However, this is not an unqualified panacea. Much (...) verification and assurance practice itself has to date been of questionable robustness, reliability and consistency, and has been framed by financial assurance models that are inadequate for the broader, qualitative dimensions of social, ethical and environmental performance. The paper argues that there is need for a universal standard for the provision of assurance of social, ethical and environmental reporting, and indeed for the credibility of the assurance providers themselves. The new AA1000S Assurance Standard, developed by the Institute of Social and Ethical AccountAbility, offers an approach and a tool for addressing these gaps. (shrink)

In this paper, the Executive Head of the Global Compact shares some of his own reflections on the evolution of the Global Compact initiative – United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s voluntary corporate citizenship initiative in the area of human rights, labor, the environment and anti-corruption. Two main themes are addressed. The first considers the Global Compact’s institutional context, examining how such an initiative is even possible in the historically hierarchical and traditionally business-unfriendly UN. The second concerns the voluntary nature of (...) the initiative and how it interacts with regulatory approaches. It explains what the Global Compact has to offer as a voluntary initiative, as well as how it can make a unique and complementary contribution to regulation-backed initiatives. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of what the future holds for the Global Compact. (shrink)

This study attempts to establish the importance of firm-level interactions with sociopolitical stakeholders in explaining firms prospects for survival. Institutional arguments are proposed to explain the effects of internal structures-both organizational and phenomenological-on firms sociopolitical relational strategies, whereas arguments grounded in the stakeholder view of the firm are advanced to explain effects of sociopolitical stakeholder relations on firm performance. Findings indicate that firms tended to adopt cooptative relationships with sociopolitical stakeholders. Furthermore, firms cooperativeness toward sociopolitical stakeholders had little effect on (...) financial performance but, under some conditions, had positive effects on social performance. Implied is that markets may not be an effective governance mechanism to ensure firms alignment with democratic institutions in a plural society and that public policies may be needed to address these failures. (shrink)

This paper explores the growing array of initiatives aimed at creating corporate accountability with the goal of attempting to uncover the foundation principles that underlie them and create a floor below which practices are ethically questionable. Using the Global Compact's nine principles and the work of Transparency International as guides, foundational principles seem to exist in the areas of human rights, labor standards, environment, and anti-corruption initiatives.