Doing Good and Doing Well:Making the Business Case for Corporate Citizenship

Corporate citizenship is emerging as a central issue for business, and is, as a result, coming under the scrutiny of the ‘business case’ approach. This report–written by one of Europe’s leading thinkers in corporate citizenship, stakeholder relations, and social and ethical accounting and reporting–explores this theme from a variety of perspectives and in the context of actual practices by leading firms.

Major findings:

• Companies engage in corporate citizenship for a variety of reasons, among them:

• • to defend reputation and avoid potential financial loss
  • to achieve cost benefits
  • for strategic business reasons
  • to help manage risks and promote innovation in learning in a dynamic and complex environment (‘the New Economy case’)

• Whether corporate citizenship ‘pays’ is not as relevant a question as how corporate citizenship contributes to achieving the core business strategy.

Special features:

• summary of key findings
• tables and graphs illustrating results
• appendix on international standards for corporate behavior