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30.04.2008
Corporate Responsibility - A Net Gain for All"
© Marco Urban
Promoting the social responsibility of enterprises is right. Germany needs a CSR Strategy because enterprises' social responsibility increases their competitiveness, amplifies the social and ecological dimension of globalisation, promotes solidarity in society, and should be made visible to consumers.
The Federal Government would therefore like to publicise, bundle and support enterprises' many activities and broad voluntary commitment.
This can only be done in a dialogue with all stakeholders. The conference entitled "Corporate Responsibility - A Net Gain for All" is hence a major milestone for the development of a jointly-supported CSR Strategy for Germany. Roughly 350 representatives from enterprises, trade unions, consumer protection and economic associations, academia and non-governmental organisations took up the offer to engage in a dialogue in Berlin on 29 and 30 April 2008. They all contributed to discussions both among themselves and together with representatives from the policy arena. Firstly, an assessment of CSR in Germany was carried out against the background of European strategies. The resulting exchange on fields of action and instruments forms the basis for continued work on the CSR Strategy. The participants have developed approaches and recommendations for action on this, based on concrete and practice-orientated experience.
One thing is quite evident here: Voluntary commitment must remain voluntaristic and cannot be replaced by legal provisions. The major potential lying in CSR activities must however be used more intensively and made still more visible than was previously the case. The goal is to create together a greater degree of engagement by these means. To this end, a joint basis is needed for supporting cooperation among CSR leaders, promoting creativity and making it clear that voluntary commitment is worth it for all. Sir Bob Geldof stressed this aspect in his speech: More than ever before, today's consumers and employees have the possibility to select the enterprises whose products they buy or who they work for. And in future they will select those products and enterprises whose corporate values suit them best. This is the net gain of CSR for all.