UN asks firms to sign pledge
Corporate social responsibility is the key to a sustainable business, claims a representative from the office of the United Nations secretary-general.
Frederick Dubee, in Hong Kong promoting the Global Compact, a bid to encourage good corporate citizenship, said trying to better understand community and consumers' concerns was simply good business.
'A lack of understanding of what is going on in society will ensure that your company turns into a 'buggy-whip company', one that lacks vision and is out of date with the needs of the future,' he said.
The Global Compact, launched last year by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is a pledge to 'unite the power of markets with the authority of universal ideals'.
The compact was not a standard, an endorsement or a club, Mr Dubee said; rather, it was an 'aspirational' pledge.
Companies could join by writing a letter to the Secretary-General and providing an annual accounting to the UN of the projects implemented to realise the pledge.
'The signatories are not saints, but they are making a determined attempt to live up to some of the principles of the compact,' Mr Dubee said.
'It seems a small move, but it generates discussion and debate within the company and that is invaluable.'
So far 400 corporations of various sizes - 'our smallest has only two employees and our largest a million' - have signed up. Mr Dubee has his eye on many other market leaders in Hong Kong to join such firms as textile giant, the Esquel Group and HSBC as well as multinational companies operating in Hong Kong, such as UBS Warburg, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank and Nike.
Last week, Mr Dubee was in China talking to 400 shoe manufacturers. They were very interested in the idea of corporate responsibility, he said.
Critics have attacked the pact as little more than a public relations ploy and window dressing to hide the insidious corporate damage.
Mr Dubee said it was important to continue to be sceptical.
'When a company says: 'Hey, I am engaged in the Global Compact', it is sticking its head up and people are going to shoot it,' he said.
'You have to be willing to accept that people are going to question what you are doing . . . you have to be transparent.'
