Corporate responsibility reports assurance trends and the role of management accountants

Over the past decade, corporate responsibility (CR) has moved from the fringes of the business world to being a significant boardroom agenda. What began largely as an extension of public relations reporting where organisations disclosed basic health and safety monitoring, and environmental impact results has now grown to a wider set of governance practices premised on the philosophy of sustainability.

This paper discusses some of the developing trends in the area of assurance of CR reports, and the emerging challenges faced by the assurance providers and managers alike. The paper also explores the role of management accountants in enhancing CR reporting and its assurance practices.

A critical review of relations between corporate responsibility research and practice

This essay identifies epistemological, theoretical and methodological problems in a potentially influential subset of the interdisciplinary corporate responsibility literature, that which appears in the management literature. The received conceptualization of stakeholder analysis is criticised by identifying six sets of factors conventionally considered as promoting social responsibilities in the firm: inter-organizational factors, economic competitors, institutional investors, end-consumers, government regulators and non-governmental organizations. Each is addressed on conceptual grounds, its empirical salience in terms of the latest relevant research and prospects to be a significant factor in promoting outcomes consistent with social welfare. Despite obvious antagonistic relations between organization-centred economic objectives and extra-organizational-directed social considerations, the huge body of research we address drifts in a disengaged Sargasso Sea. The essay argues for appropriate directions for continuing business ethics/responsibility/corporate citizenship research, suggesting certain sociological works on moral leadership, moral courage, and academic leadership.

Gender and ethnic diversity on boards and corporate responsibility : the case of the arts sector

This study provides insights on sector-specific characteristics, challenges and issues that affect corporate responsibility (CR) in relation to ethnicity and gender on arts boards. Using stakeholder theory, the study explores how arts board composition (e.g. gender and ethnicity) sets the scene for dynamics that affect CR. Data analysis is based on interviews with 92 board members and stakeholders sitting on 66 arts boards in Australia. Results suggest that the dynamism of gender and ethnic diversity on arts boards makes them responsive to CR; however, their presence does not always lead to CR. For diverse boards to lead to CR, our findings indicate the significance of board member attributes of passion, skill and capability of developing networks, irrespective of gender and ethnicity. The article advances understanding of the implications and relevance of ethnic and gender diversity on non-profit boards and contributes to an important yet under-researched body of literature.

Mobilising corporate social responsibility for world cultural heritage conservation

Through case studies and international surveys, this thesis investigates means to mobilise further corporate responsibility for World Cultural Heritage Conservation. It reveals a strong business case for support, based on the sustainable development benefits and shared value for all stakeholders and makes recommendations for using the findings to engage companies.

Financial reporting for environmental and social responsibility: a normative strategic concept

Corporate responsibility demands that firms address environmental and social values in their firms' policy and key performance indicators. These are integrated through strategic planning and require firms to merge the long-term environmental and social values with short-term economic objectives and performance measures. Each firm's strategy will differ. This paper provides a normative reporting concept to connect the financial implications associated with long-term planning for environmental and social values, with short-term accounting reports. Reporting variants adapted from total cost assessment, life cycle costing and variable costing are integrated to offer upstream information based on a product segment view.

Are we speaking the same language? Corporate perceptions of human rights responsibilities

Over the last several years, notions of corporate social responsibility and corporate responsibility for human rights have developed on several fronts, including under international human rights law, through voluntary initiatives and in the discourse and the reporting of the corporations themselves. But are all protagonists on all these fronts speaking the same language? Are these developments truly improving the realisation of human rights?
As one aspect of its three year Australian Research Council project examining the legal human rights responsibilities of multinational corporations, the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law set out to discover the perceptions that multinational corporations have of their own human rights responsibilities, the types of activities undertaken by corporations to fulfill those responsibilities and the appropriate extent, if any, of the imposition of legally binding human rights obligations on corporations.
While not setting out the formal findings of that empirical study, this paper reports on some interesting discoveries as to how corporations see their place in the human rights debate. It notes a divergence among corporations' views of the nature of human rights responsibility - whether an obligation or a benevolence - as well as its content. In considering whether corporations ought to have legally binding human rights obligations, a surprising number of corporations replied in the affirmative, citing reasons such as certainty in dealing with suppliers and instituting a level playing field against rogue operators.
However,  perhaps the most important finding is the different understandings of human rights as they relate to a corporation's operations. Agreement on potential reforms would be meaningless if they were not employed towards a commonly understood end. After examining the various responses of the corporations and the evidence they cited to support their contentions, the paper concludes that the various protagonists of human rights responsibility for corporations may be using the same words, but they are not yet speaking the same language.

The transnational corporation and new corporate citizenship theory : a critical analysis

A recent conceptualisation of corporate citizenship by Matten and Crane (2005) shifts focus onto the corporation's role in providing individuals with the rights they are entitled to as citizens. This expanded corporate role is depicted as filling an institutional vacuum resulting from the withdrawal of the state. Marking an innovation to the corporate citizenship literature, we devise a three-part analytical framework from political institutionalism to question the concept's ideological and empirical groundings. Incorporating a constrained game theory perspective, we use an example of the provision of Western corporate services by low-labour-cost nation-states to argue that the concept as strategy would in some circumstances exacerbate the implications of globalisation on individual citizenship rights. The analytical framework has application for research directed toward proposals to extend the reach of corporations in traditional public services and, more generally, for studies of corporate responsibilities. Future research on corporate citizenship would be strengthened in recognising, as we do, institutional incentives, constraints, decision-making modes and resources as used by the transnational corporation.

Social/environmental reporting by Shell

This thesis uses textual analysis to examine how language use by global multinationals in social/environmental reports contributes to maintaining economically-based understandings of corporate responsibility. The findings suggest that such reporting does not just discharge accountability for social/environmental impacts; it also has implications for how these responsibilities are understood and accepted.

Pathology, power and profits...in paperback

Joel Bakan’s The Corporation is an accessible and engaging critique of the corporation written for a non-specialist, mass audience. It has been published in the UK to coincide with the release of the multi-award-winning documentary of the same name in UK cinemas.