Corporate Social Responsibility, Talk about the good work being done by firms in touch with their triple bottom line.

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Mickey Mouse CSR

David Connor | Thursday 22nd October 2009

The latest CSR Index from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and Reputation Institute was released last week with some not so surprising results. Understandably, the financial sector suffered badly given that the Index is based upon public perception about the corporate citizenship, governance and workplace practices of the company. The Walt Disney Company just pipped Microsoft at the post to score the highest. However it may be worth noting that the Index only scores around 200 companies to produce the results and many smaller companies that have impressive CSR practices (and not just the written policies) are not covered in this list. The whole thing works on public perception, so the companies need to be fairly well known for the data to be accurately measured.

"A company's reputation today goes beyond products, services and financial performance," added Kasper Nielsen managing partner of Reputation Institute. "Organizations face increasingly higher expectations from the general public across the different aspects of their business."

Whilst reputation is a core driver for CSR we have to remember that this index is about perception or potentially about marketing effectiveness, not about actual performance against industry accepted standards. Highlighting the barriers within the industry and also in contrast, British Telecom (BT) and Co-operative Financial Services topped this years list in similarly named tool in the UK. Business in the Community's Corporate Responsibility (CR) Index, again focuses on a limited group of voluntary participants but in this case with no consideration of public perception. All information is supplied by the company themselves.

Both indices provide valuable feedback on CSR performance to various stakeholder groups in different ways but there is a lack of consistency, especially of terminology, that doesn't help the cause. I'd also like to see more inclusivity (surely a CSR value?!) than only the biggest brand names. With so much great practice out there falling below the mainstream media radar we should all be making an effort to offer up credit and kudos regardless of company size or marketing budget.

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