At the first Economic and Ethics Forum in Berlin, it was about the social responsibility of companies
With the business ethics, it behaves as with the monster of Loch Ness, Niklas Luhmann once said, "It’s going to talk much about them, though nobody is so exactly if they are overpathing."A manifestation of business ethics, which has been very much talked about recently, is the voluntary use of social responsibility by companies, Neutschutsch Corporate Social Responsibility . On Tuesday, the first global economic and ethics forum was held on this topic in the former techno temple "E-Werk", which was organized by the publishing house Helios Media. Despite the global title, it was extremely local politicians and company representatives that came to speak at the Berlin Congress.
Main speaker Wolfgang Schauble emphasized the role model function of power elites in a saturated, "posttheroic" company and at the same time complained of the moral decline in the real existing manager box. With a view to the economic scandals of the youngest past, the minister, which means that there is a similar integration deficit in the leadership layers as at the bottom of the company.
Also SPD-General Secretar Hubertus Heil gathered his impressions of a banker’s meeting at the Gendarmenmarkt in the comment, in the financial districts of the capital there are similar parallel companies as in the Proletenviertel Berlin Neukolln.
Corporations without home
Christoph Keese, editor-in-chief of the world On Sunday, leaving the growing alienation of economy and society to the fact that the globalized company has lost the regional anchoring. "Every successful organization needs a home," says Keese. For a multinational group, only the place of the element is in question. The "uncontrolled thinking" of the Global Player made Keese the soil liability of the middle class opposite. Many family-fused companies have been practicing for generations, which the coarse companies have been propagating only recently: the responsible handling of the natural environment and the socio-cultural environment of the company.
This idyllic view of the SME was not unworthold: Also, many middle-class companies are in danger of losing their regional roots because they had to embarrass their production to India or China as a supplier to be close to the production sites of their customers, said Matthias Hull, the Press spokesman of the OECD.
The current trend towards the moralization of the economy, which was emphasized on the Berlin Conference of the Ofter, is a kind of countermovement to the dominance of the shareholder value principle in the 1990s. The majority of the speakers were convinced that the CSR boom of recent years has nothing to do with a value change towards Altruism, but is based on a series of handproof competitive advantages: social commitment makes it easier for the company to recruit talented junior sparks because it is the Idealism of youth responds, and it offers ideal analyzer to enter into conversation with decision-makers from politics.
The CSR concept comes towards the trend towards "ethical consumption" as well as the interest of pension funds and other investors in a long-term business perspective. However, the extent to which these conceivable advantages in practice can be realized, however, depends on a crucial prerequisite: the credibility of the commitment. And for whose recognition, at least in Germany, it does not seem to be ordered to be the best, if you believe the program booklet: "Media rarely report on social commitment of the economy — and if, then primarily with a critical undertone".
Wilm Herlyn, the editor-in-chief of the German Press Agency, pointed the criticism of the organizers on the "suspicion" of the journalists in sharp form back: "We are not there to cheer up the companies!"So herlyn. He kinked enough negative examples that justified suspicion that many CSR projects go primarily to image polishes. Bjorn Bloching also has the experience that the social commitment of the companies often affected more or fewer charity actions is often affected by the company consultancy Roland Berger. Bloching drove this back to the fact that in many companies, the PR departments for the planning and implementation of the CSR guidelines are consistent. However, belief of social responsibility is only if it contains the reorganization of the core bereably with ocological and social aspects — and that is not a task of the marketing department, but the management.
Puma and the sweatshops
As "Best Practice" example for such a reorganization of the core business, the CSR concept of PUMA AG had selected. Their press spokesman Ulf Santjer reported on the efforts of the sporting goods manufacturer to ensure compliance with environmental and social standards in a worldwide network of suppliers. PUMA relies on intensive training of the local guidance personnel and on external controls by the Fair Labor Association. Employees of this independent audit agency can perform unannounced business visits and talk to the copies without a supervisor being present. Cleans against labor standards and environmental requirements are made public in Proubling Reports.
If the suppliers do not eliminate the abstands or repeatedly comes to complaints, PUMA calls you the business relationships. This has been the case in recent years with around 50 operations. As a weak point of the Proupling system, Santjer designated the practice of many suppliers, to be assigned to subcontractors in capacitent gaits. These are often those sweatshops that have registered the image of the conscientious exploiter to the competitor Nike.
Gruner nuclear power
Unproof management problems was a speech in the lecture by Jurgen Hogrefe, the General Commandant of Energy Sustainery EnBW,. After once again referring to climate change in Al Gore-Manier, the Fruhere Mirror Correspondent pointed out that EnBW is characterized by the lowest CO2 outset under the coarse energy providers in Germany. "Our customers might be responsible electricity", emphasized Hogrefe, without concealing that the comparatively low CO2 outset of the above-average gross share of atomic power at the energy mix of the Baden-Wurttemberg Property owes.
Already in one of the previous rounds, the FDP politician Wolfgang Gerhardt declared the expansion of atomic energy for bid entrepreneurial responsibility in times of climate change. Initiatives such as Greenpeace and Lobby Control call this designation strategy as "Greenwashing". However, critical initiatives did not speak on the Ethics Forum.
No more Nokia
Like a menu, the keyword "Nokia" appeared in a series of speech on the Berlin Conference. After all, the Finnish mobile phone manufacturer was for a long time as a flagship company in social responsibility. In order to demonstrate his rooting in the Ruhr area, the Bochum plant committed itself in the area of the corporate community involvement. One focus of activities was on the demand of child and youth projects.
With the relocation of production to Romania, the call program is now also available. And that’s exactly what is the biggest mortgage for the creditance of corporate responsibility: when it comes hard on hard, D.H. If the ingious rising yield expectations have no choice, the high gloss bushes end up with the funny children’s photos in the waste paper and the municipal politicians who have taken the sustainability discourse of the management of Bare Munze is surprised the eyes: was there something?