An interesting dialogue has emerged on the Corporate Responsibility Officers Association Blog site on LinkedIn. Here is my (David Nitkin’s) latest posting to that site:

Ethicists continually try to ensure that organizations and their stakeholders do the right thing. The idea I’ve spoken of here is that industry associations, regulators, social responsibility reporters, social responsibility analysts, and progressive companies all have and share a vested interest in improving responsibility, transparency and accountability. The idea isn’t a voluntary one: society has reason to expect that (a) companies, governments and civil society organizations should report on material issues like carbon emissions, strikes, energy efficiency, and bribery convictions; and (b) that companies who are better actors should not be required to undergo the same time, media, reporting and filing costs that accrue to companies that are inferior actors. If doing good is the norm, then being forced to publicly disclose bad behaviour annually as part of reporting is the new better way to realize that norm.

For far too long accounting has rested wholly on GAAP principles and the responsibility for more meaningful reporting has been voluntary. Two generations ago, Justice Brandeis creatively argued that sunlight or transparency is a great disinfectant. We should be looking to all progressive corporate stakeholders to consider how best to operationalize the next stage of maturity of the idea of a social license to operate, and the virtue of making the scofflaw and polluter pay by shifting their calls toward requirements of transparency on these issues. The example of mandatory reporting of corporate involvement in South Africa in the 1980s (California, Canada) could and should be expanded.

Tags: reporting