Major companies fail first national CSR report card
- Source: Global Times
- [19:11 October 20 2009]
- Comments
By Cong Mu
Several major firms were singled out in the nation's first corporate social responsibility (CSR) report for lackluster contributions to society outside of profit-making.
The 2009 CSR Blue Book, released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and the Social Sciences Academic Press Sunday, surveyed 94 of the top 100 companies in the country by collecting their voluntarily issued CSR reports and publicly available information from June to September. All these companies' previous-year revenues exceeded 16 billion yuan ($2.3 billion).
"Many of the companies do not even have a website, not to mention CSR reports or annual reports. We don't know what they're doing," said Zhong Hongwu, director of the CSR Research Center of the Economics Department at CASS.
Among the 94 companies from 16 industries, only 44 of them have published CSR reports. Since the research center did not use questionnaires for the survey, big corporations which have provided little public information about what they do scored low on the CSR index, Zhong said.
The overall index registered at 31 points, above the 20-point failing line, while 38 companies, including Motorola, Beijing Automotive Industry Holding and Shanghai Electric Group, failed in taking on their responsibility to society.
"This shows that Chinese CSR is still at its nascent stage, and about 40 percent of the companies are not getting involved," he said. "The current problem is that most companies don't want to, are afraid to, or have nothing to say about their CSR situations."
