ILO publishes new paper on integrating international social standards into corporate strategies, based on Vigeo Eiris data

ILO publishes new paper on integrating international social standards into corporate strategies, based on Vigeo Eiris data

Published by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in December 2018, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility: Exploring determinants and complementarities’ examines differences in corporate approaches to social responsibility, highlighting the key role that integrating social factors can have in improving company performance.

In addition to the commitments made by economic actors, corporate social responsibility is attracting increasing interest from researchers and public institutions worldwide. A key challenge is to understand how corporate compliance with international social and environmental standards translates into practice, and the extent to which the integration of governance principles and responsible conduct into companies’ management and operations affects their results.

Guillaume Delautre and Bruno Dante Abriata provide new insight on these questions using data and ratings from Vigeo Eiris’ research. ‘Corporate Social Responsibility: Exploring determinants and complementarities’ (ILO Research Department, Working Paper No. 38, December 2018) is a new research project conducted by the ILO with support from the French government. It deepens academic research on the economic and institutional determinants of corporate commitments to socially responsibility and considers the underlying causes of companies’ disparate behaviour by examining different areas of social responsibility.

The paper points out that although economic factors largely determine company behaviour, their approaches towards social responsibility are directly influenced by the regional standards and institutional frameworks in which they operate. Therefore and based on the thematic and territorial scores allocated over a long period by Vigeo Eiris to a sample of nearly 1200 companies, the authors show that corporate social responsibility is most effective when designed and implemented within the context of advanced social regulation. In particular, the paper specifies that respect for freedom of association and the effectiveness of corporate governance able to promote and control social responsibility approaches have a positive overall influence on other aspects of social responsibility.

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