EP talks to Simon Zadek about his plans for international growth as the new head of the Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability
When environmental responsibility became a prominent corporate issue in the late Eighties, one individual – John Elkington – came to prominence for his ability to unpick the issue and think through the ramifications for companies.
A similar process has happened in the corporate social responsibility field. Simon Zadek has emerged as a leading thinker in its development both through his writing – he has just published The civil corporation, his sixth book, frequent conference appearances and his consultancy work for clients including Novo and the Body Shop.
Zadek has brought some order to the complex issues underlying the term ‘corporate social responsibility’ by, in his words, finding the pieces that make up the CSR jigsaw and then seeing how they fit together.
All of which makes it surprising that a man best known for his ideas has just become chief executive of the Institute for Social and Ethical Accountability, a UK-based membership organization which eight months ago had a core staff of only three. Isea (also known as AccountAbility) has been in the doldrums since its previous chief executive Kay Sexton left last year on health grounds.
But Zadek has plans for the institute, an organization he helped to found. He wants to increase its international membership and to build on its AA1000 standard on stakeholder engagement, which he launched as Isea chair in 1999.
The staff complement now stands at ten and is expected to rise to between 15 and 20 by the end of 2002. ‘We have 300 members from about 20 different countries but the bulk of them, about 50 per cent, are UK-based,’ he says. ‘That partly reflects the strength of CSR in the UK, but it is something we want to change. We want to become more international.’ Isea will invest heavily in international events over the next 12 months and Zadek will spend much of his time building alliances with CSR organizations outside the UK.
One key alliance is likely to be with the Global Reporting Initiative, the body that produces the GRI guidelines on sustainability reporting. Zadek describes closer links between the GRI and AA1000 as ‘a marriage made in heaven’.
The GRI, which has just set up a permanent secretariat, seems the body most likely to harmonize the way businesses report their impact on society and the environment.
Meanwhile, AA1000 is being revised and will include a quality assurance framework ‘specifically to complement reporting standards like the GRI’. The framework, to be launched on 12 June, will help assure stakeholders that a company’s CSR reports and management systems are reliable. Zadek does not think the two standards will merge, but clearly sees them working together.
Before this can happen, however, AA1000 needs to be more accessible. One FTSE 100 firm told EP it had to ‘translate AA1000 into English’ before working through its recommendations. Zadek says the revisions reflect this, and a pro bono deal with Edelman Communications should improve Isea’s presentational skills.
At some point, Zadek believes, there will be a ‘gap in the market’ for a global ‘institute of CSR’ that will draw together the strands of corporate social responsibility. Some observers believe Isea, with a membership comprising companies, non-governmental organizations and academics, may decide to fill that gap.
But not yet. It is too early, Zadek argues, because the CSR field is still consolidating, making it impossible to build a firm foundation for such a body at the present time.
The jury is still out on whether Zadek is the best choice to head Isea. A man of ideas may not be the best person to expand and run an organization – but Zadek counters that he is both a thinker and a doer. ‘In the last couple of years what people have seen of me has largely been what I have written,’ he says.
Yet between 1992 and 1998 he was development director at the New Economics Foundation, overseeing its expansion into a leading think tank, and he helped set up the Ethical Trading Initiative. ‘It is enormously satisfying to create institutions that are effective change-makers in society. Whether I’m good at it is for others to judge, but my spell at AccountAbility will be the ultimate test of that.’