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Most companies are still not being open enough when disclosing their
social and environmental impacts, a senior CSR figure has said.
Tom Delfgaauw, a former Shell executive who with others spearheaded the oil company’s promotion of responsible business practice, told a Chatham House conference in London that a ‘very large number’ of sustainability reports are ‘full of good news stories only, and fail even the most modest tests of critical self-assessment’.
He told delegates that the rose-tinted approach of many reports showed that ‘the state of denial so typical of the overall corporate debate only a few years ago is still visible in abundance’.
Delfgaauw, who is chair of the council of the AccountAbility think-tank and a member of the policy committee of the FTSE4Good index series, said one reason for this might be ‘the paradox of transparency’ – whereby the more information given to stakeholders, the greater the ammunition ‘for new and fiercer attacks’ by pressure groups. He regretted that, while companies that are committed to explicit disclosure put themselves in the spotlight, ‘a competitor who desperately tries not to volunteer any information whatsoever manages, at least initially, to escape the storms’.
Delfgaauw said another reason for the general lack of insightful corporate reporting was that much stakeholder engagement is ‘in practice little more than a one-way information process in a strictly controlled environment with a few – often friendly – outsiders’. Such meetings rarely have the ‘tension’ necessary to reveal real concerns that companies can reflect in their reports, he said.
Tom Delfgaauw, a former Shell executive who with others spearheaded the oil company’s promotion of responsible business practice, told a Chatham House conference in London that a ‘very large number’ of sustainability reports are ‘full of good news stories only, and fail even the most modest tests of critical self-assessment’.
He told delegates that the rose-tinted approach of many reports showed that ‘the state of denial so typical of the overall corporate debate only a few years ago is still visible in abundance’.
Delfgaauw, who is chair of the council of the AccountAbility think-tank and a member of the policy committee of the FTSE4Good index series, said one reason for this might be ‘the paradox of transparency’ – whereby the more information given to stakeholders, the greater the ammunition ‘for new and fiercer attacks’ by pressure groups. He regretted that, while companies that are committed to explicit disclosure put themselves in the spotlight, ‘a competitor who desperately tries not to volunteer any information whatsoever manages, at least initially, to escape the storms’.
Delfgaauw said another reason for the general lack of insightful corporate reporting was that much stakeholder engagement is ‘in practice little more than a one-way information process in a strictly controlled environment with a few – often friendly – outsiders’. Such meetings rarely have the ‘tension’ necessary to reveal real concerns that companies can reflect in their reports, he said.
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