United Nations Global Compact: Literature review and theory-based research agenda (original) (raw)
Related papers
United Nations Global Compact and Corporate Social Responsibility
The United Nations Global Compact is a United Nations initiative to encourage businesses worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. The UN Global Compact is a principle-based framework for businesses, stating ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. Whereas Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to business practices involving initiatives that benefits the society. This papers attempts to highlight the crucial roles of the Government, the Corporate and their social responsibility in relation with the UN Global compact.
This paper aims to investigate companies’ environmental, social, governance (ESG), and financial implications of their commitment to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). The focus is placed on companies operating in the three countries with the highest number of UNGC participants: Spain, France, and Japan. The results clearly reveal that adoption of the UNGC often requires an organizational change that fosters stakeholder engagement, ultimately resulting in improvements in companies’ ESG performance. Additionally, the results reveal that ESG performance has a significant impact on financial performance for companies that adopted the principles of the UNGC. These findings provide both non-financial and financial incentives to companies to commit to this voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, which will have important implications on companies’ strategic management policies that aim to foster sustainable businesses and community development. Finally, the linkages between the UNGC-committed companies’ ESG and financial performance may be influenced by geographical spread, mainly due to the appearance of differences in the institutional, societal, and cultural settings
The impact of the United Nations global compact on firm performance: A longitudinal analysis
International Journal of Production Economics
The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is one of the most important corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives aimed at aligning companies' strategies and operations with principles that involve human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the relationship between UNGC adoption and firm performance. Starting from a literature analysis, we develop eight research hypotheses, three of them related to the effects of UNGC on performance (labor productivity, sales growth, and profitability), and five related to contextual factors that might affect them. We empirically test these hypotheses through a structured longitudinal event study analysis and an ordinary least square multiple regression, using balance sheet data of a crosscountry and cross-industry sample of 810 companies gathered from the Standard and Poor Capital IQ's Compustat Global and North America datasets. The results demonstrate a significant positive impact of UNGC adoption on sales growth and profitability, whereas no significant impact emerged on labor productivity. In terms of affecting factors, country development and cultural features affect the impact on sales performance, whereas UN vendorship affects the impact on profitability. The study contributes to the scientific debate by developing and empirically testing a comprehensive theory-grounded framework on the impact of UNGC on firm performance. It also provides significant insights of relevance for managers, firms, regulatory bodies and policy makers.
Journal of Business Ethics, 2009
CSR has become an important element in the business strategy of a growing number of companies worldwide. A large number of initiatives have been developed that aim to support companies in developing, implementing, and communicating about CSR. The Global Compact (GC), initiated by the United Nations, stands out. Since its launch in 2000, it has grown to about 2900 companies and 3800 members in total. The GC combines several mechanisms to support CSR strategies: normative principles, networks for learning and co-operation, and communication and transparency about CSR activities. However, up to now only a few empirical evaluations of the contribution of the GC to CSR strategies have been conducted that however have not differentiated between different types of companies (regarding type of industry or regarding the maturity of CSR). This paper aims to partly fill this knowledge gap by a case study examination of three frontrunner companies in the telecommunications industry. The results show that the GC is only one of the many initiatives that these companies employ in shaping, implementing, and reporting about their CSR strategies, and that its role is at most modest. There are two important reasons. One is that many of the CSR issues that these companies deal with are industry specific and are hence addressed in specific networks. The second reason is that the GC principles are perceived as minimum requirements that do not provide many incentives to the three case study companies to perform better. A differentiation of norms for GC members is expected to enhance the contribution of the GC to CSR strategy employment, not only for frontrunner companies but as well for other categories of companies.
Business and human rights journal, 2021
This article presents a review of the literature on the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs) for the purpose of situating the UNGPs in the voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) infrastructure. We identify four key themes that underlie the debate: (1) a critical assessment of the UNGPs, (2) their application to different sectors, (3) a discussion of how to embed key aspects of the UNGPs into national and regional contexts, and (4) reflections on the role of due diligence. We discuss these themes and outline some practical and theoretical takeaway messages. Our review highlights some similarities and differences to the discussion of voluntary initiatives in the field of CSR, especially the UN Global Compact. Our discussion helps to understand how the UNGPs are situated in the voluntary institutional infrastructure for CSR. Finally, we show how the theoretical and practical discourse on the UNGPs can be further advanced.
Corporate Governance: The international journal of business in society, 2010
PurposeThis paper seeks to understand what impact the current economic and financial crisis has had on the business and non‐business sector's corporate responsibility (CR) efforts, as well as to describe the critical obstacles being reported to such efforts. It proposes to do this by examining one key CSR initiative, namely, the United Nations Global Compact (GC).Design/methodology/approachA two‐part empirical investigation was conducted on a sample of GC participants (US signatories). The first method comprises a comprehensive survey completed mainly by company CEOs. The second approach involves content analysis of CEO statements (extracted from CSR reports – fiscal years 2007‐2009), which describe new strategies for managing under challenging economic and financial times.FindingsIt was found that the CSR efforts of participants of the GC that have integrated their CSR into their policies, programs, performance, and goals, and those with lesser conformity with the active princi...
United Nations Global Compact: Where are we going?
Social Responsibility Journal
Purpose In a world characterised by increasing environmental and social awareness, the number of corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives has significantly grown. Among these, the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is one of the most important, involving more than 12,000 companies. The purpose of this study is to investigate the UNGC’s worldwide diffusion, both at country and industry level, to understand the reasons leading to the highlighted dissemination patterns, and to propose various future projections. Design/methodology/approach The study pursues its objectives by applying the logistic curve model to data provided by the United Nations. The analysis is complemented by adopting instability and concentration indexes. Findings Results suggest that, while human rights and environmental safeguard in some areas and industries will remain a controversial issue, UNGC adoption will continue growing and giving the participants the required legitimacy to compete...
The United Nations Global Compact: An Institutionalist Perspective.
The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) has generated a lively debate among academics, activists, and policy practitioners. Given the scope and ambition of this program, and the prestige of the United Nations associated with it, its supporters believe it will fundamentally reshape how businesses practice corporate social responsibility (CSR). Its critics view it as a flawed program because it does not impose verifiable obligations and does not compel its participants to adhere to their program obligations. We present an approach to study CSR programs grounded in rational-choice institutionalist theory, building on previous work viewing CSR programs as clubs which can produce reputational benefits for members as well as positive societal externalities, provided that they incorporate institutional mechanisms to prevent member shirking. This perspective puts the focus squarely on the institutional rules of the UNGC and their impacts on member behavior. While we conclude that the UNGC has not yet demonstrated a capacity to generate across-theboard improvements in CSR performance beyond what member firms would have done otherwise, we are hopeful that its sponsors and leaders can undertake worthwhile changes in program design to align member incentives with program objectives.