The Social Dimensions of Business Excellence

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IPP and Eco-efficiency

The Social Dimensions of Business Excellence Teun W. Hardjono and Marcel van Marrewijk*

In an era of dynamic markets, globalisation, telecommunication and volatile stock markets, the board of directors of listed companies have grown familiar with the pressure of shareholders. Nowadays CEO’s discus corporate responsible behaviour and sustainability more often. They feel the pressure of external stakeholders. They are aware of the increasing vulnerability of their corporate reputation, an increasing number of financial institutions start demanding social and environmental criteria — and it is more and more difficult to attract new talented people and at the same time, keeping existing employees satisfied. These developments make companies aware of the social dimensions of their organisation, their corporate identity, their role within society and their duty towards future generations. The business environment is beginning to accept that prosperity, profitability and shareholder value alone do not represent the value of the company. The companies’ ability to grow and to improve continuously is also determined by its social competences, ethical responsibility and environmental contributions. This shift of focus leads to a reorientation of the concept of business excellence. At first, quality management focused on the quality improvement of products and services, later on the processes providing these products. Quality was renamed into business excellence when corporations oriented themselves on the quality of the organisation and the chain Žor network or hub. in which it operates. With the present challenges at hand, companies are beginning to focus on the quality of society while taking care of their core businesses, an objective that transcends and includes the former quality orientations. This article first introduces the European Business Excellence Model ŽEFQM model., which have facilitated the transformation toward an integral management approach, including openings to corporate social responsibility ŽCSR.. We will than elaborate on the cultural context of companies engaged in CSR and social responsible investing ŽSRI. activities. We will end this article with an overview of CSR activities, structured according the EFQM model. 䊚 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

*Corresponding author: Van Linden van den Heuvellsingel 7, NL-3135 KH Vlaardingen, The Netherlands; Tel.: q3110-4343327; E-mail: [email protected].

The EFQM Model — European Model for Business Excellence 1989. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet and East European economies, carefully structured according to Taylor’s approach to industrialisation, were no

T. W. Teun and M. Marcel, Corporate Environmental Strategy, Vol. 8, No. 4 (2001) 1066-7938/01/$ - see front matter. 䊚 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

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longer able to mask its inability to adapt itself to changed circumstances. The end of the communist era increased the instability of an already poor performing European economy. Unfortunately, the launch of the ‘White Book’ on European integration, to be completed in 1992, did not yet work as a catalyst to boost the economy. Fourteen well-known CEO’s, presiding over companies such as Renault, Fiat, Philips, British Telecom, KLM and Ciba Geigy, had to turn the tide and stimulate the quality of European businesses and its products and services. They founded the European Foundation for Quality Management. The CEO’s admitted to one and other that there were enough arguments for launching improvement programs in their corporations as well as in the corporations of their suppliers. However, they did not have the pretension to know how. Insufficient management information systems, planning and control cycles, and the rapidly changing business environment raised a sense of urgency. Furthermore, the collapse of the Soviet economy was an additional proof that Taylor’s principles of standardisation, specialisation, maximisation, concentration and centralisation were no longer valid. Consumers did not want Model-T Fords. Scientific management, based on Taylor’s principles, and also its successors, were not able to provide the CEO’s with new clues how to improve their business. They studied the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria, which had recently been successfully introduced in the United States. Together with a small team of experts, the CEOs developed a European framework, now known as the EFQM-model, or officially, the European Business Excellence model. They also established the European Quality

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Award and in 1991 the Spanish King was honoured to hand this award to Rank Xerox. The EFQM model includes nine areas, including employee and customer satisfaction and the company’s impact on society. In addition to eight business principles, underpinning the EFQM model we.g. results orientation, customer focus and partnership developmentx we will focus on typical European features.1 1. The conviction that the legitimacy of the company’s existence lies within its surroundings and that these surroundings would not tolerate that the company’s goals are established at the expense of the surroundings. 2. Employees are like molecules: they are the organisation. Employees should not be considered as resources, like information, raw material and financial means. 3. The EFQM-model is not a blue print: it raises a set of good questions, thereby structuring business and managerial processes, without determining its outcome. The creation of the EFQM model, was, despite the studies and experts involved, inspired by intuition. Since its recent update, the business excellence model still emphasises the social and societal dimensions of corporations. But this time it was accompanied with evidence and business practises. By 1999, the ‘‘European Vision on Quality’’, an initiative of the Finnish government during its presidency of the European Union, ŽEditor’s note: See CES, v8 n2, Eco-efficiency, Factor Targets and Integrated Product Policy ŽIPP. -Finnish experiences, Antero Honkasalo. confirmed the direction the EFQM had taken. The concept of quality is no longer restricted to activities, processes and organisations alone. Also, societal norms and values are, nowadays, essential features for decision-making and progress. In this European Vision three elements are emphasised:



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Diversity — a critical component of European competitive capability, enriching innovation, creativity, competitiveness and subsidiarity The creation of a European centred model of thinking, based upon a ‘charter of European Values’ A ‘win together’ culture, enabling working across and within sectors, and across other ‘boundaries’

The vision reinforces the stakeholder approach, and other fundaments integrated within the European model for business excellence. In the next paragraph we will elaborate on the principles and corporate awareness in which the social aspects of business excellence are embedded.

The cultural prerequisites for corporate social responsibility Corporate sustainable development involves the simultaneous pursuit of economic prosperity, environmental quality and social equity. Therefore, business excellence ultimately implies that corporations integrate social, ethical and environmental criteria into their investment decision-making processes: they measure their performance against three bottom lines wThe Triple P of planet, people and profitx. Before companies are engaged in corporate sustainability a fourth P is necessary, the P of ‘principles’. ‘‘Who you are as an organization, and what you stand for, have become just as important as what you sell’’. This statement indicates that principles and values have indeed become core business. Adam Smith’s concept of self-interest is still the driving force of post-modern society, but sustainable progress will only occur when this self-interest is enriched with sufficient ethical, social and environmental elements. Organisations ought to adopt these values

before it can transform its business into more profitable customer relationships, into mutual beneficial supplier arrangements and improved employee circumstances. Only than organisations are able to meet the need for personal growth of the new employees, challenge the increasing awareness within society and fulfil the request for transparency in reporting and public debates. Some companies are leading the way towards sustainable development, via trail and error that is. The appeals of corporate social responsibility ŽCSR. make others pretend they are also doing it. Much of the present CSR and social responsible investing ŽSRI. activities is only ‘window dressing’: organisations paying only lip service to sustainability. Who is and who isn’t and what makes the difference. These are the questions. The corporate identity and cultural profile determines the company’s range or domain of responsibility: Where does a company feel competent, confident and responsible. How far does their awareness reach? How large is the company’s inside world and what is left to outsiders? It can be visualized by a wall, a ‘psychological wall’, moving outward when the domain expanses into new realms. In the beginning this wall cuts right through the organisation itself, separating management Žand especially owners. from the work floor: us against them. As development continues, there is a moment that the wall surrounds the organisation tightly, consciously allowing employees, for instance, to dump waste material illegally or shift burdens to society, not taking any responsibility for them. When organisations have become truly client oriented and use the concept of perceived customer value the wall shifts even further. A together win relationship becomes


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dominant and also suppliers become in crowd. As its cultural maturity grows, organisations gradually understand that increasing the basic competences implies allowing others to gain and grow. The wall moves further away, first employees benefit, than customers and suppliers and, ultimately, society. The concept of corporate citizenship starts to unfold as companies develop a need to mean a difference within their neighbourhood. Companies, especially the people employed by that company, adopt behavioural codes stating they do not longer want to shift negative consequences of their business activities to weaker social groups, peripheral regions wthird world countriesx or exploit at the expense of next generations. Ultimately, the corporate wall includes the whole planet. Various sources have indicated that changes within the organisation should always be supported by a change in culture. Otherwise the change will only be an incident. Various contributions of Ken Wilber2 and also Pirsig’s3 concept of dynamic and static quality help in understanding this phenomenon. The individual and collective social and ethical awareness must align with the company’s strategies and concepts. Without this alignment, without supporting values and believes, a company can only create incidents, because the changes will not last. Furthermore, without supporting values, the intentions behind CSR activities are often not sincere. As soon as economic downturn appears, fancy activities are immediately cut back. Mature organisations, however, or ‘visionary’ companies as Collins and Porras4 showed in Build to Last have sustainability and the urge to continually improve as a business principle. ‘Principles’ have thus become core business. Without the urge and incentives, without having personally and collectively integrated the related values, the desired behaviour, will not last, will only occur incidentally and will not be manifested for long. This is why govern-

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ments play a little role in making CSR happen. Government regulations are not able to force companies into a ‘CSR mode’. Of course they can enforce more strict regulations — and they should — but unwilling corporations will obstruct the process of sustainable development because in their small domain of responsibility and corporate awareness they only can see the costs involved and not the gains.

An overview of CSR activities The state of the art in CSR and SRI was scheduled during Europe’s largest SRI conference, the Triple Bottom Line Investing Conferences in 1999 and 2000, initiated and organized by Brooklyn Bridge.5 In the various plenaries and breakout sessions, experts and business representatives discussed statements, which were ‘unthinkable’ in the corporate environment only a few years ago.6 They have presented the developments of the SRI Industry with respect to methods of auditing and screening corporations’ triple P performance. They have demonstrated good practices in corporate environments showing that sustainability pays off, that ethical codes, humane social policies, corporate citizenship and pro-active environmental procedures reduce the corporate risks, boost the creativity and loyalty of the workforce and improve the financial performance, now and in the future. For companies that are fit for a CSR strategy, we have listed a number of activities, structured according to the EFQM model.

Leadership There are international business heroes who have become pioneers by transforming their company into responsible ones and showing the positive impacts of adopting triple P performance as a business principle. Ray Anderson ŽInterface., Izaak van Melle ŽVan Melle. and Yvon Chouinard ŽPatagonia. are examples of these CEO’s. To a certain extent



also the CEO’s — or major builders — of the before mentioned ‘visionary companies’ such as Sam Walton, Jack Welsh, Walt Disney, William Procter, Gerrit Philips and Dave Packard, have had substantial impact in the architecture of their social corporate system and success of their companies. Even without being a charismatic and visionary leader, a CEO plays an import role in the introduction or acceptance of new values and principles as business fundaments in the forthcoming transformation process. There are a number of transformations a company has to go through before it is mature enough to act responsible, in other words, act in according to the principles of sustainable development. The CEO as a person has to go through this process himself. Without being able to integrate new values, he is not able to lead his company into the transformation process. When a company is forced to move, due to for instance a change in market circumstances, it needs management to change its role. Are they able to leave behind their authorities hierarchical style and become participative managers or coaches? Are they ‘one trick ponies or are they able to grow along with the company? It is an essential question to managers: ‘‘In what circumstances am I effective in my company and when should I make place for others?’’

Strategy and Policy The Four Phase Model7 gives clear indications which strategy matches the market environment and which interventions should be selected. The aim remains the growth of competences. Although specific strategies always relate to its dominant competence, over time all four competences ought to increase to the desired levels. Given the awareness and maturity level of the company, the chosen strategy might have win-win arrangements with consumers, suppliers and other stakeholders, allowing them to gain and

grow their competences. The extent to which this is valid determines the level of corporate responsibility. When the organization has a clear sense of its purpose, direction and desired future state, and when this image is widely shared, individuals are able to find their own roles both in organization and the larger society of which they are a part. They gain a sense of importance as they are transformed from blindly following instructions to human beings engaged in a creative and purposeful venture.

People management Human Resource Management does not match the principles of the EFQM model. Neither is it capable of effectively responding to contemporary challenges. Due to tight labour markets, a situation that will hardly improve considering the ageing problem in western societies, many corporations will have to transform into a more attractive organisation. Potential new employees choose to work in organisational cultures that align with their personal values and support them in becoming all they can become. To retain the best people organisational values are necessary to meet the needs of existing employees so that they feel fully aligned with the organisation’s vision, mission and values and feel they are able to bring their whole selves to work. These circumstances and ambitions are features of the so-called Human Capital Management approach. The UK initiative ‘Investors in People’ fits nicely within the HCM approach and it is starting to become popular in Europe. When a company is fully committed to developing its people in order to achieve its aims and objectives and is able to prove that the development of people has improved the


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performance of the organisation, teams and individuals, they can obtain a certificate to become officially an Investor in People. Nowadays, the ‘soft’ social dimension of organisations contributes largely to the company’s competitive edge and adds to its financial performance, while reducing corporate risks. Prices can be changed overnight, but imitating one’s business culture and social arrangements is almost impossible. Who you are as an organization, and what you stand for, are becoming just as important as what you sell.

Resource management Three key corporate resources are information, finance and suppliers. With respect to information the big issue is ‘transparency’. A worthwhile dialogue with various stakeholders requires open books. The various initiatives to upgrade corporate reporting facilitate the shift in attitude indicated as: tell me, show me, prove it and involve me! The number of environmental reports is increasing and its quality is improving. Some companies have also published a social report, following the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. Research institutes screening the triple P performance of listed companies use performance questionnaires to obtain sufficient data. These inquiries are far from standardized and despite the pioneering efforts of these institutes to make better judgements, the market of SRI products and services need serious improvements to facilitate the final breakthrough of Social Responsible Investing. With finance as one of the drivers behind corporate transformation, it makes a difference that traditional financial organizations are starting to move over and participate in

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‘sustainable’ financial services. Pension funds, like PGGM, the Netherlands’ second largest fund with $50 billion invested in stocks, has adopted a SRI strategy and ultimately wants to screen its full portfolio against the triple P performance criteria. With SRI becoming a mainstream practise, the amount of money invested in some sort of ethical funds is rapidly increasing. Some sources claim it is over $ 2,200 billion. The amount of money involved and the fact that for instance the Domini Index and also many other social indexes are outperforming average stocks, listed companies seriously want to be part of these indexes. The European Commission supports this process by raising awareness among the financial community, in order to use their financial power to put greater pressure on business to embrace better social practices. The third resources with substantial impact on CSR are the products purchased from suppliers, especially when these suppliers operate in low wage countries. The Social Accountability 8000,8 the global humane workplace standard, is a code of conduct for designated company-owned and supplier facilities. Companies can issue a plan for moving these facilities to SA8000 compliance over time and report annually on progress towards meeting this plan.

Process management Improving business excellence often means improving process control. Waste can be seriously cut back saving significant amounts of money. By being keen on waste and externalities, companies can improve their environmentally friendly profile, add surplus value to their products and services and save production costs at the same time. Some seriously responsible companies even compensate their still inevitable pollution, for instance CO2 production, by investing in forests.



The above five management attention areas are the so-called enablers. Below we have listed the results.

Employee satisfaction Unfortunately, many employee satisfaction surveys are biased, incomplete or not linked to the companies’ objectives. The outcomes are often not very resourceful. By measuring the individual motivation and by analysing the alignment between individual motivation and the company policies precise recommendations can be made. Especially one aspect of motivation — employee dedication — directly corresponds with productivity. Recent studies have shown that dedicated employees have a up to twelve times Ž!. higher productivity than average workers ‘just doing their job’. And besides, committed employees are the only ones capable of delivering the kind of quality and service needed to compete.

Customer satisfaction Although it costs more money to get new customers than keeping the existing ones, customer loyalty is not the issue. Getting to know the customer is essential. Only than the perceived value of customers for your Žpotential. products and services can be deducted. When companies are able to design and produce unrefusable offers, it has to be a together win option.

Impact on society In addition to having motivated employees, being employee’s first choice, operating an environment friendly production process, compensating efforts for still inevitable pollution, being listed in social indexes and having increased market shares and revenues, there is something called corporate citizenship. It includes investing in the surrounding communities, like offering volunteers, sponsoring local activities or get involved in public private partnerships aimed at upgrading facilities in nearby townships.

Financial and operational results The Collins and Porras’list of visionary companies, who are to various extent socially responsible corporations, have a remarkable financial performance: The long term stock performance — since 1926 — is six times the comparison fund and 15 times the general market. Earnings over the last decade are four times higher than the revenues in their industry.

Conclusions and outlook In the last few years, the topic of sustainable development has been receiving increasing attention from major stakeholders around the world. Corporate social responsibility ŽCSR., corporate citizenship ŽCC. and social responsible investing ŽSRI. have been placed on the agendas of management forums and corporate boardrooms. The potentiality of these objectives is undisputed. Who wouldn’t want to work for, work with, or buy products from organisations that respect the environment, that create atmospheres in which employee commitment, motivation and dedication flourish, that is able to generate the best out of people and through this approach make a good profit? Who wouldn’t want to live in a country where many organisations contribute to the quality of society? All of us do. Can we all do it? No. This article focused on the cultural prerequisites, that make it naturally for a company to proceed with business excellence and include the strive for improvements of the quality of society while taking care of their core businesses. The road towards corporate sustainable development is a difficult one. The present management frameworks can structure the CSR activities, as we have shown in this article, but the business community needs a clear and consistent theoretical concept of CSR and related SRI and a related set of practical Žassessment.-tools to measure,


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manage and development.

implement

sustainable

The stakeholders of sustainable transformation process also need a transparent, verifiable company performance judgement system. Despite the efforts of various rating agencies, at present we cannot tell for sure how responsible, ethical, environmental friendly company A is compared with company B? We do not exactly know what performance criteria are valid to indicate the company’s responsibility? We often do not know which listed companies are selected in SRI indexes and why? It is our common challenge to smoothen the transformation process towards corporate sustainability, taking away all the Žpossible. constraints obstructing the development process. Failing to lift and solve them will bring the process to a stand still, causing companies to wait and see and turning CSR to just another management hype.9

Endnotes 1. Related to the first feature is the ongoing debate between the Angel Saxon and the Rhineland approach: Does the company’s surrounding only have shareholders and is maximizing shareholder value the ultimate goal of the company, or expresses the Rhineland approach a higher reality when it considers the company’s surrounding as a complex set of stakeholders, whose interests should be included in the company’s strategies. In discussing quality, the subject should not be restricted to products, services and processes, but also about the organisation as a system and as an integral part of the society in which it operates. The EFQM clearly stands in the tradition of the Rhineland school, as is among others shown in the management attention areas ‘people results’ and ‘impact on society’.

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The second issue relates to the question ‘do organisations exist? Applying a post-modernistic view, it makes sense to emphasise organising, rather than organisations. The employee becomes the focal point. In discussing the quality of organisations, it is realistic to state that total quality starts within people; within their hearts and minds, their concepts and perceptions. Organisations function better if people function better. The way in which an organisation realises permanent care for quality, distinguishes it from its competitors. And the manner in which employees interpret quality, makes an organisation unique. Within the context of the EFQM, Human Resource Management is thus a wrong concept. Its non-descriptive approach might be one of the reasons why the EFQM model is so popular. It is widely used and accepted among various organisations, including SME’s and not-for profit organisations. The model is not only used as a tool for the Quality Award, but also as an instrument for self-evaluation and as a management organisation tool, linking the mission/vision, corporate strategy, critical success factors and measurement systems, such as the Business Balanced Score Card. 2. Ken Wilber: Sex, Ecology and Spirituality Ž1995.; a Theory of Everything Ž2000. 3. Robert M. Pirsig: Lila, an Inquiry into morals Ž1991.; Zen and the art of motor maintenance Ž1974. 4. James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras: Build to Last Ž1994. HarperBusines 5. TBLI 2001 will take place October 18 & 19, again at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Please visit www.tbli.org for more information 6. Some conclusions of the TBLI conferences: d Socially Responsible Investing ŽSRI. is all about wealth creation and profit. This is not a trade-off at the expense of shareholder value, but a powerful way of making sustainable profits and achieving lasting value for the shareholder and everyone else. d Corporate Social Responsibility ŽCSR. is no longer the domain of corporate affairs and public relations. CSR is the purest form of good business, because it integrates all aspects of a company’s performance. It has become of major strategic importance to cor-



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porations; particularly publicly traded companies. By achieving an optimum level of social and environmental performance, corporations are achieving superior financial performance over longer periods of time. This means better returns for investors with lower risk exposure. The days when portfolio decisions could be made in a complete moral and social vacuum are numbered. Indications for this transformation are: d Consumers are more and more sensitive to corporate citizenship and willing to confront corporate violators to the environment, ethical codes and social responsibility. ‘Old fashioned’ companies do no longer attract enough talented executives Good corporate environmental and social policies improve sustainability and contribute to a better financial performance SRI is at the edge of becoming mainstream financial practice wInterxnational legislation is being developed to support the SRI activities Žtransparency, codes of conduct..

7. The basic assumption underlying the Four Phase Model, developed by Teun Hardjono, is that many management principles, models and even hypes have their value, but only in a certain context. This context depends on the market circumstances, the strategy of the organisation, the history of the organisation and the organisational culture. This all changes over time and has its own dynamics and rhythm. The Four Phase Model structures various organisational control points and possible interventions and is able to provide guidelines for a program of organisational change. The various layers in the model are able to describe the basic mechanisms in organisations growing into sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The Four-Phase Model consists of four layers. d d d d

The basic competencies The basic dichotomies Performance criteria and interventions Dynamics

The first layer is a more or less philosophical view on what people, and therefore organisations, drives. It identifies four basic competencies: material, commercial, socialisation and intellectual competence. The origin of these competencies can be found in religion, philosophy as well as in all kinds of sociological and psychological research. The competences are visually presented as four concentric circles. The second layer is based on the model of Quinn and Rohrbaugh. They identify two dichotomies: external/ internal orientation and orientation on control/ flexibility. Many other models based on scientific research, which try to explain why organisations are successful or not, or what kind of interventions are applicable, show a comparable set of dichotomies. The two sets of dichotomies together form a matrix of four possible combinations. The combination of the four competencies and each of the four organisational orientations leads to sets of possible organisational interventions. The third layer introduces the principle of strategic premises and the accompanying sets of performance criteria. The third layer also lays a relation between the interventions in organisations and the sets of performance criteria on the one hand and kinds of markets from a strategic perspective on the other. Here also four types of markets are identified and which kind of leadership and methods of decisionmaking is most appropriate. The fourth layer makes the model dynamic by bringing in the factor time. It shows how organisations can or should develop from one strategic premise to another. With this layer the concept of a phase where an organisation can be in is introduced. Such a phase is a state in which an organisation can be as an outcome of a choice for a strategic premise or a natural development. For more information: [email protected]

8. Social Accountability International and SA8000: Social Accountability International ŽSAI., a non-governmental, non-profit organization founded in 1997, is dedicated to improving workplaces and communities around the


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world by enabling companies to meet ethical standards through a strong code of conduct combined with independent verification and public reporting. To develop and manage these social accountability systems, SAI takes an international, consensus-based approach bringing together experts from business, trade unions, non-governmental organizations ŽNGOs., and government. The first of SAI’s systems to be fully operational is Social Accountability 8000 ŽSA8000., a humane workplace standard and verification program that was launched in late 1997. Social Accountability 8000 ŽSA8000. is a systematic way for companies to assure just and decent working conditions in their facilities and those of their suppliers. SA8000 combines all the elements needed for an effective and credible humane workplace program:

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A code of conduct that covers all core international labor rights including child labor, forced labor, health & safety, freedom of association and right to collective bargaining, discrimination, discipline, working hours and wages Žsee ‘‘Code of Conduct Elements’’ section below. The code also requires that facilities have the management systems needed to assure longterm compliance. Independent certification of compliance at the facility level by accredited certification bodies around the world Žsee attachment ‘‘SA8000 Accredited Certification Bodies’’ for contact information. Development of the standard and oversight by a multi-sector Advisory Board Žsee attachment ‘‘Advisory Board’’ for list of board members. with experts from business, trade unions, government and NGOs, around the world ŽNorth America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. and across industries Žapparel, personal care, food, retail, and toys. Involvement in the certification process by all key stakeholders including business, workers, trade unions and non-governmental organizations ŽNGOs. Žsee ‘‘Trade Union and NGO Participation’’ section below.

The SA8000 process of independent certification is modelled on the International Organization for Standardization standards for quality control ŽISO9000. and environmental management ŽISO14000. - standards now used in over 300,000 facilities. Facilities seeking certification of compliance to the standard must undergo an audit by an independent, accredited certification body. SAI and its Advisory Board oversee the accreditation of certification bodies, which requires an extensive staff background in systems auditing, intensive training in SA8000, and the institutional capacity to assure quality and responsiveness. There are currently five accredited bodies – SGS-ICS, ITS, BVQI, DNV and UL Žsee attachment ‘‘SA8000 Accredited Certification Bodies’’ for contact information.. For information on how to become an accredited certification body or accredited auditor, contact Rochelle Zaid at 212-358-7697, ext. 233 or [email protected]

9. At the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Free University Amsterdam we have initiated international research programmes to develop Ž1. a new generation CSR model and Ž2. ways to improve the transparency and quality assurance of rating corporate performances. Contributions are welcome. Pull Quotes Insufficient management information systems«and the rapidly changing business environment raised a sense of urgency. «societal norms and values are, nowadays, essential features for decision-making and progress. Who you are as an organization«has become just as important as what you sell. Especially one aspect of motivation — employee dedication — directly corresponds with productivity.
