Using Corporate Social Responsibility Reports for Company Research
Companies no longer operate in an ethical vacuum, but have come to understand that a broader stakeholder analysis is important in the way they interact with customers, employees, vendors, and society at large.
Some companies have gone so far as to evaluate and document their stakeholder analyses in a document called the “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) report. These can be really valuable for Sales as well as Research Professionals.
Here’s a quick example snapshot from the GE CSR – the full report has much more detail on each of these areas and also dives into specific business initiatives where GE will be spending money to address corporate citizenship goals.
CSR analyses cover many topics including:
- Environmental impact (e.g. Pollution, Carbon Dioxide Emissions)
- Global Vendor Sourcing (e.g. Plant Safety, Wages, Child Labor)
- Social (e.g. Charitable Donations, Employee Community Involvement)
- Industry Specific Concerns (e.g. Tobacco Company Marketing, Mobile Phone radiation)
If a sales or business development rep can tie their product or service to one of these objectives, they have a strongly focused, company specific selling point (e.g. Your CEO set a 2012 goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20%, our logistics software helps…) CSR goals can also be useful for business development directors, underwriters, lawyers, investment bankers, and consultants.
You can sometimes find a bit of this content in news releases or on corporate websites. The glossy version of the annual report may have this information as well (you’re more likely to find it there than a 10-K annual filing). One way to get comprehensive access to CSR information is through a business information service.
Tags: Annual Reports, CSRs
January 15th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Its best to look for a service that provides CSR reports that are fully indexed and therefore, searchable. This can be a significant time saver when looking for a particular topic or keyword within the reports (which can be farily large in many cases). I have found that in addition to being valuable to sales and research professionals, the CSR’s are of particular interest to procurement officers within the manufacturing space as well.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
CSR reports provide a nice insight into a company beyond the traditional information you typically find when researching a company. Doing CSR research may even help you find a connection with a company executive on a more personal level, by identifying causes that may be of interest to both of you (although you shouldn’t assume that because a company cares about a particular cause, all the executives do, as well). It seems like CSR activity is becoming mainstream at more and more companies, and I, for one, am trying to leverage this information as much as possible.