IFamily
CORPUS
Responsible Business in the Blogosphere
CSR as Governmentality
Employer Branding
Corporate Communication and Sustainability
A Moral Philosophical Perspective
DISTRES
Cleantech Investment Research project
CREWe
BDS Network
Strategic Communication about CSR
Implementing the UN Global Compact
CSR and Integrated Communications

You are what you eat and the way that you eat it! Investigate and report.
The EC-funded project I.Family will do just that, helping to identify the reasons why young people in Europe eat the way they do and how this influences lifelong health.

Why do young people in Europe eat the way they do? What are the reasons behind their eating habits and choice of foods?

Many factors are at play. Family time and influence are challenged by modern independent lifestyles. Processed foods, drinks and snacks are readily available. Marketing and peer pressures, accompanied by screen-based distractions that can replace physical activity, all play their part, under-pinned by learnt taste preferences and genetic predispositions.

Building on data gained from over 10,000 children in the IDEFICS study, the EC funded project I.Family will provide further insight into the most important influences on Europe’s young people, their lifestyle behaviour and their eating habits.  I.Family will do this by re-assessing families as their children move into adolescence, identifying those families that have adopted a healthy approach to food and eating habits and those who have not. The project will help us understand the biological, behavioural, social and environmental factors that drive dietary behaviour as children journey towards adulthood.

With nutrition-related diseases causing a loss of over 56 million years of healthy life of European citizens as reported in 2000, policy-makers and healthcare professionals need to be sure how they can best support families to achieve healthier lifestyles. Families and individuals themselves will also benefit from the clarity provided by I.Family’s results, helping them to establish the ground rules that will lead to enjoyment of a longer healthier life.

Prof. Lucia Reisch is chairing the Work Package 7 “Consumer health behaviour and environmental factors”. Here, wider factors of nearer and wider environment of children and adolescents and their families are investigated. The regarded age group of pre-teens (tweens) is particularly susceptible to external influences since consumer competence and health literacy in nutrition related behaviour is just being built up, family guidance is gradually losing its predominance and the external consumption environment is gaining importance.
Assistant Prof. Wencke Gwozdz is co-chairing the Work Package 8 “Consumer awareness, ethical acceptability and policy implications”. Here, based on existing research and theory on behavioural change, social marketing and health communication, effective and pragmatic strategies as well as long-term policies to overcome ‘resistance to intervention’ will be designed and tested.

For more information, contact: Lucia A. Reisch  and Wencke Gwozdz

 

 Enhancing connectivity between research and policy-making in sustainable consumption - CORPUS -

FP7 Project, chaired by Prof. Lucia A. Reisch, cbsCSR (starts 2010)

The current EU Research Framework Programme (FP7) provides the unique opportunity to further improve knowledge transfer at the interface of policy-making and research on sustainable development. CORPUS is a research project within the work programme “Environment”. It aims to develop new and practical approaches in order to enhance the connectivity between research and policy-making. The aim of this activity in FP 7 is to experiment and develop new integrative modalities of linking research results to policy-making through 'secondary exploitation' of existing research. The project will focus on the policy issue of ‘sustainable consumption’ which is of great importance in the current and future strategic development of the EU. It is included, for instance, in the re-launched Lisbon Strategy and is one of the key challenges of renewed EU SDS.

The objectives of the project are:

You can download the brochure for the project here: Corpus Folder

For more information, contact Lucia A. Reisch .

Responsible Business in the Blogosphere (RBB) is a 3 year-project run by Copenhagen Business School (CBS and Danish Technological University (DTU). The goal of the project is to investigate how companies’ reputations as a “responsible business” are constructed online in virtual social networks.

A reputation as a responsible business is becoming more and more important among executives in their work for company value creation. At the same time the online communities of the web are setting the news agenda before journalists and regular media masses. Apple for example did not predict how users would mobilizes a “Green my Macintosh” online supported campaign which demanded that the company acknowledged and lived up to values of environmental sustainability, which Apple never had promised.

The project works from the assumption that communication process, even though initiated autonomously, not necessarily are unpredictable. The projects hypothesis is that these online communication process are taking place in networks and patterns which are possible to identify through the use of socio-economical case studies, linguistic analysis, data-mining, and mathematical models. On this basis the project will contribute with the development of new measurement methods for the value of online communication for the development of ethical capital.

 For more information, contact Mette Morsing .

This part of the centre’s research agenda focuses on the public policy dimension of CSR. The aim is to explore and compare government agendas and initiatives regarding corporate responsibilities at the supranational, national, regional and local level. Particular attention will be devoted to developments within the EU (including EU member states) and in the Nordic countries. At cbsCSR, associate professor Steen Vallentin is leading research into this particular dimension of CSR.

One of the sub-projects in the Nordic Center for Corporate Responsibility (NCCR, see page 37) is concerned with mapping and comparing governmental activities and developments. Among the researchers contributing to this project are, apart from Steen Vallentin, professor Atle Midttun, BI Norwegian School of Management, associate professor Susanne Sweet, Stockholm School of Economics, and PhD candidate Maria Gjølberg, Oslo University. Data has been collected in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland and is currently being analysed. Other research projects in this area involve collaboration with Bocconi University (Milan) and ESADE (Barcelona).

The heading ‘governmentality’ points to the need for critical reflection on public policy developments. In the new millennium we are witnessing a transition from social policy to economic policy as the dominant rationale for government involvement in CSR. The Danish “People & Profit” project and the recently (May, 2008) published Danish government “Action Plan for Corporate Social Responsibility” are both clear-cut examples of a business-driven approach to CSR. Within the EU, the competitiveness agenda is increasingly dominating governmental approaches to CSR and we are, accordingly, seeing widespread employment of liberal and indirect means of steering. Government assumes the role of an empowering facilitator of CSR, not a regulatory enforcer. Government becomes a matter not of providing formal or hard regulation, but of enabling and encouraging socially responsible self-regulation by companies. Government works - not to put social or environmental restraints on companies - but to help them identify and act upon strategic opportunities in their environment. Curiously, government promotes CSR by pushing the profit motive, not by restraining it – which is often assumed to be the role of government in regard to CSR.

The question is: what happens to CSR in the process. The competitiveness agenda subjects CSR to economical reasoning and market thinking with its strong focus on the business case, strategic CSR, value creation, innovation and win-win situations. Although such an economic approach may be considered as absolutely crucial for a widespread mainstreaming of CSR to take place, it also gives reason for concern. Mainstreaming may come at too high a cost. What happens to CSR in the process? Are we witnessing a kind of economic colonisation or takeover of CSR at the public policy level? And, if so, what social issues and concerns may be pushed to the side in the process?

The governmentality approach suggests that we need to take a close look at the means and modes of governance that the turn towards competitiveness leads to. We need to focus not only on the rationalities and mentalities that serve as the impetus for governmental policies and activities, but also on the forms of networks and organisation it gives rise to and its actual implications. Thus, the overall aim is to formulate a critique that is not only ideological but also practical.

For more information, contact Steen Vallentin .

 

Sanne Frandsen started her TDC-supported industrial PhD project in the fall of 2008 with a focus on employer branding, while asking the question of how CSR influences the corporate employer brand. Sanne Frandsen has a MA in Danish and Communication and she came from a position in TDC’s communication department. Her PhD project focuses on exploring how corporate communication and HR may integrate their efforts to strategically pursue the challenges of employer branding. Rather than seeing employer branding as an exercise, which targets external stakeholders, i.e. potential employees, or seeing employer branding as an issue of identity and identification, Frandsen’s project explores how the corporate identity of the company plays a role for external communication with the ambition of creating a strong employer brand.

Her PhD project addresses a subject with much focus on current Danish society; yet an area that is relatively unexplored theoretically, and Frandsen’s contribution is, through empirical studies, to explore the relations and dynamics of HR and corporate communication towards employer branding.

A key question for the PhD project is how employer branding strengthens the perception of the company as an attractive place to work among potential and existing employees?

For more information, contact Sanne Frandsen

Carina Christine Skovmøller started her VELUX supported industrial PhD project in January 2008. Carina Christine Skovmøller has a MA in Communication and Economics and she works at VELUX Stakeholder Communications.

Carina Christine Skovmøller’s project focuses on the implementation of sustainable living in VELUX communications on a global level. The aim is to uncover, which parameters are the most decisive in relation to whether or not sustainable living can be managed in a way, so that it appears credible, but at the same time respects the relationship between global and local level in the company.

Carina Christine Skovmøller will do the PhD in collaboration with cbsCSR and VELUX A/S. Her supervisors are Professor Anne-Marie Søderberg (cbsCSRaffiliated) and Professor Mette Morsing (cbsCSR).

"VELUX's answer to the climate situation and to the demands made of us and our products is ‘Sustainable Living’, which for us means three things: that the buildings of the future have a sound indoor climate, that they are energy efficient and that we have to use renewable energy sources. We hope that we are able to use some of the results from this PhD internally in our future work with sustainable living.”

Michael Rasmussen, Markering Director, VELUX A/S

For more information, contact Carina Christine Skovmøller

Claus Strue Frederiksen, Master of Arts in philosophy from University of Copenhagen, is currently writing an industrial PhD for Coloplast, Danfoss and TrygVesta. Therefore, he is associated to both Centre for the Study of Equality and Multiculturalism at University of Copenhagen and Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility at CBS. Based on his educational background, Claus studies the participating companies’ CSR-policy from a moral-philosophical perspective. The objectives are to investigate and assess the motive of the companies’ work with CSR. What are they doing, and why?

The objective can be separated into two parts:

1. To carry out an empirical investigation of the participating companies’ CSR-policy with specific focus on the companies motives with the aim of comparing these with substantial moral-philosophical principles.

2. To use the result of the empirical investigation as a point of departure for a normative discussion and evaluation of the moral challenges concerning CSR - faced by the participating companies.

The final thesis will consist of three scientific articles; one will deal with the empirical investigation and the two others will deal with the normative investigation.

Just as ordinary people do not act based on a consistent moral-philosophical system, it is probably only very few companies, which have chosen their CSR-policy in light of such thought-through moral-philosophical principles. In this way, the three participating companies resemble most other companies. Nevertheless, even though moral philosophy is not an everyday issue, it is not irrelevant in relation to CSR. Claus is of that perception, that those companies, which acknowledge their implicit moral way of thinking, will be able to strengthen their argumentation and give a more explicit formulation of their CSR-policy.

Malene Østergård, CSR and Environmental Director for Danfoss A/S, formulates it this ways: “From the beginning, we were able to see many perspectives in an industrial PhD; especially if it could include other companies than just us. It is always good to have an outsider focus on an area, especially when it happens from a completely new angle. The new perspectives makes one reflect on conclusions, which until this point have been considered common sense, and thereby the new perspectives encourage innovation. We feel certain that we will be able to use some of the results for internal training, and hopefully all three companies will be able to learn from each other. In short: Claus’s approach concerning an industrial PhD was right on the button and therefore we could not refuse.”

Originally, Claus only planned to include one company, but his supervisor at Danfoss, Malene Østergård, suggested early in the process to involve more companies from other branches and, thereby, make it possible to compare the companies’ approaches to CSR. In that way they got an impression of, to which extend the individual company’s specific properties influence the CSR-policy. On top of putting the companies' CSR-policy into a moral-philosophical context, it at the same time also provides an estimate of the branch-specific and market-oriented properties’ effect on the CSR-policy. The extra companies also extend the network for the PhD-student and the participating companies.

The first article has been published and can be seen here .

For more information, contact Claus Strue Frederiksen, clausf@hum.ku.dk

The Distributed Renewable Energy Sources Project, Creating EU Leadership within Solar Energy

Lately, climate change and renewable energy seem to be on everybody’s lips, and cbsCSR is no exception. In November 2007, we joined the European Commission funded DISTRES project as the only North-European partner. And as we have learned at cbsCSR, the project has nothing to do with being distressed! On the other hand, the DISTRES project is about creating research results, which will help to promote increasing and better
use of the abundant resource that solar energy constitutes in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. All together, the DISTRES project
represents one small piece in the major EU climate and environmental puzzle, which aims to promote the development of “greener” and less CO2-emitting ways of producing energy. Within DISTRES, the focus is particularly on solar cell and solar thermal energy. DISTRES is a three-year coordination action project, which involves a range of different partners with expertise within diverse areas of energy, technology, climate and the environment. The partners are Universitaet St. Gallen (Switzerland), Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (Portugal), Institute of
Communication and Computer systems (Greece), Scholai Frederickou (Cyprus), TECHNOFI (France),Organization for Energy Planning (Egypt), Centre deDeveloppement des Energies Renouvelables (Algeria), Palestinian Energy and Environment Research Center (Palestine), Center for the Development of Renewable Energies (Morocco), Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority (Cyprus), Centre for Renewable Energy Sources (Greece), Association Libanaise pour la maitrise de l’Energie et pour l’Environment (Libanon), Cyprus International Institute for the Environment and Public Health in Association with Harvard School of Public Health (Cyprus) and New and Renewable Energy Authority (Egypt). As one of the only two business school partners on the DISTRES project, we will contribute with our knowledge and research expertise on issues of corporate environmental responsibility and business performance.

Our main task in DISTRES is to conduct in-depth research on a range of solar cell businesses along the entire solar industry value chain, from manufacturers of raw materials to major solar system developers. One of our goals is to be able to identify examples of successful business models for solar energy companies; broadly speaking what are the specific characteristics and value propositions of the solar cell companies that do really well today? What are the success factors and how can we use their business models to make recommendations for future solar cell businesses? Another goal is to be able to identify important mechanisms and dynamics for cooperation on the Mediterranean solar energy market in order to enhance the diffusion of solar cells in this area. The research so far touches upon diverse areas - ranging from environmental communications, ownership and investing, motivation, organisational structures, resource access and network capabilities. We have also been happy to see that climate change and renewable energies have attracted a lot of positive attention from students at CBS. We have been fortunate enough to start cooperation with a number of CBS thesis students on the work of DISTRES, so far creating a very positive synergy effect.

For cbsCSR’s part, DISTRES is planned to end in December 2008, concluding with a workshop and conference taking place in one of our Mediterranean partner countries. The event will outline the results achieved on our specific project task, and participants will include other project partners as well as external stakeholders. We already look forward to presenting the results to them as well as to relevant cbsCSR partners at the end of 2008!
 

For more information, contact Kai Hockerts

The main objective of the project is to conduct an analysis of venture capitalist (VC) investors’ decision-making process when investing in cleantech companies. That is, how do venture capitalists assess the attractiveness of different clean technologies? It would be interesting to assess these technologies based on two key dimensions, namely: 1) the environmental performance, and 2) the financial performance. As part of the project, the research includes a study on how venture capitalists’ perceived attractiveness of the different clean technologies' changes over time and why this attractiveness may change.

The research is carried out by identifying and categorising different types of clean technologies mainly within energy generation or energy related technologies including those, which are mature, those ready to set up today, and those under development and ready for future commercialisation. Several interviews with experts within the cleantech industry are carried out as well as an execution of a survey among a large group of individual experts within the field of clean technology and cleantech-focused VC investment. Following the results of our survey, we will be able to develop a better understanding of, at what stage in the ‘development life cycle’ of a given clean technology it is most attractive for venture capitalists to invest in it.

The clear reason for this project is that climate change and renewable energy have emerged as topics of key importance on the agenda of companies, organisations as well as national and international governmental bodies. The reasons for the increased focus range from a fear of diminishing oil reserves and because many countries’ wish to become less reliant in terms of fossil fuels, due to the words on everybody’s lips: climate change. Within this context, there is a profound understanding of the need to develop and disperse the use of renewable energies such as wind, water and solar power. Consequently, the potential for cleantech investment to promote and facilitate the development of renewable energies and profit from the wave of interest in clean energy will be huge.

The aim of this project is to achieve a better understanding of the development in cleantech investment.

For more information, please contact Charlotte Ledgaard Steffensen, cleantech@cbs.dk.

Corporate Responsibility in small Enterprises and Work Environment

To what extent can CSR be used to ensure a healthy working environment? This is the question that cbsCSR and NFA (National Research Centre for the Working Environment) jointly have been trying to answer for the past year. The work continues, and deeper research is taken on, but already now several main conclusions seem ready.

Anne Roepstorff is responsible for CREWe at cbsCSR. “It has been a really positive cooperation with NFA and it has been very exciting to meet with CEOs from SMEs (small- to medium-sized enterprises) from all over the country,” Anne Roepstorff says. Until the startup of CREWe, the obvious connection between CSR and working environment has been an unexplored theme in Danish as well as international research. That is why this partnership between cbsCSR and NFA is notable among other research projects. cbsCSR has been able to add knowledge about CSR, and NFA has delivered knowledge about the working environment.

”We have found that academic research on the interaction between working environment and CSR in smaller entreprises is practically non-existing; but since most CSR initiatives in SMEs deal with environment and employees, working environment and CSR together are absolutely relevant for further research,” says Anne Roepstorff.

The study is somewhat comprehensive. The CREWe project runs from the summer of 2007 to the summer of 2008. The project will continue the research from the summer of 2008 to the summer of 2011. The CREWe project uses a wide approach. Literature on the subject is studied, ten qualitative interviews with CSR experts are done, and 21 case studies in smaller companies have been arranged. The project has a special focus on smaller- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Large fonds are needed, and through Arbejdsmiljøfonden, the research project has received a total amount of 5.9 million DKK. The main conclusion is so far that different types of CSR activities help improve the working environment. This is interesting in relation to SMEs. Regulation of SMEs is often considered necessary by parliaments, but SMEs tend to see regulation as an external evil, which takes up capacity and suppresses profit rather than supports it. It therefore seems as if the new study in CSR opens the door for SMEs to take up CSR even more and thereby, as time goes by, make current regulation unnecessary.

Another main conclusion is that CSR activities have a large potential to improve the psycho-social working environment. CSR stresses the importance of volunteering, business and dialogue with shareholders. This is an important conclusion since 1/4 of all absence due to illness comes from stress. “CSR with a starting point in the individual company and with focus on freedom for the individual company has been found to have larger appeal to the companies than law-making, which the working environment debate traditionally has been characterised by. On top of that, it has been shown that SMEs have a particularly good possibility to use this CSR-concept to enter into entrepreneurial action,” says Anne Roepstorff.

For more information, contact Anne Roepstorff

Critical Changing a Debate

“Today, the debate on CSR and development is broader and more nuanced than only a few years ago,” states Søren Jeppesen. Søren Jeppesen, Associate Professor at CBS, is the coordinator for the Business, Development and Society (BDS) network (www.bdsnetwork.cbs.dk). The network has members from Denmark, Britain, Argentina, India, Australia, China, Kenya and South Africa. It was originally established in 2002/03 with the ambition to encourage an independent space, in which reflections and engagement in dialogue on the ongoing changes on the broad CSR and development/business and poverty reduction discourses and the practices could take place.

From the very beginning, Peter Lund-Thomsen, now Associate Professor at CBS, has been in the network. “From late 2005, it has gone into a new phase. A number of researchers from southern countries were included, and the work has been more formalised from the beginning of 2007, as the project has received DKK 900,000 from the Danish Social Science Research Council (FSE),” says Søren Jeppesen. 2007 was a hectic year for the network. Three main achievements have been: the further consolidation of the network, a special issue of Third World Quarterly (edited by two members), and finally a 3 1/2 days international workshop in Humlebæk near Copenhagen. During the workshop, 12 papers were presented, and new ideas and perceptions of the future direction of CSR in Development was aired.

“Today, there is more space for critical views on CSR and development. The picture has earlier been somewhat rosy and over-optimistical, but it has changed. And today the debate seems to start focusing on the underlying structures of CSR in development, such as the financial system, the market, trade policy and taxation along with issues such as the rise of China, regulation of civil society and politics of consumption. These changes are obviously not only due to the merit of the network, but it has had its impact on the changes that have taken place,” says Søren Jeppesen. In 2008, BDS Network will among others organise a second international workshop in South Africa. A number of working papers and journals will be published, seeking to expand BDS Network's strategic collaboration, for example, by exploring the options of joint efforts with EABIS (see page 43), as a part of an ambition to push the European influence (being the largest bilateral donor in the world) in the field.

For more information, contact Søren Jeppesen or visit http://bdsnetwork.cbs.dk/

 

In 2005, professor Lars Thøger Christensen, University of Southern Denmark, and professor Mette Morsing, CBS, published “Behind Corporate Communication” in Danish at Samfundslitteratur Publishers. In 2008 an extended and English version with the title “Corporate Communications” was published at Sage in collaboration with professor George Cheney from Utah University. The book provides a critical discussion of the area of corporate communication, while it discusses the complexity as contemporary companies attempt to appear legitimate vis á vis internal and external audiences, and as such, it unfolds a number of issues of concern for companies, as they communicate about their CSR engagement in order to achieve legitimacy and trust. Back in 2006, Mette Morsing edited the book ”Strategic CSR Communication” with her colleague Suzanne Beckmann at Djøf Publishers as an attempt to invite contributions and perspectives on the challenges that companies face, as they are expected to appear as socially and environmentally responsible organisations. A number of CBS colleagues contributed to the book. The book triggered a number of questions in order to understand more fully the dynamics behind the corporate strategies and the implications in terms of reception among internal and external audiences. As companies simultaneously communicate much more conspicuously about their CSR engagement in public media, corporate websites, on weblogs, in annual reports, at conferences and via many other channels, a group of Nordic researchers met on a workshop in April 2008 to discuss these issues further. The workshop was supported by The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS), and about 25 researchers from the Nordic countries participated in the first day’s workshop, while the focus of the second day was on the corporate communication discipline’s contributions and challenges to unfold the particular challenges, as companies placed in a Nordic context communicate about CSR. Participants on day two were associate professor Peggy Brønn from Bi Norwegian School of Management, associate professor Susanne Sweet from Stockholm School of Economics, Anne Ellerup Nielsen from Århus School of Business and Maria Joutsenvirta from Helsinki School of Economics. This group will meet again in 2008 to develop ideas and strategies for future research.

For more information, contact Mette Morsing .

The biggest retail store in Denmark, named Coop, signed up for Global Compact - the UN initiative concerning Corporate Social Responsibility - in the summer 2008. They thereby agreed to implement changes in the company’s operations, in order to make Global Compact and its ten principles an integrated part of the company’s strategy, culture and daily actions. Today they face the great challenge to implement Global Compact’s 10 universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment, and anti-corruption in more than one thousand stores in Denmark spread on different chains of shops. Based on theories and models of change management the project will describe the various tools Coop brings into play when implementing the UN-initiative.
 
The methodology used is an ethnologically inspired in-depth case-study within Coop combined with qualitative interviews among other companies, who also signed up for Global Compact. The research questions are as follows: -Which change management tools does Coop apply in their efforts to transform, implement and integrate Global Compact’s principles into an organizational “every-day context”?

For more information, contact Maja Rosenstock

The focus of the project is ethical actions in organizations and their communication about their behavior. The project deals with CSR and integrated communications, which aims to contribute with new research to the practical implementation of CSR in knowledge-intensive organizations. With COWI as empirical field, I focus specifically on domestic support, including employee identification, opinions and involvement in relation to the implementation of CSR. Where the discipline Organizational Behavior assumes that implementation is a matter of leadership, the approach of this project, to the management of CSR, is that it is very much a matter of communication. It is the aim to develop theoretical understanding of how CSR as a changing element can be implemented, which include new requirements for ethical organizational behavior. Starting from the identification of knowledge-intensive employees the purpose of the research project is to compare like communications, CSR and the integration of these and thereby contribute to the organizational behavior and management of CSR.

For more information, contact Christina Frydensberg Lollike