TRIGOS CSR rechnet sich - Institut für ökologische ...

1.2. English Version
Motivation
Environmental protection and management have proved to be environmentally as
well as economically beneficial, especially when combined with integrated prevention
technologies and material flow costing. But for social projects and corporate
responsibility, there is no clear win-win-situation. Many organisations are reluctant to
openly account for, or even disclose, voluntary social activities for employees and the
local community, in fear they will be stopped in order to save operational costs.
There are also other tendencies. The dialogue initiated by the European Commission
on „Corporate Social Responsibility“ (CSR) and increased demand for social, ethical
and environmental investment options have made corporate social responsibility an
issue at least for companies listed on stock exchange.
Project Goals and Targets
The project analysed and developed assessment tools for sustainable management
accounting in organisations, who have already set such initiatives, received an award
for specific projects and thus believe in the positive effects of responsible behaviour,
even thought the monetary effects and cost/benefits had not been calculated. This is
what the current project did on the basis of selected case studies.
Methodological Approach
TRIGOS is an award scheme for organisations that combine economic performance
with social and environmental responsibility. It is organised by the Austrian Red
Cross, the Caritas, SOS-Kinderdorf, the WWF, die Association of Industry, the
Austrian Chamber of Commerce and Humans.World. TRIGOS itself states, that
corporate responsibility pays also in economic terms due to the increased trust into
the values of an organisation.
The FdZ-Project clustered the 150 applications and 18 award receivers for TRIGOS
2005 and 2006 by their activities taken and calculated the internal and external
(monetary) effects of selected projects. To the degree possible, the results were
monetised. Immaterial values and benefits, risk aspects and external effects were at
least qualitatively described and assessed by a cost-benefit-analysis. The project
serves as scientific baseline for the development of assessment tools for corporate
sustainable accounting.
Results
A questionnaire on motivation, effects, costs and benefits of the TRIGOS project and
the generell CSR-orientation has been sent to all applicants for TRIGOS. It was
followed by telefone interviews with the companies. In about 30 companies more
detailed costs and specific indicators were discussed to at least partly monetise their
CSR effects.
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