Responsible Business Guide: A Toolkit for Winning Companies

RBG
Responsible Business Guide: A Toolkit for Winning Companies
What Stakeholders Want
In July 2008, business leaders and their counterparts in government and the civil sector
attended Social Enterprise – Beyond Philanthropy, a roundtable organized by the Center
for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and Responsible Business Initiative(RBI).
Participants asked for a user-friendly guidance document for companies, one which would
help them understand and implement globally recognized principles of responsible business
in locally relevant ways.
This call echoes the voice of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) representatives
within chambers of commerce, business associations, and trade bodies that say their
member companies want to be able to demonstrate responsible behavior, but find it
difficult in the absence of reliable, easy to use guidelines that can help them negotiate an
increasingly complex business environment.
...do not consume one
another's wealth unjustly
but only [in lawful] business
by mutual consent...
The Qura’n, 4:29
Sahih International translation
This Responsible Business Guide – the RBG – emerges from a
truly national effort 7 . It aims to give entrepreneurs in Pakistan,
and elsewhere, an easy to use resource that helps them
understand, internalize, implement, and demonstrate corporate
citizenship through precepts that are familiar and an approach
that is practicable.
The RBG explains, demystifies, and encourages. Companies big or small can use it in an
incremental or piecemeal way within a holistic framework to move towards higher levels
of responsible corporate citizenship.
Using the RBG
This is an action document. The first chapter provides necessary background information
but avoids lengthy academic discussion, moving straight into the six practical dimensions
of demonstrating responsibility as a company, each organized as a chapter. Each chapter
begins with a brief discussion on the topic from the “responsible business” perspective
along with relevant examples, followed by a checklist for action. The Appendix contains
useful materials or links for further information if needed.
Responsible Business Initiative 9