Responsible Business Guide: A Toolkit for Winning Companies

RBG
Responsible Business Guide: A Toolkit for Winning Companies
Responsibility Performance Level III: Practice
From here a company proceeds to Practice, the third step of responsible behavior. Here
is where the management assumes the biggest burden; it is up to them to lead by example,
establish rewards and sanctions, and ensure that policies become practice and over time
become integral to company decision-making. Employees
Climbing up the ladder of the
establish their work culture in response to expectations
“4-Ps”, that is, from Perception to
from management, particularly when it comes to making
Preparation to Practice to value judgments in daily decisions. This is where companies
Performance, ensures weaving become most vulnerable. There are many examples of
socially responsible conduct into companies where behavior turned out to be contrary to
high-sounding credos and policy statements, invariably
the very fabric of corporate
pointing to corporate leaders not walking the talk and
behavior. making policies meaningless.
Responsibility Level IV: Performance
The final step is Performance, where a company shows its capacity for sustained responsible
behavior. This, unlike the first three steps, is a state that requires constant oversight, but
at the same time promises the greatest reward for a company. It is a state where personnel
and management share a clear set of values integrated into the company’s business model,
retain familiarity with guiding policies and procedures through experience-sharing and
documentation, take decisions in conformity with values, identify any breach confidently,
and take pride in communicating their company values through words and action. This is
the state where a company is seen to live its values. This is when the company finds itself
valued as a corporate citizen within its community.
Returning to the RBF, the six pillars reflect distinct dimensions of demonstrable behavior.
The framework is organized in a modular yet interlinked manner, so that each dimension
builds on the one before and contributes to the one after. Hence, if a company structures
its management systems to be accountable, it can develop policies that reflect this quality
in implementation and be communicated with confidence. This in turn helps build a
feedback mechanism in which stakeholder participation helps to create better products,
which leads to satisfied customers and finally to profitability. The RBF assumes that
companies capable of developing each of these six responsible behaviors to a sustained
performance level have higher competitive potential.
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Responsible Business Initiative