Influencing Power - WWF UK

4 Influencing PowerIntroductionIntroduction1.01.1 Benchmarking Corporate LobbyingOver the past few years the number ofmajor companies picking up the corporateresponsibility (CR) 3 agenda has beensubstantial. As part of the work for thisreport, for example, we found that overthree-quarters (77) of the world’s 100largest companies now produce some formof stand-alone corporate responsibility orsustainability report. So widespread is thepractice, in fact, that while ten years agopioneering companies were remarkable forproducing such reports, today it’s the lackof reporting at the other 23 companies thatis more noteworthy.Despite this impressive rise in reporting bylarge companies, 4 substantive progress onthe big social and environmental challengeswe face remains elusive. We believe thislack of progress derives partly from the factthat CR is often an add-on — leaving corebusiness models and operations largelyuntouched; and partly from the fact thatmarket frameworks within whichcompanies operate do not provide thesignals needed to encourage companies toadopt more progressive practices. 5 This gapin market frameworks, in turn, is oftenattributed to government concern overbusiness resistance to new policies. As agroup of leading companies including BAA,BP, Cisco Systems and HSBC haveexplained with relation to climate change:‘The private sector and governments arecaught in a “Catch 22” situation . . .Governments tend to feel limited in theirability to introduce new policies forreducing emissions because they fearbusiness resistance, while companies areunable to take their investments in lowcarbon solutions to scale because of lackof long-term policies.’ 6This brief report builds on an initial paperproduced by SustainAbility and GovernmentPolicy Consultants (GPC) in 2000. Thatpublication, Politics and Persuasion, 7 madewhat was then seen as a bold claim — thatCR practices needed to be explicitly linkedwith a company’s lobbying and policyactivities. (See Panel 1.1 for an outline ofsuch activities.)At that time, the suggestion that these twoareas might be connected was widelyconsidered to be at best an unwelcome‘stretch’ for corporate responsibility, and atworst a harmful restraint on a legitimatebusiness practice. Five years on, thegrowing activity around this topic suggeststhat the scales are tipping in favour ofthose working to bring greater transparencyand responsibility to lobbying (see Section1.3).But although there has been a ground-swellin activity from NGOs, investors and othercommentators, progress within the businesscommunity has never, to our knowledge,been systematically analysed. 8 The first aimof our project is to address this gap bybenchmarking 100 of the world’s topcompanies on how they report on theirlobbying, and to derive recommendationson how this process could be improved. Thesecond aim is to move from a focus on‘conduct’ to look at ‘content’, and make thecase for companies to work withgovernments and other stakeholders inhelping shape public policy for sustainabledevelopment.Structure of the ReportSection1234IntroductionExplains the basicconcepts andbackground behindthis report.Our ApproachSets out the processused in reviewingcompany reports anddiscusses limitationsof the approach.Results andFindingsProvides the majorresults from theresearch as wellas our principleconclusions onthe conduct ofcorporate lobbying.Where NextSets out ourassessment ofwhy and howcompanies shouldadopt bestpractices in linkingCR with thecontent of theirlobbying.Figure 1.1