In their effort to 'glocalise' corporate responsibility the UN Global Compact's team in New York have been pushing toward their target of 1,000 signatory companies. Already 216 Brazilian companies have expressed support, and agreed to work with a local business association to implement the principles in company operations.

The United Nations country team also held a workshop of over 40 Malaysian business leaders to provide the community with information regarding the implementation of the Global Compact in their country, while in India over 20 high-level Indian business leaders demonstrated their support of the Global Compact and the implementation of its principles.

However, it was 'back home' in the US where the UN were making slower progress. The International Herald Tribune noted that 'many of the big names of American business have remained aloof' to the UN initiative (25 January 2001). Thomas M.T. Niles, president of the US Council for International Business (CIB), an American affiliate of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), told the newspaper that the main cause of American corporate hesitation was that important details on how the programme will work are still undetermined: 'US companies want to be sure what it is they are being asked to do before endorsing the compact.' For Mr Niles, the problem for American companies is not the Compact's basic premise ('American companies fully support the fundamental principles which form the basis of the Global Compact'); instead, he suggests that US companies need reassurances that the agreement will remain as it was presented by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in July 2000. 'The heads of some of the UN agencies involved made statements at odds with what had been presented by the Secretary-General, particularly on external monitoring and verification. These points need to be clarified. Companies need to receive the same, consistent message from all the UN officials involved: a clear idea of what is expected of them should they choose to endorse the compact.'

The Compact's Mr Dubee told The International Herald Tribune that 'the compact was never meant to be fine print carved in stone for lawyers, but is a broad framework inspiring action in support of the nine principles'. He explained that companies are challenged to be as creative as possible and to use their entrepreneurial skills in developing innovative solutions to concrete problems and that 'this concept has been understood by business leaders around the world.'

The caution from CIB seems to stem from a concern with having their business activities subjected to a greater degree of scrutiny by various groups. Rather self-evidently, Mr Niles commented that 'Inevitably, their postings on the Global Compact Web site will be examined in microscopic detail.'

The UN Secretary-General's office has established an experimental Global Compact Learning Forum at Warwick University's Corporate Citizenship Unit which will focus on the organisational change and learning issues involved in company engagement with the Global Compact. They will report annually and hold the first of what it is hoped will become an annual event in October 2001.

In January a new survey of 150 technology companies warned that dot.com entrepreneurs are wrong in thinking their businesses have no impact on the environment or society, or that they can be irresponsible because they are new. The report, Dotcom Ethics: E-business and Sustainability, includes case studies from Amazon.com and eBay, and forms part of a year-long inquiry into the social and environmental opportunities from e-commerce and the new economy. The inquiry is being steered by a group of companies, government departments and think-tanks, and co-ordinated by the UK-based environmental non-profit Forum for the Future.

The report argues that new economy companies are all innovators with the opportunity to change for the good the way that business works. Yet they are not realising potential benefits, such as the lesser environmental impact of Internet use. Although more than two in every three respondents think the environment important for their businesses - and almost all are personally committed to safe-guarding it - just over half say they do not have enough time or expertise to do anything about it.

One e-business leader who seems to be taking the issue seriously, Jeff Bezos, is a contributor to the new book, Digital Futures (Earthscan, 2001) edited by James Wilsdon of Forum for the Future. On the other hand, Bezos's company, Amazon, is currently experiencing troubled relations with the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers union, since it started laying off 1,300 staff in January, adding to fears that the new economy may become a jobless rather than weightless society.

"There are fears that the new economy may become a jobless rather than a weightless society"

Although dot.com entrepreneurs may not be seizing the opportunities offered by the Internet to become good corporate citizens, the existence of the Internet is certainly making corporate transparency and accountability more important. It is the ability of the Internet to facilitate communication that is making it a key weapon on the social responsibility battle-ground. 'Critics of large corporations use web sites to mount attacks on them and call for boycotts and demonstrations, while companies have begun using their own sites to promote examples of positive corporate citizenship', reported The Financial Times (Pike, 25 January 2001).

"The Internet is making corporate transparency and accountability more important to management"

Meanwhile, there are a number of new online services being established within the field of corporate responsibility. In the US, SRI Worldgroup is striving to help social investors and promote corporate social responsibility through a variety of Internet-based services, including SocialFunds.com, the Corporate Social Research Center, and CSRwire.com.

SocialFunds.com provides over 2,000 pages of mutual fund and corporate information; the Corporate Social Research Center offers viewers social and environmental performance reports for more than 1,500 publicly traded companies; CSRwire.com is a niche newswire service devoted solely to corporate social responsibility press releases and a resource for concerned investors, consumers and media. Other initiatives include business-impact.org and worldcsr.com, which is a gateway to websites of business-led organisations on corporate responsibility.

"The existence of web watching services has raised serious concerns within civil society"

However, the existence of these web watchers has raised serious concerns within civil society. Head of Research at Infonic, Mark Bunting, recognises that most of the companies selling these services 'advocate control ... [and] sell themselves on the ability that they give their clients to stop other people doing things'. He argues that Infonic has a different strategy, and that it recommends to its clients that 'successful adaptation means engagement, not control.'

The obvious objection is that clients of these services are under no obligation to use the information to engage, but can use it to pre-empt or undermine campaigners' activities. Mark Bunting questions why campaigners might be worried that companies will find out about their concerns and activities, as 'this assumes that campaigners have more chance of success if the companies they target remain ignorant of their endeavours'. Yet the power of a campaign to affect corporate reputation only really kicks in when an issue moves out of the virtual world and onto our TV screens and into our newspapers. Before this happens, processes of knowledge creation, critical independent debate, and the marshalling of people, resources and evidence around an issue are crucial. If these processes are increasingly inter-rupted at an early stage by a company with a commercial interest in the issue, will the critical nature of civil society be forever undermined? In such a society how will we really know what is going on and be able to decide what is important for us and the planet?

A leaked report from Sony demonstrates this concern, as it advocates using Infonic's services as part of a co-ordinated strategy that could include intervening in the potential funding of a campaign by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Mark Bunting recognises this new reality is a challenge for NGOs and suggests 'campaigners have to acclimatise to the new transparency of the Net, just like corporations'.

All of these new web-based initiatives raise the issue of access to information technology. Half the people on this planet have not even received or made a telephone call, let alone used the Internet, and most of us do not speak English. The Internet is a great communication tool for the connected, but one solution does not fit all situations, and we need to consider how representatives of workers and communities from Nicaragua to Namibia are going to have a voice in these new processes governing corporate policy and practice.

"We need to consider how representatives of workers and communities from Nicaragua to Namibia are going to have a voice in these new processes governing corporate policy and practice"

The United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS) is attempting to bridge this digital divide. Managed by UN Volunteers, UNITeS mobilises information technology professionals to help developing countries harness the power of information and communication technology (ICT) for human development.

One leading supplier of hardware for the Internet, Cisco Systems, is joining the effort by teaming up with the UNDP, launching an Internet training programme in Benin for Internet administrators from eight francophone countries in Africa. The 'training of trainers' course is a new step by UNDP, Cisco Systems, UN volunteers and other partners to bring Cisco's Networking Academy Programme to half of the world's 48 least developed countries. Cisco is also establishing a new Internet training centre in Burkina Faso.

Meanwhile, the growing notoriety of the protests against global economic institutions, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the WTO, has established the issue of globalisation and its governance on the international business agenda, as illustrated by the discussions at January's World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. 'Stung into action not just by the threat of anti-capitalist demonstrations but by many of its own members from poorer countries, the World Economic Forum turned into an unprecedented public expression of guilty conscience from the planet's most exclusive gathering of political and business leaders', suggested The Financial Times (Hugh Carnegy, 30 January 2001). George Soros told the participants that globalisation 'creates a very uneven playing field. The centre is rich and the periphery is less rich and the centre also controls the system.' Soros took part in a satellite link-up with the World Social Forum, held simultaneously in Porto Allegre, Brazil, which drew some 10,000 participants mainly from civil society organisations.

Post-Seattle, those who have for years questioned the merits of economic growth and free trade are no longer ignored by players in the global marketplace, although they are still considered misguided. For example, on 24 January, journalist Martin Wolf wrote an article in The Financial Times entitled 'Growth makes the poor richer'. In it, he suggested that those arguing for the reversal of the effects of globalisation to increase equality 'might be right - but only because it would be a move towards equality of destitution'. Head of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Globalisation Team, Raphael Kaplinsky, responded by pointing out that 'the "losers" are not confined to those who failed to participate in the global economy (as Mr Wolf implies) but are also drawn from those who have participated but have done so inappropriately.'

"We may not know the outcome of these debates sparked by global protests, but one thing is certain: history has restarted"

In January, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) in London published a new Briefing Paper, which adds to the discussion on whether there is a need for tougher regulation of multinational corporations.

"Legal developments, such as foreign direct liability, could drive us social performance of corporate practice across the board"

Interface's CEO Ray Anderson suggested at a conference in Houston that, in the future, if executives did what he had done before his conversion to corporate responsibility, they would go to jail. Similarly, in his book 'Crimes against Humanity' (Penguin, 2000), Geoffrey Robertson QC argues for global human rights enforcement mechanisms to apply equally to corporations and executives, as it is being proposed that they should to governments, politicians, generals and armies. It seems that, no matter what the US Supreme Court decides, Shell's action may only delay the inevitable, as the global economy advances the debate about a concomitant global legislature.

"The global economy may require a concomitant global legislature"

International union coalitions also kept up the pressure on companies to take responsibility for practices in supplying factories. The International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation (ITGLWF) brings together 250 workers' organisations, representing ten million workers in 130 countries. Their secretariat in Brussels issued a press statement on 24 January 2001 accusing the Chicago-based clothing multinational, Fruit of the Loom, of 'behaving disgracefully' in its treatment of workers in three continents. Condemning the company's activities in the Americas, Europe and Africa, the ITGLWF is now demanding that the company 'immediately clean up its act and respect international labor standards.'

In what appears to be a first action of its kind, the union is lodging a complaint with the ILO to seek a determination as to whether the company's behaviour in its factory in Morocco breaches the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s recently revamped guidelines for multinational enterprises. (This action was sparked by the dismissal of eight union leaders who had established a union branch at a factory in Rabat, Morocco.) These continuing cases of labour rights abuses can only add impetus to the social auditing movement and sections of the financial community, who have begun responding to concerns about sweatshops. The head of New York City's US$49 billion pension funds, Alan Hevesi, is to launch a shareholder resolution offensive this spring in an attempt to persuade 27 US companies to adopt and implement the SA_8000 labour practices standard of Social Accountability International (SAI, formerly CEPAA). McDonald's, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, J.C. Penney and Home Depot are among companies facing resolutions on the subject at their annual general meetings.

This support for SA8000, rather than other codes, will be welcome news to the speakers at SAI's recent conference, who complained about the proliferation of labour codes of conduct. Criticism was led by Michael Goldstein, chairman of Toys 'R' Us and a member of SAI's advisory board. He argued that, if more companies and organisations develop their own codes, then factories will require numerous inspections, which will be both costly and could lead to confusion and fatigue. Goldstein said the solution was for all parties to work together to agree a single, globally applicable code.

Reasons why SA8000 has not yet reached this position of de facto global code probably include the fact that it is not an open membership organisation so that stakeholders in social auditing have found it difficult to influence the process in an open democratic fashion. Another reason preventing more widespread support for the code is that it aims to treat accredited certifiers in the same way, thereby preventing SAI from accrediting, at a reduced charge, small local NGOs to perform inspections.

Verité differs from a number of other social auditing providers, as it is non-profit, seeks to use local auditors, and makes the findings of its audits public. However, social auditing is still a new and highly contested profession, and in February their first audit of the Kukdong factory was already being questioned by the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS). USAS complained that, while Verité auditors were present, around 70 workers who attempted to return to work were required to sign their affiliation to a union they did not support, and were then turned away. Nike responded with the information that, under Mexican Law, and the current collective bargaining agreement between the management of Kukdong and the union, the workers must recognise that union in order to be rehired. However, also under Mexican law, workers have the right to seek an election and a new representative union, so they should not have been fired in the first place when they sought to do this. Therefore, the Kuk-dong case demonstrates both the highly technical and highly political nature of issues such as freedom of association and collective bargaining which social auditors need to deal with.

"Social auditors need to deal with highly technical and highly political issues such as freedom of association and collective bargaining"

Recognising both the potential of codes and problems with their implementation and auditing, The ITGLWF announced in February that it will begin training thousands of garment workers in factories around the world on how to encourage companies to comply with their codes of conduct. The ITGLWF will fund a three-year project to train some 6,000 workers on code compliance.

Volunteering is not new, of course, and for the past 30 years the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme has been placing volunteers throughout the world - currently around 4,400 volunteers of 149 nationalities serving in 139 countries.

Now UNV has teamed up with the UK's New Academy of Business and launched a 'collaborative inquiry' to explore current trends in business-community relations, corporate responsibility and volunteering in eight countries: Brazil, Ghana, India, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Philippines and South Africa. Through action research they aim to promote new models of business-community relations and enhanced corporate responsibility practices at the local level in developing and transitional countries. An additional dimension of the project is going to be the active participation of volunteers as partnership facilitators between UNV, business and local communities.

Meanwhile UNV has teamed up with Kraft Foods. In February, Kraft scientists arrived in Kingston, Jamaica, for a two-week volunteer assignment helping the Jamaican Food Technical Institute improve food processing. It is the first in a series of missions around the world in which Kraft employees will work under the United Nations International Short-Term Advisory Resources (UNISTAR) activities of UNV.